Daphne Geismar photo
2012 car crash at Bradley and State Street intersection.
Daphne Geismar has lived on Bradley Street since 2001, and has personally witnessed at least three car crashes at the intersection of Bradley and State.
She has been petitioning the city for over a decade to improve the safety of that intersection.
With a renewed commitment from the city’s transportation department and the support of her South of Humphrey Street (SoHu) neighbors, Geismar may see a safer intersection in the not-too-distant future.
Traffic safety at Bradley and State Streets was one of the focal points of this month’s East Rock Community Management Team meeting, held on Monday night at the mActivity gym on Niccoll Street.
Thomas Breen photo
Geismar at Monday night’s meeting.
Geismar and city transit chief Doug Hausladen opened the floor to the nearly 40 East Rock residents present at the meeting to share ideas about what the city and the neighborhood could do to make that intersection safer.
“The issue is that it’s extremely dangerous to pull out from Bradley Street onto State Street if cars are parked in the no parking zone on State Street,” Geismar said as she passed around a photo she had taken on Thursday, Aug. 24. The photo (at the bottom of this article) showed a white van parked at the problem intersection, which is a no parking zone because of its proximity to a fire hydrant, and which the city’s traffic department had recently marked off with white painted stripes and a yellow painted curb.
She noted that, since there are no traffic lights or stop signs for more than five blocks between Humphrey and Bradley Streets, cars move quickly down that stretch of State Street.
Intersection of Bradley and State Streets.
“You have to eke out” of Bradley Street, she said. “And by the time you eke out, cars are going fast, and then there’s a crash. I’ve seen three myself.”
In her binder full of notes on the project, Geismar carried around a timeline that documented crashes, outreach, setbacks, and progress related to this intersection’s safety and lack thereof.
In 2007, then-Alder (now State Rep.) Roland Lemar sent an email to the city’s transportation department describing neighbors’ concerns about the safety of this intersection.
In April 2012, Geismar and her neighbors submitted a Complete Streets application requesting bump-outs, or extensions of the sidewalk, that would increase visibility for cars coming out of Bradley Street. (Click here for a 2012 SeeClickFix record that includes a screenshot of the Complete Streets application as well as 40 comments attesting to the dangers of the intersection.)
In 2013, Geismar and Downtown/Sohu Alder-turned-city transit chief Doug Hausladen communicated about parking ticket enforcement at the intersection. But any hopes for streetscaping improvements were delayed several years until the completion of a sewer separation project on that block.
In 2016, an accident. In 2017, another accident. (Click here for a June 2017 SeeClickFix record about a car crash at this intersection.)
Earlier this month, Geismar met with Hausladen, Bradley Street Bicycle Co-Op owner John Martin, interim Ward 7 alder Lukas Moe, 2017 Ward 7 alder candidate Abby Roth, and several other Bradley Street neighbors to talk about potential improvements to the intersection. She said that the transit and engineering departments have already begun making the intersection safer by trimming some nearby leaves and shrubs, by painting the relevant curb yellow, and by painting white stripes on the no parking zone itself.
They had also been brainstorming different streetscaping ideas for making the intersection safer, and wanted to throw the problem out to the community management team to see what ideas they had on the topic.
Thomas Breen photo
A packed room at Monday night’s East Rock community management team meeting.
“You couldn’t throw a few big cement planters into the road because of the fire hydrant, could you?” asked cycling activist Rob Rocke. Hausladen said that the city does not currently place cement planters in roadways.
“Can you add a bike parking stall or corral in that spot,” Martin asked. Hausladen said that he’s still waiting to hear back from the fire chief about what can physically be placed in front of a fire hydrant.
The group kept up with the ideas: build a bump-out or “bus bulb” so that cars could not park there without driving up onto the sidewalk; convert the current blinking-yellow traffic light into a fully functioning traffic light; reverse the one-way traffic directions of Bradley and Eld Streets, since the church at Eld and State Streets would ensure visibility for drivers turning south on State; add curb-side seating for the new restaurant Dashi; put up a sign that politely asks residents not to park in the no parking zone because of how many accidents have taken place at the intersection.
When one resident demanded more parking violation enforcement, Hausladen asked residents to document all parking violation concerns on the SeeClickFix citizen-problem-reporting platform.
“We monitor [SeeClickFix] from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. for parking enforcement,” he said. “When you request [enforcement at a specific location], it really helps me direct staff in our office. If you record a parking problem, we’re going to get out and hammer that problem for two weeks, because all we know how to do is give parking tickets.”
He added that having that documentation helps later on if someone accuses his department of being selective in parking enforcement, since he can always point to a standing record of citizen concerns about a particular area.
Hausladen.
He also said that his department is experimenting with sharing a Veoci email address (from the city government’s inter-departmental info-sharing system) with residents that will allow them to send emails directly into his department’s workflow for a nearby traffic safety project, involving citizen requests for a traffic light at Trumbull and State Streets. That way, his staff can easily package together citizen requests, concerns, and ideas so that his department has all of the correspondences in one place if they appeal to the mayor or the state to help fund improvements for that intersection. The email address for that project is [email protected].
“It really helps to have citizen-documented data driving policy, so please do not hesitate,” he said.
Hausladen said that some of the more popular ideas are unlikely to be realized due to the extensive time and effort required.
He explained that designing a traffic light for the intersection would likely take a year, and that getting funding for a traffic light would take two budget cycles.
He admitted that a bump-put, or “curbing,” would be the safest and most effective solution for this intersection, but that the cost may be a bit too high for a project that is not on one of the city’s main streets of Grand, Dixwell, or Whalley Avenue, which the city prioritizes when it comes to traffic safety improvements.
“We have 1,700 intersections [in New Haven],” he told the group. “There is a Complete Streets budget of $500,000 annually, and one bump-out is going to cost you $60,000. A bike corral in the street is $2,000, and we still need to get the fire chief to sign off.”
At the end of the meeting, Geismar said that she had been hoping for a bump-out to be added to the no park zone, and was eager to hear what the fire chief had to say about adding a bike rack or other physical structure to the no park zone. Anything to make that intersection less dangerous.
Daphne Geismar photo
Aug. 24 photo of an SUV illegally parked at the intersection of Bradley and State Streets.
Geismar and city transit chief Doug Hausladen opened the floor to the nearly 40 East Rock residents present at the meeting to share ideas about what the city and the neighborhood could do to make that intersection safer.
I knew It take back the next mayor of New Haven Doug Hausladen Back at it again trolling for Cars.
When one resident demanded more parking violation enforcement, Hausladen asked residents to document all parking violation concerns on the SeeClickFix citizen-problem-reporting platform.
Will there also be more violation enforcement on cyclist.
The same laws that apply to motorists apply to cyclists
Obey all traffic control devices
lways Wear a Properly Fitting Helmet
74% of bicycle fatalities involve a head injury
Wear your helmet snug and level, no more than two fingers above your brow
Before you get on your bike, put on your helmet, no matter how short the trip
http://www.ct.gov/dot/cwp/view.asp?a=2314&q=438854