New Haven Independent

Damgaard, a student at the Yale School of Public Health a block away, crosses the intersection daily. Until last Friday, when the new walk lights became operational, Damgaard and many other pedestrians felt they were taking their lives into their hands there. It was “hard to know who’s coming and going, especially at dusk,” she said.

The intersection is one of the most hazardous in the city, where traffic rushes off the Route 34 Connector onto city streets and where several serious accidents have occurred.

For years students and faculty at the School of Public Health — which promotes, well, public health, including accident prevention — have been trying to get walk lights installed. They were told the improvements would come as part of a grand plan to improve traffic safety all around Yale-New Haven Hospital and its new Smilow Cancer Hospital.

But when the new facility opened in October, no walk lights appeared.

Members of the Yale medical community have been meeting with city and state officials to press their case for pedestrian safety. One such meeting occurred right after Smilow opened. Several people there expressed their frustration with the slow pace of progress. Mike Piscitelli, New Haven’s director of transportation, was at that meeting and counseled patience, saying his staff was working with state Department of Transportation officials to get the improvements in place. He said the project would shortly go out to bid, but would not be in place for about a year.

So safety advocates were surprised and delighted when workers appeared at the intersection last week and began installing the walk lights.

Rob York (pictured) is a contractor with Signal Service who was working with city transportation employees to finish the job last Friday. He said that because both streets are one-way, the walk light is on to cross College (on the north side) when the light is green on North Frontage. The walk light is on to cross North Frontage (on the east side) when the light is green on College. “And they [walk lights] all run together when you push a button,” York added.

But pedestrians have to hustle. The walk signal changes to a flashing orange hand after about seven seconds, indicating a pedestrian should not start across the street.

On Tuesday morning, city traffic engineer Bijan Notghi explained how the walk light came about. Because the whole area will get new traffic lights within a year, he said, “the goal was not to spend much money — since we don’t have it — but to achieve getting a pedestrian light at that location. One of our challenges was: How would you be able to reach the push button on the control box, if you’re in a wheelchair?” since it’s on the other side of the guard rail from the sidewalk.

“That guardrail has been damaged many, many times by high-speed vehicles not paying attention, so we were afraid to put another pedestal in front of the guardrail. So we put a piece of pipe and attached it to the ground in front of the guard rail and put a push button sign on that piece of pipe.”

Notghi said another challenge was posed by “little friends” who live in the grass where the control box is. Rodents had chewed the wires and left a lot of feces inside the control box. That all had to be cleaned out.

Finally, he said, “The controller that runs the traffic signal is more than 25 years old, so we had to look for spare parts in the shop and rewire the whole thing. Hopefully that will do the job until we get brand new equipment.”

A medical student who approached the intersection just then said she was also glad to see the walk lights installed. Some other pedestrians who crossed North Frontage (some without waiting for the walk light) were blasé about it. They seemed happy enough to take their chances with the traffic.

Natalie Spicyn, a medical student and co-chair of the Yale Medical Campus Traffic Safety Group, wrote in an email message after the light had been installed:

“The lack of pedestrian signals at the College and Frontage intersection has long posed a hazard to pedestrians traveling between the medical and central campuses. I’m thrilled that Mike Piscitelli has responded to the concerns expressed at the November traffic safety meeting with such a swift, effective measure, and am looking forward to further interim improvements at York Street and other problematic intersections along Frontage.”