New Haven’s College Street Music Hall is bringing in the acts that draw the crowds. Despite the potential new business, merchants are singing the blues over the acts’ tour buses.
“There’s just no place to put these buses,” city Traffic Operations Engineer Bruce Fischer told the city’s Traffic Authority (which doubles as the police commission) during a meeting Tuesday night at 1 Union Ave.
“We’re a victim of the success of all of these venues,” Fischer added.
Because there is no place to park the buses other than in public street parking spots, the city Department of Transportation, Traffic and Parking plans to create spaces a block away next to Co-op High School.
“The idea is to relocate the tour buses down the block as best as we can; we have mapped out four locations for buses to park, and we are working through the city engineer to take it to the next level – which is to install electricity plug-ins to have the tour buses (and semis that make deliveries) plug into the power source and no longer have to idle,” city traffic czar Doug Hausladen wrote in an email. “The plan is to have one bus in front of the Music Hall, and then the others to wrap Co-op essentially and to create new parking options to mitigate any losses.
Commissioners unanimously approved a “request to establish two-hour meter/voucher 8 a.m.- 5 p.m., no time limit meter/voucher 5 p.m.-9 p.m., Monday through Saturday parking regulation on the east side of College Street” between George and Crown streets.
The additional parking would reduce the travel lanes on the street from three lanes to two lanes. Hausladen wrote in a memo to commissioners. Two-hour parking on the west side of College Street already exists.
Commissioner Gregory Smith asked if the additional parking and the lane reduction would have an impact on traffic. The department officials said there won’t be problems.
“It is proposed to re-stripe the roadway with two travel lanes and allow a parking lane along the east curb,” Hausladen wrote in a memo to the commissioners. “Traffic volume at this time can be accommodated in two travel lanes.”
Between the Shubert Theater and the Music Hall, competition for parking is fierce, Fischer said, and merchants are up in arms about the the tour buses hogging all the spaces. He said the city’s Traffic, Transportation and Parking Department has tried to work out a solution with Yale University, but there simply isn’t any other place for the buses to go.
“They’ve been taking up almost all of the parking spaces along College Street,” Fischer told commissioners Tuesday night.
Fischer said that department officials would likely be before the commissioners again to create more parking in the next block, between George Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
“More business means more people,” he said.
'Shouldn't this be the bus companies' problem to solve?
I remember when I used to contract with bus companies to carry a bunch of folks around DC, the buses were not allowed to park near such places as the Capitol, but would disappear somewhere into the region and return at a specified time for pickup. (Now,with the newfangled cell phones,. they would maybe be just on call)
The bus operators or the venue could probably lease a few not-being=used spaces at Amity Mall or similar places with excess parking places
Then the City employees could concentrate on their main function---making things easier for bike-riders and more inconvenient for car drivers