Street Parking, Towing Changes Brewing

There have been a couple of cars with "boots" on them on Chapel street by Yale Bowl (just before Yale Ave) for well over 1 year now. Can someone explain to me the process or the thinking involved in having no apparent resolution to the issue that got them booted in the 1st place? Can one be booted forever?

You put up signs the day before and cars moved should be towed. But you must tow all cars not just some. I see the tow trucks pass up some cars. Looks like a small #. How many get the boot for non-payment of tax. I live near Wooster Sq. and I see the same cars from out of town here all the time, nice small walk to work. Ticked person comes by {on some days] in the late day and comes back late in PM!!! He missed a few. And if you point out a car they say so what.

How much does it cost to send a man out on Wed. to put up the paper signs, and then take them down, then put up the paper signs back up for Thursday and then take them down.?
We have the metal signs, take these down or stop putting up the paper ones.

thanks

Bike lanes generally make pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers safer, because they narrow the street travel lane.

Crosswalks put pedestrians at risk, unless they are combined with traffic calming measures. They create a false sense of security.

Most crashes are at crosswalks; pedestrians are generally much safer when they cross in the middle of a block or other places where a crosswalk is not painted.

"Hausladen said the striped crosswalks are refreshed every year and the non-striped intermittently. Santiago said he's owned his house for 15 years and the crosswalks there have never been refreshed."

I agree with Santiago that the "refreshed every year" is not a true statement. Hausladen seems like a great person and seems like he's doing a great job but I think he misrepresented the truth about this. The ones in my neighborhood look like they were refreshed 10 years ago. Nevertheless, I'm glad somebody is trying to improve transit in New Haven because currently nobody is well served, and that includes bus riders, bicyclists, pedestrians, and automobile operators.

@westville man-I know the cars you are talking about on Chapel, I live just down the road. Those cars are not booted by the city. Those are anti-theft devices placed on there by the car owner. If you go through the neighborhood at different times of the day, you will see the cars have moved and the boots been placed back on.

I don't suppose "Anonymous" would care to share the data supporting their comments, given how stunningly irresponsible they appear be. And how about those data be qualified with other critical data including whether accidents in crosswalks occurred when pedestrians were in compliance with signaling?

Better advice: use crosswalks, use walk signals - wait for them; keep your eyes and ears open and expect other users of the road to make mistakes (exactly the same advice for cyclists and motorists).

NHI should post a challenge to have readers send in photos of the almost invisible crosswalk lines in their neighborhoods.

Thanks Westvillesean! A number of us couldn't figure out why they had moved and still had the boots! Mystery solved. I appreciate the reply. That's a lot of effort to protect one's car but it must work!

Noteworthy, here are findings from the Federal Government:

"On multilane roads with traffic volumes above about 12,000 vehicles per day, having a marked crosswalk alone (without other substantial improvements) was associated with a higher pedestrian crash rate (after controlling for other site factors) compared to an unmarked crosswalk. Raised medians provided significantly lower pedestrian crash rates on multilane roads, compared to roads with no raised median. Older pedestrians had crash rates that were high relative to their crossing exposure."

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/04100/index.cfm

Narrowing the road widths, and providing other major traffic calming improvements to make pedestrians safer, should be the top priority before we spend money striping more crosswalks.

As an aside -- in addition to the fact that older pedestrians are more at risk, people of color are too. Studies have found that drivers stop for white people in crosswalks, but they are much much less likely to stop for people of color. This goes along with the evidence that white people (who represent most drivers in New Haven) tend to view racial minorities as three-fifths of a person -- which goes back to Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution, of course.

The three-fifths clause was nullified, but the social factors behind it still have not been.

Anonymous, multilane streets with average daily traffic volumes above 12,000 account for a small proportion of the city's streets. The ADT for Edgewood Avenue, the proposed site of the cycle track, ranges from 4,400 to 4,800 according to ConnDOT, depending on where you measure traffic. It probably does not make sense to install crosswalks without traffic calming measures on high-volume streets such as Whalley Ave., which has an ADT above 26,000 in stretches. But there are plenty of streets where well-marked crosswalks make sense.

One thing the city could do is to require utility contractors to repaint crosswalks and lane lines when they dig up and repave city streets.

The answer to the question of why cant the city keep crosswalks painted is actually another question. Why does CT continue to issue drivers licenses to people who are so stupid that they don't know that a crosswalk exists everywhere a sidewalk path points across a street whether that path is painted or not?

Bradley: Actually the Federal study says that they have no measurable effect on smaller streets. In other words, a waste of money relative to the things (like improvements on the city's many large streets other than Whalley, or other forms of traffic calming) that actually would work very well to reduce the thousands of injuries that happen here each year.

Can someone clarify something for me please. When a meter maid or a cop issues a ticket for a parking violation, speeding, red light violation etc. WHERE does that money go- the city OR the state? Does the same also apply to PARKING METER violations?

One other thing- having residents PAY for a parking sticker to park on their own street is outrageous! Don't they pay enough in TAXES to cover the cost of a STICKER?

What I like is the City saving money by internalizing work that had previously gone out to bloated private contracts; that's with respect to the "Signal Maintainer" position.

The neglected neighborhood Crosswalks are a big issue. Would the Feds really care if we sprinkled some of the bike lane funding -- which should really be characterized as funding for neighborhood safety and mobility -- and extend it to safe intersections and street crossings? Small examples of official neglect can send big messages to our citizens. Mobility without Equity is a hollow prize.

"Free Parking" again, really?

So the complaint is that there aren't enough vacant parking spots on residential streets. That is, demand for parking currently exceeds the fixed capacity. So Alder Anna Festa's solution is to reduce the price of parking? Huh?? That will lead to more demand for parking slots, making vacant slots less common and making the problem worse. Imagine if I have a narrow driveway and am in a two car family (common in Alder Festa's neighborhood). If there is a fee for on-street parking, I might decide to jam two cars into the same driveway. But if the permit is free, what the heck, just leave the cars on the street. Which of course then takes the spots away from my neighbors.

Vote Festa for more difficult parking and less city revenue, leading to higher taxes!

In fact, we ought to expand residential parking to more areas, but increase the annual fee. Make the fee payable online, with license-plate camera enforcement. This will lead to more available slots for residents, more efficient use of existing driveways, etc., and will increase city revenue. If you can't afford a $100 annual resident's parking fee, then you can't afford a car, let's get serious. And it is a basic principle that you ought to pay something for the expensive road-side parking that is built and maintained by everybody's tax dollars, including non-car owners and those who have driveways, etc.

No, you are NOT paying enough for this via your taxes; you are being heavily subsidized by other folks who don't park on the street (including folks too poor to have a car.)

The Free Parking cult is still such a weird case of "socialism for cars not people." Free food, God forbid, but Free Parking forever and always, and of course subsidized by the poor.

All of the tow companies are terrible for one reason or another and should be held to a higher standard. Crosswalks, a bucket of paint and somebodies job during regular business hours. Aren't these things part of a $525 million budget. If not id like to know what is. Just like street signs, downtown New haven they light up. Other areas you either cant read them or they are missing. Yet again, new haven politics and money. Its all a facade.