Paul Bass Photo
Alders Dolores Colon, Jessica Holmes, Jill Marks at Monday night’s hearing.
A grand total of five Yale commuters — of 3,300 pitched — have agreed to accept a discount to ride the bus to work instead of driving. But 226 commuters said they’re willing to park in a suburban commuter lot and take a campus shuttle the rest of the way under an experiment set to launch next month.
A Yale official announced that news Monday night at a City Hall hearing held by the Board of Alders Legislation and Community Development Committees.
Yale’s Karen King.
The official, Office of New Haven and State Affairs Community Affairs Associate Karen King, was offering an update on the university’s Overall Parking Plan (OPP). Yale must file that plan annually with the alders, or more often if it undertakes new building plans that will affect parking availability in town.
As part of its last OPP approval, Yale was ordered to try to promote greener transit and to stop its employees from occupying scarce neighborhood street parking places by offering a ninth-month CT Transit bus subsidy to employees who have been parking on campus for at least three months.
King said Yale offered the 50 percent subsidy to 3,300 qualifying employees. Only 13 expressed interest, she said. In the end, five took up the offer.
Alder Adam Marchand.
Westville Alder Adam Marchand, an architect of the OPP conditions, asked King how many times it contacted those employees. “Multiple times,” she responded. Several alders urged Yale to try the pitch again, more aggressively.
Yale had more success in promoting a second OPP condition with a similar aim: That university find commuter lots outside the center of town, where suburban commuters can leave their cars and then catch a shuttle to campus rather than pay to park in the center of town or occupy precious parking spots on streets outside people’s homes in East Rock, Dixwell, and the Hill.
Out of 4,000 employees surveyed, 226 expressed a desire to use those lots, King reported.
Yale approached the city about creating those lots at two city-owned properties, but the city wasn’t selling, King reported. Finally Yale struck a deal with Yale-New Haven Hospital to allow university commuters to leave their cars in state-owned “park-and-ride” lots in Wallingford and in North Haven and then catch existing Yale-New Haven Hospital vans that pick up employees there. Meanwhile, Yale has agreed to allow Yale-New Haven to do the same with a Yale-run commuter shuttle that leaves from the university’s “west campus” in West Haven.
King said the arrangement will begin as a pilot, probably in July.
An Invitation
At the hearing, the alders also considered an update to a separate Overall Parking Plan by Yale-New Haven Hospital, the Connecticut Mental Health Center, and Yale’s medical school. The alders voted to approve the plan. (They didn’t need to vote on the Yale University update.)
Several alders commended both the hospital and the university on their extensive programs to subsidize employee parking in lots and to offer incentives to bike or walk or carpool to work. The programs have won national recognition, and deservedly so, the alders said.
But even having the hospital subsidize 60 – 70 percent of employees’ parking costs in nearby lots hasn’t stopped many university and hospital employees from parking all day at unmetered spots in front of people’s homes in the Hill and Dixwell, the alders complained.
Hill Alder Dolores Colon offered an “invitation” to “those of you involved in parking, to come to our neighborhoods. Come take pictures during the week.” The visitors will find residential streets jammed with visitors cars, past signs preventing parking to the curb, she said. But not on weekends. Colon spoke of elderly constituents who get up early to go to Shop-Rite, then return unable to park anywhere near their homes.
Yale-New Haven Senior Vice-President of Operations Michael Holmes said he’d like to “explore ways to work together” with the alders to find ways to convince the hospital’s workers to make more use of ample existing lots.
“There are people in your organizations who would rather pay zero. I want that on the table right now,” Colon said.
Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison spoke of similar takeovers of the streets in her stretch of Winchester Avenue near where Yale is constructing two residential colleges. She urged Yale to create free parking lots for workers.
“It’s gotten to the point where employees have made the corner of Compton and Winchester the pick-up spot for commuters,” Morrison said. “How do we address this? People do want free.”
Yale-New Haven’s Michael Holmes, Yale’s Brianne Mullen report to the alders Monday night.
Brianne Mullen of Yale’s Office of Sustainability responded that the university is planning to expand its number of park-and-ride lots. Morrison said employees will need incentives to use those lots instead of parking on her neighborhood’s streets.
Mullen also suggested expanding the number of residential parking zones in the neighborhood. Morrison said her neighbors don’t like those zones, which reserve street spots for neighbors, because they make it difficult for her constituents’ visiting relatives and friends to find spots. Mullen recommended exploring ways to tweak the residential parking plan to address that concern.
I don't know, but I was thinking that maybe a bus depot can possibly be built, but only for Yale shuttles though. If something similar to that can be the case for a proposal then maybe it would be easier for commuters who works or attends at Yale (college) or the Hospital to not drive and to have a hard time find parking spots in the vicinity of their destinations. Free parking should be only for employees who works at the Hospital, but people who drive and attends to the college should be charged a small fee. Depending on how long they would want to leave their vehicles parked on the lot. Just a thought in my head.