A memo from the city's Traffic and Parking Department recommends that Yale-New Haven pay for a new system of traffic signals in the area near the hospital, including North and South Frontage roads and Park and York streets. The hospital is balking. Saying the new lights aren't needed, the hospital has instead proposed improving the light signals that exist, creating an underground loading dock for trucks, and constructing a traffic circle that dumps Air Rights Garage traffic directly onto Route 34. (Click here to read the memo as well as a previous one on the same subject.)

Not good enough, say traffic officials. They argue that the cancer center will create a big traffic problem, and the hospital should pay to fix it.

"Our issue is, you're dumping a lot of traffic in that area. There's no way we can come up with the money [to address it]. That traffic is your traffic," said Bijan Notghi of the city traffic department.

"We understand that developers don't want to pay for public improvements," said city traffic director Paul Wessel. "But that's life" when their projects cause a public problem.

Hospital spokesman Vin Petrini took sharp exception to the traffic department report.

"We are disappointed that the report from traffic and parking doesn't seem to take into account the mitigation strategies we proposed," Petrini (in photo) said Tuesday. He claimed that the city is trying to get Yale-New Haven to pay for addressing existing traffic problems separate from the cancer center.

The cancer center is the number-one controversy in New Haven right now. It's the largest proposed development in city history. It promises, according to the hospital, advances in cancer treatment. It will change the face of the Hill neighborhood. It will create new jobs, jobs that activists hope will pay well enough and be available enough to local workers to address poverty in New Haven.

Several disputes, from the hospital's debt collection and free care programs to a seven-year union organizing drive, have held up approvals for the project. Hopeful signs of progress have emerged in the wake of efforts by City Hall and local politicians to broker a compromise.

Traffic By The Numbers

The cancer center will spawn an estimated 1,142 new car trips a day in the area, based on figures from a traffic study the hospital paid for and cited in the memos prepared by the traffic department. About 339 of those trips will take place during morning rush hour, another 454 during afternoon rush hour.

Those intersections already trap drivers in rush-hour tie-ups. The traffic studies combined the regular projected traffic at seven intersections with the traffic dumped by the cancer center for the year 2011. Projections show all seven intersections having "unacceptable" levels of service for at least one of the two daily rush hours; five of the seven would be a mess at both rush hours.

In response to these numbers, the hospital proposed to the traffic department that it pay to upgrade existing traffic lights at those intersections. The hospital also said it could cut down on traffic by enabling cars to drive directly into the Air Rights Garage from Route 34, by directing trucks to underground loading docks, and by supporting alternatives to driving like shuttle buses, carpooling, and bicycle commuting.

Hospital spokesman Petrini said Yale-New Haven enlisted the help of retired city traffic director Leonard Liss in coming up with its proposals. Petrini accused the city of exaggerating the cancer center's role in increased traffic.

Traffic director Wessel and engineer Notghi of the traffic department dismissed the hospital's proposals as "tweaking." Especially the idea of traffic light repairs. That won't work, they said, because the lights are 20 years old. The city needs new lights that take advantage of modern technology. The older lights can't adjust to traffic by communicating with each other and monitoring the flow of cars on the street. The newer lights would also be more durable. Once you open up those old lights for repairs, additional unforeseen problems would surface, Notghi added.

As part of the city's deal to allow IKEA to build its new Long Wharf store, the furniture chain agreed to spend $1.5 million on a system of new traffic lights. "It works," Wessel reported.

Wessel said the city relied on the data in the hospital's own traffic study to determine needed solutions. He accused Yale-New Haven of undercounting the cancer center's traffic impact in its recommendations, by, for instance, not taking into consideration anticipated increased demand for cancer services.

The traffic department memos also call on Yale-New Haven to pay to widen parts of North and South Frontage roads, Park and York Streets, and Howard and Legion Avenues to allow traffic to flow better. That would cut into the footprint of the hospital's proposed project.

Street Life vs. Traffic

That would also sap street life along a border of downtown which the city is trying to resuscitate from the devastation of urban renewal and hospital development.

For that reason, the head of another city government department, Karyn Gilvarg, said she is "of two minds" about street widening. She said the city faces a "balancing act" between the needs of pedestrians and the desire to prevent automobile gridlock.

Similarly, a call in the traffic memos for the construction of a series of skywalks leaves Gilvarg cold. Skywalks connecting medical buildings all the way down to 300 George Street would help ease traffic because fewer pedestrians would push "walk" buttons. But, Gilvarg pointed out, that would also mean fewer people passing by street-level stores. City officials have pushed Yale-New Haven to include street-level retail in its plans. Gilvarg said she recognizes the need for skywalks to help transport, say, gravely ill patients through clinic buildings. But she wants cancer center employees and visitors parking at garages to walk the block or two on the street, not in the air. "If someone is walking to work or walking home, I'd much rather see them walking by a dry cleaner or a place to eat," she said.

Rather than widen streets or build skywalks -- or even invest in new traffic lights -- the hospital should be pushed to put all that money into getting people out of cars, suggested Anstress Farwell. Farwell runs the Urban Design League, a citizen group deeply involved in public debate over the cancer center.

"We [city decision-makers] are still in the thinking of the [Dick] Lee era. We are oriented toward cars, not people," Farwell said. She called on the city to push the hospital for hard numbers on its proposed investments in carpooling and mass transit programs for its employees and visitors. "You don't give away the comfort and safety of people," Farwell said. "If you keep building parking garages and widening roads, you get further from building the public sector. The city is at a tipping point. The hospital is a good place to start. It's a health issue. And we just have to invest in the public sector."