Paul Bass Photo
Scene at one of Yale-Chapel’s 50+ crashes in recent years.
City of New Haven
Proposed peanut rotary.
Help is on its way for a crash-prone intersection in the form of a roundabout — shaped as a peanut.
Officials presented the plan for intersection of Yale Avenue and Chapel Street and other problematic nearby blocks at a traffic-calming meeting held on Zoom Thursday night with 40 Westville neighbors.
As usual in New Haven, ideas about how best to redesign roads for cyclists, pedestrians, and drivers elicited passionate debate and a wide range of ideas.
The roundabout design proposal met with overwhelming approval from the neighbors. The city will now proceed building it, at a cost of $400,000, this fall.
Proposed design changes for other stretches of Yale Avenue — a near-mile-long road that winds from Central to Derby Avenues — met with skeptical questions. The feedback will inform officials as they continue tinkering with altering the parking and bike lanes and striping Yale Avenue, which is currently being repaved.
Maya McFadden Photo
Yale/Chapel intersection Wednesday afternoon.
Westville Alder Adam Marchand organized Thursday night’s meeting with Transportation, Traffic and Parking (TTP) Director Doug Hausladen and City Engineer Giovanni Zinn.
During the meeting Zinn and Hausladen shared the city’s proposal for the long-awaited solution to the dangerous intersection near the Westville Bowl, Yale Bowl and Edgewood Park where often high-speed drivers converge along wide stretches of road from Route 34 and Chapel Street. Zinn estimated that 50 or more crashes have occurred at the intersection in the past four to five years.
The idea for a rotary wasn’t as simple as the usual roundabout seen in several other parts of the city. The Yale/Chapel Street wide intersection is arranged with askew intersecting roads rather than at an ideal 90 degree angle.
The peanut-shaped roundabout, which is new to New Haven but not other high traffic roadways nationally, will tackle the challenges the unique configuration presents, said Zinn.
Dangerous speeding in general on Yale Avenue has concerned Westville neighbors for years. Marchand, Hausladen, and Zinn have been gathering input from neighbors to find the best solutions to calm the avenue’s rubber-burning traffic, improve its structure for pedestrians and cyclists, and provide more parking.
Neighbors at Thursday traffic calming proposal input session.
Westville residents submitted a complete streets application for improvements to the intersection several years ago, said Marchand.
Yale Avenue is currently getting milled and will be repaved this summer starting the second half of July.
The peanut roundabout will “provide traffic calming all the time as opposed to traffic calming just when there’s a red light,” said Zinn.
Deadly Yale/Chapel intersection.
The only challenge the roundabout may pose is for large tractor trailers and trucks bigger than a bus or fire truck.
Both sides of the two circle island areas will be mountable to help larger vehicles to make the turns, said Zinn. In addition, all four road approaches will have crosswalks with curbed refuge islands for pedestrians. Each pedestrian path to and from the refuge island will be about 14 feet wide.
The project will extend slightly into the edge of Edgewood Park and overrun a garden/greenspace that Block Watch 303 created and maintains at the corner of the intersection. A replacement garden will be put in the roundabout island with water service for easier maintenance.
During parts of construction, Yale Avenue will need to be closed off while Chapel Street remains open. said Zinn.
Thursday’s positive feedback gave the engineering team the support to begin the next three-week stage of finalizing the design and begin bidding to start construction in the fall. Zinn estimated that the $400,000 project construction will take at least eight weeks.
The rotary design was met with positive feedback and excitement from residents during the meeting.
Joshua Kuhr asked about the maintenance for the island green space. Zinn said the garden and other ideas for the “neighborhood gateway” will be left to neighbors to decide on for beautification opportunities.
Dead Man’s Curve
Marchand shows the proposed roadway structure improvements already in place on Crescent and Goffe Street.
The next portion of Thursday night’s meeting concerned proposed designs for traffic-calming on other speeding-plagued portions of Yale Avenue.
For the Derby Avenue side, Zinn described a second floating parking lane that will protect a two-way cycle track on the east side of the street. It will continue through the peanut rotary. The cycle track will also be used as pathway for pedestrians.
The floating bike lane will add parking for park users, the school, and events in the future, said Zinn.
Commenters: who do you envision using the extra parking?
The design, eliminating having a bike lane between the travel lane and parking, will aim to calm traffic by seemingly narrowing the road for drivers who may “view the bike lane as empty space” that they can move more quickly and freely on, said Zinn.
“This is an attempt to rearrange the road so that the apparent size of the road to the driver is less even though the travel lanes are, still within the specified limits,” said Zinn.
Crosshatch design in proposal to avoid blocking driveways.
Several crosshatch designs in front of driveways to homes neighboring Edgewood School are proposed in the parking lane to keep bus drivers and cars from parking in front of driveways. A parking restriction is also proposed during school pick-up hours to allow buses to park in the area.
A speed hump that stretches through the cycle track is proposed between the school and West Elm Street, following a six-inch raised crosswalk at the entrance of the park trail adjacent to the corner of West Elm Street.
At the avenue’s bend — which Cheryl Bergman described as “Dead Man’s Curve” — two additional speed humps are planned. Within 30 days after the road is repaved in late July the speed humps, raised crosswalk, and striping will be installed.
Harold Houston at Thursday night’s virtual meeting.
Harold Houston raised concerns about the proposed construction timeline for the roundabout, with two scheduled Yale home football games on Sept. 18 and 25.
“Those football games attract approximately between 10 to 20,000 people,” Houston said. “We all know that it’s never done within a time frame that accurate. And if you push it back another couple weeks, you’re right smack dead in the same time frame that the football games that are being played.”
Hausladen responded that Yale operations work with the departments in planning. “There will be an active construction project next to a Yale football game, and it will be fine,” he said. He added that traffic will continue at that time around the construction.
Natalie Judd’s written comments were shared by a neighbor during the meeting. “We remain opposed to the bike path as presented, as it only complicates an already congested area,” a neighbor read on behalf of Judd. “A more cost effective and less disruptive option for NHV would be for the bike path to not use Yale Avenue at all and use the existing path in Edgewood Park. This would save considerable funds for NHV by using existing paths.”
Several neighbors disagreed with Judd’s suggestion to remove the cycle track on the avenue and steer cyclists to the park.
“I wouldn’t want to ride in an isolated area after dark.” said Carolyn Lusch.
Zinn presenting at Thursday night’s meeting.
Gabe Da Silva argued in favor of the cycle track. He added that the park is closed at night. So that would bar cyclists who go to and from work after 9 p.m. “The streets are definitely more secure than a dark park,” he said. In addition, he proposed a raised intersection opposed to the raised crosswalk at the corner of West Elm Street.
“I don’t think we see a difference in speed attenuation, whether it’s a raised table or crosswalk,” Zinn responded. He added that a table is also more expensive.
Joshua Kuhr also disagreed with the suggestion to eliminate the cycle track from the plan. In addition he suggested the city invest in painting the bike lanes green for “another layer of safety.” Zinn responded that paint is costly, and the current project budget does not have the funding for it.
Nature? Or Rubber Duckies?
Robin Mercier Kuc: Prettier delineators are investment for city’s future.
Robin Mercier Kuc showed the meeting a number of examples of vegetated delineators — i.e., plants instead of plastic delineators, or “rubber duckies” —- used in other states and neighborhoods to suggest a more beautified separated for the project.
“I think they’re frankly ugly,” she said about the plastic delineators mounted with adhesive pads that the city currently uses.
Mercier Kuc suggested the planning team ask Yale to come up with some funding for the roundabout project, because of its close proximity to the Yale Bowl, so the city can use those current funds on more “aesthetically pleasing, residential looking” delineators.
“We could actually plant some really exciting things that would add to the city,” she said.
Kathleen Bradley cautioned her neighbors about their ask for vegetated delineators because of the intensive upkeep needed from the community for them to remain aesthetically pleasing, she said.
Suggestions from neighbors ranged from planters for delineators to planting trees to be used as separators. Janis Underwood suggested the neighborhood ask their management team to fund the gradual installation of planters for delineators, tapping in to the $10,000 in “democracy” funds granted by the city each year.
Zinn said he was inspired by the examples shown but again noted the added cost the idea comes with. He added that the project is meant to “prioritize investments first and foremost that save lives.”
Hausladen added that the plastic delineators are both cost-effective and designed with maintenance in mind for season plowing.
“When talking about the aesthetics we need to think first about the primary goal here which is preventing unnecessary deaths,” Lusch said.
Tim Holahan addresses Zoom gathering.
Tim Holahan, who lives on the corner of Yale and West Elm Street, said he is in support of the project. He said he struggles to sleep at night when his home windows are open due to the noise from aggressive speeding drivers.
“It feels sometimes like we live on Merritt Parkway,” he said.
Marchand plans to host another meeting with the neighborhood to come to a final consensus in time for the next traffic authority meeting on July 13.
At this meeting the traffic authority will decide on the regulatory change allowing for parking on the second side of the street, he said.
I'm so glad the dangerous intersection of Yale Ave and Chapel St is finally getting a round about.
I agree with the comments that the bike paths needs to remain on the streets rather than expecting people to ride through the park.
I also agree that plastic delineators are ugly, but they also don't contribute to traffic calming because they create a highway feel, whereas trees or planters create a residential feel and have been proven in studies to calm traffic and also to contribute to reducing pollution, calming anxiety and depression, and help with cooling the city. The plastic delineators on Ella Grasso Blvd near the Route 34 connector also get run over by vehicles constantly and never slowed any vehicle on that street.
I'm sure with a water source in the center of the roundabout the friends of Edgewood Park or the block watch for the neighborhood will have volunteers to keep the plantings watered and weeded, but Yale should provide funds for the materials because it is the gateway to the Yale athletic fields and it will look great for visitors, employees and students when they head up from downtown to the Bowl and the other athletic areas.
The road planners will need to be very careful about not only not blocking the driveways physically but also not blocking them visually for the safety of drivers, bike riders, pedestrians alike when residents are entering and exiting their driveways to be able to see each other.
Speed humps and raised crosswalks will help reduce speed, but there is still the stretch of Dead Man's curve on Yale Ave that needs special attention to prevent speeding from the Edgewood School to the curve.
I also wonder what is being done on Chapel St and Edgewood Ave from Yale Ave to Forest Rd and Ella Grasso to Yale Ave to prevent speeding? I think if you added raised crosswalks you would make those streets less conducive to speeding and safer to cross for pedestrians. Who knows, maybe it will even discourage prostitution around the park?