New Haven Independent

Posted by: charlie | June 19, 2007 9:49 AM

The only way that part of the city will be economically viable is if it is walkable. Everyone here should be concerned, because only if the traffic is calmed and area made beautiful will developers be able to charge very high rents. And the higher the value of the land, the more tax revenue that the city will see. Traffic should be removed almost entirely, except for a dedicated bus and ambulance lane connecting the hospital, downtown, and train station. Also, we should all agree that subsidized housing should NOT be a component of any economic development plan. New Haven already has way more than its fair share of affordable/subsidized housing. Housing should be market rate and we should all share in the tax revenue created by it.

Posted by: Ned | June 19, 2007 10:26 AM

Take a look at the transformation of the old Central Freeway, in San Francisco, turned into the new Octavia Boulevard: http://www.sfgov.org/site/octavia_blvd_index.asp

Not great, but a good start.

However, as CT's Department of Tar, aka DOT, will be involved, we'll probably end up with something just as awful, as the existing Route 34 mess. Note how un-pedestrian and un-bike friendly the Church St. extension is. "Urban" design, in the U.S. is really a misnomer as the designers always emphasize what's best for cars, that is, how to make them go as fast as possible on city streets (The Boulevard, Elm St. from Broadway past the green, anyone?), and produce the most shittiest, dangerous bike lanes and horrible stupid pedestrian crossings - makes a lot of sense to push a button and breathe exhaust for 5 minutes to walk across a twenty foot intersection. My head is spinning from the abundance of examples of what NOT to do, which have been implemented in New Haven (and elsewhere). I could go on and on...

Posted by: Charlie | June 19, 2007 11:30 AM

I agree, Ned. If the City cares about improving its tax base, it needs to make a truly walkable center on this site and relegate cars to third-class citizens, not the ultra-special-first-class citizens they are right now. Businesses are only going to want to locate to this area if it is desirable and not traffic clogged. Let's stop supporting the car companies and start supporting our environment, neighborhoods, and personal health.

Posted by: pedro | June 19, 2007 11:33 AM

People seem to me missing a rather big point: 75,000 cars a day use this road, and there are projections of up to 110,000 cars using it. There is no way to simply wave a wand and make that area pedestrian friendly.

I do think that Connecticut need to vastly improve its mass transit system, but even that won't totally solve 34 specifically because many people will be using that to GET to the train station.

If traffic isn't allowed to flow, people will simply reroute their commute elsewhere, flooding the city with an additional 75,000 cars on local streets, and that doesn't seem to be responsible either.

I really like the multiway concept in that it provides the most flexibility. I wonder if something like that could be put into place in places like Whalley. Perhaps "express" traffic could be rerouted to one side of the divider, with local on the other. Octavia Boulevard looks like a fantastic model that might work well on 34.

Posted by: charlie | June 19, 2007 2:02 PM

Pedro, I think you are missing the point. Cities aren't viable if they are clogged with high velocity traffic. There's nothing wrong with 75,000 cars a day, but those 75,000 cars have to be slowed down to 20mph and set within a beautiful landscape that will attract residents and businesses. People will adjust their commutes for the fact they have to drive 20mph, not 60mph like they do now. But keeping the system the way it is now is simply unacceptable.

Posted by: Our Town | June 19, 2007 3:10 PM

I really don't get it. You concentrate economic activity to the downtown area and the Route 34 "Corridor", and then you restrict access to the area by choking its main artery? Let's not be silly. We do not have alternate transportation; we do not even have near the population density to support mass transit without massive subsidies (a much larger subsidy than required for the roads). You talk of pedestrians and safety, and I can think of nothing safer than keeping the vehicles away from the people in limited access cuts or covered roadways. Just think, a limited access roadway can handle approximately 1200 cars per lane per hour, a surface street can handle about 600 under ideal conditions. You need twice as many surface lanes for the same amount of traffic, and that traffic which now moves at a steady flow would have to start and stop at traffic lights, a major source of air pollution. Pedestrians that now cross the Rt. 34 roadway on bridges would now have to cross twice as many lanes in a crosswalk.

If the purpose is to reduce the traffic in the "Corridor", which is not what a developer wants to hear (one of the comments about Yale's purchase of the West Haven site was "Access to I-95"), where will the traffic go? Onto an adjacent local street, exacerbating traffic conditions on those nearby streets to the point of gridlock? Or maybe not come to New Haven at all, as Yale has shown us with their West Haven site.

This isn't an issue of cars vs. pedestrians and bicycles. Cars and trucks are and will be the transport of choice for a long time. It is safer and better for pedestrians and bicycles to keep as many cars and trucks as we can off the local streets. This idea that a "Boulevard" is more pedestrian friendly than an expressway is a crock.

The problem with Route 34 is that Henry Fernandez and JD gave it away to Pfizer when they didn't demand that their building be built on a platform, and JD has now let Yale build in the Rt. 34 right-of-way also. Now JD is cramming Gateway College into the mix, Yale is continuing to build, and the Hospital continues to grow. All this traffic in two surface lanes...What ARE you thinking?

Posted by: charlie | June 19, 2007 3:25 PM

Our Town: Ever been to Europe? The streets there have more traffic but you can still walk along them. They have wide sidewalks, separated lanes for bicycles and buses, and generous crossing signal timing. There's absolutely no reason that something like that can't be repeated here. Of course traffic may no longer be able to zip at 60MPH directly to the front door, but that's kind of the point. Land values would be much higher in that area if it were a tight, medieval-like district of narrow streets. The energy of the pedestrians, cafes, etc., would make it into a place where every business wanted to locate. The current wasteland of a highway is a waste of space and is quite dangerous because of all the traffic coming off of it at exits 1, 2 and 3 directly onto our city streets.

Posted by: Ned | June 19, 2007 4:32 PM

Population density and mass transit do not necessarily go together. Most trips in Manhattan are made on foot. Retailers are interested in foot traffic, unless they're located in a strip or shopping mall, which is not going to happen in New Haven without tearing the entire city down and rebuilding it on the plan of Hamden Plaza... 75,000 cars is equal to more than half the population of New Haven (are these numbers for real?) - where - one could argue that there is an imbalance between housing and economic development... In addition, if greater population density were allowed, in New Haven, along with more dense economic development people could actually walk to work, negating the need for major investment in roads, buses or rail. One thing is certain, more and bigger roads create more and bigger traffic jams.

Posted by: charlie | June 19, 2007 5:35 PM

I agree with Ned. Adding more lanes, faster lanes, etc., actually creates more traffic and congestion, not less. It's a paradox to people who first hear it, but it is a very well known fact.

Posted by: nfjanette | June 20, 2007 1:20 AM

The problem with Route 34 is that Henry Fernandez and JD gave it away to Pfizer when they didn't demand that their building be built on a platform, and JD has now let Yale build in the Rt. 34 right-of-way also. Now JD is cramming Gateway College into the mix, Yale is continuing to build, and the Hospital continues to grow. All this traffic in two surface lanes...What ARE you thinking?

Thank God I've lived long enough to see someone else understand the problems with those decisions. If that one block next to the Air Rights garage had been built differently, the connector traffic could at least continue under the garage and surface up ramps into that block, or even better, the next block. Look at the snarled traffic in that area during any rush hour - New Haven traffic engineering at it's finest.

Posted by: charlie | June 20, 2007 4:09 PM

People are more important than snarled traffic. I'd rather have the traffic slow down and have it spend another 5 minutes getting to its destination than have people being run over.

Posted by: Our Town | June 20, 2007 6:04 PM

Charlie...The Rt. 34 Corridor shouldn't be an open swath of land...it should be a covered roadway with development above it. Your image of a medieval-like area with narrow streets reminds me of lower Manhattan, which I love.

Ned...the lack of population density is not just within the city limits, it is the also the limited population of the suburbs. "New Yorkers" are from all over the tri-state area, with effective mass transit to NJ, Long Island, Westchester and even Connecticut. Most of those walkers you see commute to Manhattan. I used to be one of them. And...the 75,000 number is low, the projections are higher.

Charlie, you're right, good transportation will breed more trips, be it roads or trains or bikeways or walkways. My issue is the trips that are there already, and the ones the proposed development will bring. If you downgrade Rt. 34 to a local road, the traffic won't just slow down, it will snarl, and then go elsewhere. Nowhere do I see a plan for that. All I hear is that the traffic will divert into the grid. I don't want that traffic on my street, do you?

And thanks for the thoughtful comments. It's nice to have a reasoned discussion for a change.

Posted by: Your Tax Dollars at Work | June 20, 2007 6:14 PM

I hesitate to tell you folks -- New Haven Economic Development is, as always historically, just slightly behind the curve. Take a look around! Real estate prices are going DOWN! And that's likely to continue for years.

JDS' motivation is the same as that which has bedeviled all previous mayors. He desperately needs to increase the value of the Grand List so as to produce more taxes to support this poor city.

Problems: it's been tried before and failed AND he as well as his predecessors seem to attempt it after the boom has occured and subsided. In other words city development administrators don't really get going until the downside of the economic cycle.

Eventually we'll again experience some boondoggle giveaways like the Connecticut Financial Center, the dubious romances with David Nyberg, and Pfizer.

Maybe, someday, the legislature will drastically change the system so as to relieve the city of the ever-increasing real estate tax burden. Maybe, city officials will be able to play small ball -- lots of small neighborhood projects -- instead of trying to hit home runs -- which are a lot more difficult.

Posted by: DAFeder | June 21, 2007 12:51 AM

Like Ned, I'm also a fan of San Francisco's anti-freeway solutions. Their planning is aided by great public transit -- buses, light rail, subway, even those trolley cars. In keeping with the last sentences of OUR TOWN's second post, I think we really should be discussing a monorail for the Rte. 34 site. It has been a really effective solution in Ogdenville, North Haverbrook, and Brockway.

Posted by: nfjanette | June 21, 2007 1:14 PM

Proper traffic engineering doesn't place people at peril over smooth traffic flow. It's ridiculous, however, to deny that the route is a major thruway to the west - city hall needs to face the reality of the primary usage of that corridor.

Monorails are more flash than substance. I'm a rail advocate in general, but New Haven needs the flexibility of routing and scheduling offered by the buses. However, why do we still allow those pollution-spewing engines currently used in the buses? Electric, Electric/hybrid, or some other safe clean approach should be the technology of choice for those urban-route buses.