New Haven Independent

posted by: anon on November 17, 2010  12:41pm

A lot of city staff have noble ideas here, and have spent an enormous amount of time to apply for and plan this project. They should get performance bonuses.

However, this project simply won’t work as long as ConnDOT is involved. With its requirements for extraordinarily wide highways and flat-out limitations on pedestrian infrastructure like raised xwalks, ConnDOT continues to destroy towns throughout the state with no accountabity to local residents.  ConnDOT’s idea of “compromise” in this project is bringing a travel lane from 12’ wide to 11’ wide- neither of which is remotely acceptable. 

The city needs to stop moving forward on this project until they can get a written commitment from the state that allows the building of a real downtown landscape here.

This project does have the potential to re-connect neighborhoods, like the Hill and Dwight, but only if it is built for doing so. That idea was written out of the presentation probably because nobody seriously believes that ConnDOT would ever allow the construction of the types of “downtown”, lower speed, healthy roads that benefit people who live in the area, who may walk everywhere and have lower incomes—- not just suburban drivers (unfortunately almost all of the officials working on the project fall into the latter category, and none live or work in the immediate area impacted by the project).

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on November 17, 2010  3:16pm

Tony Bialecki is correct that in order to accommodate for small parcels, costs of infrastructure would have to be shared by the developers of each of the parcels. This is how the green median was constructed on Norton Street between Goffee and Crescent after the original plan for a trolley line dissolved turning the 70’ wide street into something resembling a “parkway”, and how numerous other civic improvements were paid for throughout this city’s and country’s history.
Whereas large scale development like 360 State, Wintergreen of Westville, and the Winchester Factory redevelopment can pay for infrastructure costs, site remediation, and demolition more straightforwardly, the end result of having big boxes is much less desirable then a long-lasting network of adaptive, smaller buildings that can evolve over time to meet the needs of future residents.
However, it is also important to realize that the only way developers will share the cost of improvements is if it raises their property values and/or attracts more investors in their property/building. Like anon suggests, if the highway right-of-ways are maintained then the corridor will continue to function primarily as a pass-through, and not a destination. The plan has to be designed so that the environment created is one conducive to pleasant living, convenient shopping and easy access to jobs. I do not doubt that this project, as planned, will make jobs easily accessible for suburban commuters and shopping convenient, but that simply repeats the exact same mistakes of urban renewal. It doesn’t matter if it looks somewhat more “urban” and pretty, if the system still operates the same way - commuters come in to receive pay checks then leave, and perhaps sometimes buy goods from chain stores of which 57-63 cents of every dollar spent in them is sucked out of the local economy, and the only people living in the residential units are young professionals who leave when starting a family - it doesn’t address the problems and will just leave us with a series of unadaptive buildings that will need to be demolished when their designed-for function changes, as inevitably happens with every modern building.
Large scale development also tends to internalize important civic functions thereby destroying street life, activity, connectivity, and interdependence with other businesses, facilities and residences.
What are needed are maximum 7 story mixed use buildings similar to those shown in the pdf plan, but much narrower on the street to allow for smaller lot sizes that can be developed by different people, which contributes to the visual diversity of the street. A major component of the plan should also be to incorporate working class jobs for the Hill neighborhood perhaps south of Route 34 in the area filled with parking in the medical district. That would do more good for the city then attracting more high-skill jobs to the city.

posted by: John Q. Public on November 17, 2010  5:38pm

I am all for reconfiguring the “speedway” of Frontage roads, but I see Mark Abraham states that the DOT doesn’t allow speeds to go as slow as to allow vendors. How much slower than current posted limit of 25mph does he envision?? We must face the facts that if we want to encourage bringing in visitors and commerce to New Haven that they will be driving in by car, no matter how much public transportation is available, America is what it is and people travel the way they do. What we need to find is the right median of pedestrian traffic and speed limits- going slower than 20mph really puts the brakes on what can be accomplished on moving cars in volume for events and for everyday travel why bother coming here if you have to sit for 30 min in traffic to get 6 blocks once off the highway. I’m all for safety, but we really need to be realistic about cohabitating pedestrain and auto traffic- we need to be looking at the big cities and how they do it (i.e. NY, boston, Chicago, etc….)

posted by: anon on November 17, 2010  6:24pm

John; slower design speeds dramatically increase the amount of cars and activity that can be accommodated, since they can travel closer together. They can also find it easier to observe retail offerings and utilize on street parking spots.

15-20mph is a widely recognized standard used in many of the world’s most successful cities.  In addition, speeds of greater than that amount are dangerous (to all road users), create more noise (which limits the attractiveness of retail and sidewalk interaction), and make streets far less comfortable for walking or cycling. Compare lower Orange Street (generally under 20) to Church Street (generally 30+) and you’ll see the plain difference.

It is for this reason that the Yale faculty, downtown business district, and many other groups have called for much lower speeds in downtown areas like this.

posted by: meta on November 17, 2010  6:30pm

Toronto’s enormous effort to revitalize the once-industrial waterfront has proven to be an enormous success so far. A big part of the incentive to develop is the fact that the government (local/regional/national) pays for all infrastructure including roads, storm water systems, public transit (street cars), and a generous and well-planned waterfront boardwalk. While many in today’s political/economic climate balk at this notion, I believe that this is an appropriate role for government: to provide the opportunity and guidelines for responsible and sustainable development. Also: bike lanes should be provided without question!

posted by: anon on November 17, 2010  6:43pm

speeds may be posted at 25 john… but that doesnt mean people drive that. 

dot’s are notorious for saying a street is a 25 mile per hour street then building them so that people can easily drive at 60 on.  Whalley is one good example.

if the city asks for 15, they might get lucky and see speeds that are under 30.

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on November 17, 2010  7:25pm

John Q. Public,
The United States used to have the best transit system in the world made up of private trolley companies. In 1907, the new haven trolley system sold 31.6 million rides and that is when new haven’s population was identical to today’s. Beginning in the 1940s, GM, Firestone rubber, and Standard Oil began buying up trolley companies and dismantling the rails, electrical wires and trolley cars so that they could be replaced by less efficient and attractive internal combustion engine buses, that ran on gasoline and Firestone tires. The less desirable and viable bus systems began hemorrhaging money as the automobile became America’s mass transit device, which caused massive decreases in service and public subsidizing of the system since revenue from the now largely low-income ridership doesn’t sustain the system alone. Cars were able to become the mass transit device because the car manufactures and oil companies lobbied the government to fund highway construction because highways, unlike rail, are not viable to build privately. For example, the amount of cargo 1 rail line can carry requires the equivalent of 15 lanes of interstate for trucking, which is another massively subsidized system thanks to our disinvestment in rail transport.
The idea that transit is not viable for the masses as a transportation device is simply false. If funding were allocated more wisely we could have a decent system of trains, trolleys and buses that would work effectively for the bulk of the population.
As for travel speeds, road capacity peaks at 27 mph, meaning that congestion is least likely when cars travel at 27 mph. In populated areas, maximum road capacity should not the primary objective. Rather, pedestrian safety, noise levels, and emissions should be the highest priority in order to create an environment conducive to shopping, dining, holding conversations or public assemblies, entertainment, cultural or civic events, recreation and relaxing. In the early 20th century, New Haven had a city ordinance that limited traffic to a maximum speed of 10 miles per hour within a mile of City Hall, and 12 miles per hour beyond that mile radius. Having a range of speed limits like 10 mph for alleys, 20 mph for residential streets, 25 mph for avenues and 35 mph for boulevards would make sense. These different street types also need to be deployed throughout the city so that no resident is too far from calm, slow streets nor from high capacity thoroughfares. That’s one of the issues with the Route 34 West project; it is surrounding by almost all multi-lane, high speed thoroughfares with little relief for existing and future residents.

posted by: BillB on November 17, 2010  8:53pm

Filling in Rt. 34 seems like it will make traffic much worst.
Just a few of the problems that come to mind are:
1. It will put thousands of cars onto the downtown streets just when there is a major effort to make the city more friendly to bikes and walkers.

2.The thousands of daily commuters that work at Yale University, Yale-New Haven and St R’s hospitals will need to wind through the city to get to and from work twice daily.

3. Travelers who want to continue through the city on Rt. 34 to Westville, Derby and beyond will be delayed and add to the problem.

4. Traffic will back up onto I91 & I95 creating more daily traffic nightmares if exit one is the only way into the city. This will only get worse after Gateway College opens.

5. This plan will result in people spending more time in their cars.

6. Far more people who live and work in and around New Haven will be adversely effected by this project than the number of people who will benefit.
Perhaps, as an alternative, Rt. 34 could be covered over (not filled in), similar to I95 in The Bronx, NY, or I91 in Hartford. Then buildings and open space could then connect the Yale medical community to the rest of downtown, while traffic flows along the existing path under the newly created space. Developer Carter Winstanley and the Mayor would still have their project and the traffic downtown would not be made worse.

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on November 18, 2010  12:16am

BillB,

1.Bike and pedestrian safety has less to do with the number of cars and more to do with travel speeds, street widths, noise and fumes.
Route 34 currently dumps thousands of cars onto downtown streets because the highway was never finished.

2.Under the current plan the highway right-of-way is being maintained, so commuters can still take the same route they currently do, it’ll just be at grade instead.

3. They will probably be delayed, but only slightly more than they currently are. They just have to get off the highway 2 blocks before they currently do, but they will continue of the highway right-of-way one way on North Frontage to get to the Blvd and over to Westville.

4. The only way to reduce traffic congestion is through mixed-use planning. Adding, improving and fixing highways only encourages more driving, thereby adding to congestion.

5. If people choose to be car dependent, then yes they will spend more time in their cars, but one of the possible benefits of this project is to make transit, walking and biking more viable for the masses for transportation. If people don’t like traffic, they can live a lifestyle that doesn’t depend on driving.

6. Perhaps, which is why the public needs to make their voices heard to ensure that this project is a benefit to the city. However, suggesting that the problem has to do with not enough accommodations for cars is pretty weak. The city is covered in parking lots, garages, and high-speed roadways, yet its never enough and it never will be enough so long as we are a car-dependent society. We have to do something else, like creating places of meaning, which people choose to live in, work in, shop in and support.

posted by: MORON on November 18, 2010  12:46am

I’m sorry, and I may be stupid, but there is a traffic line up every day trying to get in to New Haven on Route 34 from I95. If all this development on Route 34 takes roads away the traffic will back up on to I95 causing an ever bigger traffic back up. I’m sorry to mention this but don’t all these really educated people from Yale understand this. If walls that are trees that are growing is all thats important and people getting to work are unimportant then we should all give up and go on welfare.

posted by: streever on November 18, 2010  10:28am

@Moron
Good thing we have you here to point out the obvious. You are absolutely right. Without a massive highway running through it’s downtown, New Haven will not continue to be a better place to work and live with greater density and better jobs than cities like New York and Montreal.

How naive we’ve been to think that cities should be walkable, dense, and have slower traffic speeds. The experiments of other cities (incorrectly thought of as “world class”) has proven this idea wrong, and instead we should all aspire to be like Hartford, where parking spots outnumber residences.

—

In non-facetious world, great work to all of the participants. I remain as frustrated as ever by the glacially slow pace of actual traffic improvements, but am glad to see my friends and neighbors continuing to push back and ask for more pedestrian-centric spaces.

posted by: Vinny G on November 18, 2010  1:10pm

Follow the intended plan.  Run 34 under the air rights garage (under the proposed relinking of the Hill)and terminate route 34 onto Marginal Drive and Derby Ave.
Keep 1 exit onto City streets as proposed.

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on November 18, 2010  3:46pm

Vinny,
Who’s going to pay for that? The interstate highway system was paid for with taxes, are you suggesting raising taxes to pay for something that does not generate revenue?
Paris was redeveloped in the 19th century as the first modern city by using Baroque planning techniques to retrofit the medieval city for industrial manufacturing, department stores to sell manufactured goods, rails and train stations, and a growing population. Enormous swaths of the city were demolished - similar in scale to urban renewal - in order to create grand plazas connected by axial boulevards and avenues, sewers were also added underground, and large public and civic buildings were constructed on prominent sites. The entire project - demolition, upgraded infrastructure and new construction - was paid for by the rise in property values around and along the redevelopment sites. The revenue generated from selling and developing private land paid for the massive project. The exact opposite occurs with highway construction. Whereas highways and new roads in the countryside made farmland developable for suburbs, highway construction and street widening in existing cities and towns lowers the property value of surrounding land. Because it is not economically viable to build roads in the first place, taxes have to be used to pay for it. Then those taxes are never paid back because the value of the land is lowered. Then maintenance, expansion and replacement costs come in, which raise taxes even further or redirect money away from things like parks, schools, and libraries in order to pay for roads. The model of suburban development has been imposed onto cities since the 1950s and it just doesn’t work and cannot work because cities work differently from suburbs. Route 34 ran out of funding when we were the US was in the middle of a massive road, bridge and highway building project, when we were the world’s sole superpower, when our currency was worth more than the paper it’s printed on and when we didn’t have 60 years of history to look back on and see the failed policies that have not and will not work.
The Route 34 West plan is a modest plan that tries to incorporate both the bad planning practices of the past and the desire to do good urban design. The argument that this plan is extreme, and will have more than a marginal effect on traffic flows, commute times, etc. is just ridiculous. If anything, the plan is far too modest and should be reworked to ensure that the revenue generated from private development pays for the infrastructure costs, which probably means the road and parking infrastructure has to be scaled down and the number of development lots have to be increased and the plan has to be beautiful and functional so that it is a unique place of character and meaning.

posted by: Vinny G on November 18, 2010  6:42pm

Jonathan I never stated raising taxes.  I merely suggested an idea that could accommodate the needs of alleviating traffic while allowing a more urban design, walker friendly atmosphere as discussed in this article.  One can not have his cake and eat it to.  One thing you left out was that RT 34 is a interstate Rd, thus federal funding, just like the tiger grant.  Unfortunately I did not explain my self in euclidean design that you would agree to.

posted by: john wysolmerski on November 18, 2010  10:37pm

Two points:

1) The plan as described in the tiger grant application describes an access road that will be tunneled under the proposed developments to take traffic from the new end of 34 at Church Street directly to Air Rights and the new building.  So, the fears of gridlock for folks trying to get to the hospital and the med school are overblown.  Anyway, it is only 3 blocks from the garage to Church Street - not exactly miles of traffic.  A little more time to get from the highway to your parking garage is well worth the potential improvements in downtown.  People who want to go all the way to the end of the current 34, can stay on 95 and come in from the other side.  There will always be some traffic congestion at rush hour - I for one would rather see it happen further down 34 and have the traffic in the city flow more smoothly, which will happen with the new plan.  Finally, the New Haven rush hour is short and many people will have the option of adjusting the start and end of their day to spread out any congestion

2)  For this to really improve the area, the new developments have to include housing.  It is not rocket science - cities that work well are those that have people living downtown.  Downtown New Haven is incredibly better than 20 years ago now that there is approaching a critical mass of residents living in the city center.  This new neighborhood is a great chance to keep this trend going.  There are lots of young people (even some old farts) training and working at the medical school and hospital that would love to live in a nice new neighborhood within a couple of blocks of their jobs.  If you build it, they will definitely come.  If it is just lab/office buildings and retail, it will remain a dead zone after 6PM. 

Anyway, this is well worth the extra debt and the alders should OK the grant and get on with it.

posted by: Karyn Gilvarg on November 18, 2010  11:00pm

Anon- For the record, all 8 City staff at the meeting on Tuesday live in the City of New Haven; some are home owners and some have even occasionally been seen on bicycles.

Vinny G - No longer possible to complete Rte 34 as originally intended, 55 Park Street, the Pfizer CRU and 2 Howe Street all occupy the land once intended for the depressed highway west of the Air Right’s Garage.  And all pay real estate taxes.

posted by: anon on November 19, 2010  9:00am

Just curious how many staff working on this project live within the “immediate” area, walk everywhere (do not drive to work every day, like most residents), and “may have lower incomes”? 

Good to know that city planners (like Mike Piscitelli) are taking the considerations of local residents into account—this project wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for their valiant efforts in the first place.  But I’m not sure that DOT, urban engineers, traffic planners, etc., will follow their lead.

Somehow, the roads that are designed always seem to be very different from the roads that people would prefer to have (e.g., recent re-dos of Whitney Avenue, Whalley Avenue, Frontage Roads), though hopefully that will change beginning here.

Ideas are the currency of modern cities. Ideas can’t flow if people can’t!  Look at the streets where people flow today in New Haven—if they had been designed today instead of 200 years ago, none of them would be approved by ConnDOT.

posted by: jondoeski on November 19, 2010  11:23am

agreed…The only thing that will make this area become more livable is to locate residents immediately on site.  The medical district on the other-side of the 34 is already an awful area (not totally sure why we want to connect it), but if labs and offices are the only programs to be introduced to the reclaimed city block, then it is doomed to begin with.  Mixed use building so that the space is occupied at all hours of the day.  Density and scale are important. Thru traffic should be tunneled under the garage and dispersed after dwight st; allowing for a high density of built space and narrow avenues on the reclaimed area.

posted by: anon on November 19, 2010  1:23pm

John Doeski:

I don’t think housing, even affordable housing, would be prohibited as a use on these new blocks. It would be great for the city.  In fact the entire site could consist of housing.

The real question there is whether any developer would build housing next to a massive highway (with all street life exterminated by the 30+ mile per hour travel speeds), and expect to be able to sell it.  People prefer to live, work and interact on quieter and calmer streets - a clear indication of what the city needs to build if it wants this project to succeed.

posted by: jondoeski on November 19, 2010  2:38pm

anon- if in fact zoning prohibits residential construction in our downtown district…which i don’t believe is true, then we have some serious issues. 

...if the highway is below ground; not only exiting into the garage, but bypassing it as well, then residents would not be affected by fast moving traffic.  we need to get the high-ways out of sight…no matter the price tag, it will pay off

posted by: Karyn Gilvarg, City Plan on November 19, 2010  3:54pm

Redsidential uses are permitted under the current zoning for the entire corridor and downtown and most of the medical district

posted by: anon on November 19, 2010  5:09pm

Karyn, How much of the highway will be underground?

posted by: robn on November 20, 2010  9:44am

To those who fear traffic problems,

I had the same fear, including the fear of spillover into East Rock by those in a long queue on I-91. One intrepid reader pointed out that the queues are usually the result of the interchange from I-91S to I-95S which is being currently rebuilt to hopefully correct the problem…currently, people going to New York clog the lane into the New Haven connector and then cut in at the last minute. I was skeptical but actually found photographic evidence of this on Bing Maps here….go to the birds eye view and hover around this area.

http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?v=2&cp=qwhcxn8xqdms&lvl=18.61909963394733&dir=77.351888923786&sty=b&where1=New Haven, CT&q=new haven ct

This isn’t complete evidence of overcapacity on the connector but its compelling explanation for the back ups.