New Rockviewers Stranded Off Bus Line

Dilias Ratchford pointed to the dump trucks lined up at the very bottom of Wilmot Road to indicate where residents of Rockview must walk to catch a bus.

It doesn’t matter if it’s freezing cold, or broiling hot, whether you can walk or have to use a wheelchair. If you want to catch a bus, you have to make your way to the intersection of Wilmot Road and Brookside Avenue, which is nearly a mile away.

“It makes no sense,” she said. ​“This neighborhood used to have a bus stop.”

That was before the old West Rock housing development was razed and rebuilt with $33 million, reopening with a sparkle in December 2013. Now the residents of this pocket of West Rock have shiny new homes, but still lack one of the all important amenities that officials said they would receive as part of a master plan to revive the area: bus access.

Now people need to walk seven-tenths of a mile uphill to catch a bus, seven-tenths of a mile back up to head home.

Ratchford, who lives at Rockview, stood on snow-lined Wilmot Road as a neighbor named Marisol was attempting to make her way to the bus stop with her 3‑year-old daughter, Kaylanay, in tow.

“Are you on your way to the bus stop?” Ratchford asked.

“Yes, I am,” Marisol said.

“Will you tell this lady about what it’s like to catch the bus?,” Ratchford asked.

“It’s a lot,” Marisol. ​“It’s too much, and it’s too cold. My daughter already has a runny nose.” Sure enough, wearing a coat and hood and also wrapped in a furry pink blanket, little Kaylanay had a running nose.

Marisol said trying to catch the bus is hard during the day and can be difficult to time. She’s had bus drivers pull off just as she reached the stop. But trying to catch the bus at night is even worse. ​“I come home from work, sometimes at 10 and 11 at night and there are deer out here. It’s scary.”

At night it’s ​“pitch black,” Ratchford said because there is very little lighting on the stretch of Wilmot Road between where the housing complex is located and the bus stop. ​“There are people sometimes out here dressed in black, and you can’t see them, but they’re walking behind you,” she said.

Ratchford (pictured) has contacted the city and CT Transit and convinced her neighbors to sign a petition to get a bus routed to a stop in the neighborhood, but so far she’s been told buses can’t get through the quasi-roundabout on Wilmot Road; that it would cost CT Transit $20,000 to route a bus through the neighborhood; and that whenever the rest of the complex is built out, the community will have access to buses coming from Woodin Street in nearby Hamden.

“The buses on Woodin Street are allegedly coming in the near future,” she said. ​“The near future? That could be 10 or 15 years from now. There are elderly people here and people with disabilities. This needs to be solved now.”

Ratchford also pointed out that other West Rock public-housing communities like Westville Manor and Brookside have easily accessible bus stops, but somehow that detail got left out of the design of Rockview.

“This is supposed to be mixed income housing,” she said. ​“They had to know that there would be people, especially low income people, who didn’t have cars and would need access to the bus.”

Access Blooms In Spring?

New Haven Housing Authority Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton (pictured) said a bus could be coming to the neighborhood this spring.

The housing authority, CT Transit and the city have been trying to figure out a solution for the neighborhood, but part of it hinges on whether the city gets a reprieve from the weather. The plan is to open Wilmot Road all the way to Woodin Street in Hamden. Not only are there established bus stops on Woodin Street, but DuBois-Walton said the neighborhood would have easier access to grocery stores, pharmacies, childcare and employment opportunities.

“With that open, we could potentially take hours off of somebody’s commute and keep them from making that long trip to the Green to change buses,” she said. ​“It would be a real help to families.”

But Rockview residents like Ratchford and Tiffanie Lawrence question why there’s been no interim solution. Lawrence said a compromise solution could be to re-route the bus that usually turns right at Brookside Avenue and Level Street, to keep straight across Level Street and then turn right on Wayfarer Street, picking up residents at Wayfarer Street and Wilmot Road. That would cut some of the distance to the bus stop, she said.

DuBois-Walton said that was a short-term solution that was offered in discussions with CT Transit, but it was determined that the turning radius for the buses was not sufficient.

CT Transit General Manager David Lee said the challenge with the area is that the street pattern for Rockviewis difficult for transit buses to navigate. ​“The goal is to provide some solution,” he said. ​“We understand that the residents in that community are a population that need transit, the question is what service is required and what will that cost be.”

Lee said said while it might seem simple to stick a bus stop out in the community and route a bus through there, it’s not: ​“We’re funded by the state so any significant change in operation that impacts our operating cost needs [the state’s] approval.”

Neighbor Daranice Hopkins said it would be better if there was a stop in the neighborhood again near the West Rock Family Center, or anywhere else in the grassy front of the complex.

City transit director Doug Hausladen said it has been a struggle to ​“get transit where it isn’t,” but he’s hoping that the $22 million the state Department of Transportation has earmarked for capital improvements including purchasing new buses will help. There also are plans to address a couple of the routes in the area, but whether or not there will ever be a bus stop specifically in the Rockview community is unknown.

“That’s good news for the future, but for the present, it’s pretty dark,” he said. Lee said CT Transit will have one of its three yearly route adjustment meetings this spring.

City Engineer Giovanni Zinn said as part of the program to replace all city streetlights with brighter LED lights, Brookside Avenue has had lights replaced near the bus stop. He promised to ride over to Wilmot Road and take a look at the lighting on Wilmot Road. The city can put lights only where there are poles, so depending on how far apart the poles are in that area, people in the neighborhood could see a slight to significant improvement. ​“Changing out the lights should help the situation somewhat,” Zinn said.

Ratchford said she’s lucky because she has a car, but she knows that if her car were to break down, she’d be riding the bus just like her neighbors. The dark conditions at night are just unacceptable, she said. ​“I pray nothing happens to anybody,” she said.