nothin Edwards St. Raises The Bar For Traffic-Calming | New Haven Independent

Edwards St. Raises
Bar For Traffic-Calming

Thomas MacMillan Photo

Edwards and Livingston.

As cops investigated a high-speed crash across town that left a teen in critical condition, city officials unveiled a new raised East Rock intersection designed to specifically to slow cars down.

The re-done T intersection, at the corner of Livingston and Edwards streets, is the first of its kind in the city and maybe the state.

It’s known as a raised intersection. The surface of the intersection itself has been raised slightly, creating a kind of speed table” that will force cars to slow down.

In addition, the new intersection includes a variety of other traffic-calming measures, including textured crosswalks in a contrasting color, a honeycomb pattern of injected yellow plastic, new traffic islands, curb bump-outs, and two new speed humps.

With that list of improvements, the new intersection is primed to be a darling of the traffic-calming movement, which has gained steam in recent years and led to the passage of a law and a creation of a new road design manual.

The intersection is expected to open in the next couple of weeks, once striping is done and new signs are put in. The project cost a total of $310,000, paid for with municipal bonding.

Meanwhile, police Thursday morning were investigating a serious car accident in Westville. In what may have been an early morning drag race, two cars were crashed. Emergency responders found an unconscious teen with a serious head injury.

DeStefano (left) with Sharon Brett, Alex Platt, and Kay Petraiuolo.

At 11 a.m., Mayor John DeStefano and East Rock Alderman Matt Smith met other city officials at the new intersection for a brief press conference. It’s a spot where neighbors have for years complained about cars traveling at excessive speeds. Motorists often use it as part of a cut-through to get from East Rock to Newhallville and beyond without going through town.

City Engineer Dick Miller explained how the new infrastructure will work to slow traffic. First, cars coming from either direction on Edwards Street will encounter new speed humps halfway down the block. As they come to the intersection itself, drivers will sense several shift in the streetscape that will cause them to put on the brakes. The street narrows with new bump-outs and traffic islands. A honeycombed pattern of aggregate reinforced thermal plastic” in eye-catching yellow indicates the slight elevation of the road as it enters the intersection. A red brick-like crosswalk further demarcates the space, and marks it as a pedestrian zone. A brick-like circle in the middle of the intersection suggests a subtle roundabout.

A full roundabout was the original idea for the intersection, but it turned out there wasn’t room for it, Miller said.

Smith pronounced himself excited about the neighborhood being at the forefront of the traffic calming.”

It’s the 360 State of Edwards Street,” said DeStefano. It’s a game changer.”

Ladd.

We’ve just had so many accidents here,” said Billie Ladd, who’s lived one house down from the intersection since 1972. She said she’s delighted” and thrilled” about the new intersection. She suggested the city could do one better, however, by shutting down the street entirely and making a pedestrian park” out of the intersection. The circle in the middle could be a fountain, she said with a laugh.

Ladd, a past president of the New Haven Garden Club, said she and her neighbors will be tending to the plantings the city puts into the new traffic islands.

Petraiuolo with Alderman Smith.

Other neighbors were not as enthusiastic. Kay Petraiuolo, who owns a large apartment building at the corner, said she’s waiting to see if the new improvements actually improve anything.

She wondered why the city couldn’t have put in a simple traffic light. Miller said traffic signals are not generally well suited for three-way intersections like Edwards/Livingston. With a straightaway on Edwards, a raised intersection has more power to cause drivers to pay attention and slow down. A traffic light wouldn’t necessarily have been cheaper, Miller said. Many of the street and sidewalk improvements would still have had to happen.

In an email, Mark Abraham of the New Haven Safe Streets Coalition hailed the new intersection and called for similar measures to be a part of other big street projects in the city.

Other than a limited number of improvements like this one, the city has largely ignored the clear public mandate for slower residential streets throughout all neighborhoods,” he wrote. Many streets, like Route 34, are being reconstructed without the proper attention paid to the city’s own Complete Streets Legislation. The administration must redouble its efforts to address the public interest, look into lower-cost and more rapidly-deployed solutions like those used in other cities, and ensure all new projects meet the city’s own standards.”

Workers installed a new crosswalk at Edwards and Orange.

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