Paul Bass Photos
SeeClickFix’s Ben Berkowitz and Caroline Smith in the WNHH studio.
A bike path opened a new public route through the city for bikers and walkers — but also opened a new target for crime.
New Haven knows that story. After creating a pedestrian/cycling trail along the old Farmington Canal, the city had to up security in response to occasional muggings.
A similar story developed in South San Francisco, California, after that city created a similar trail in 2009. The 2.85-mile trail, called Centennial Way, was constructed above the underground BART (mass transit) line. These days, the crimes reported there have involved graffiti and illegal dumping.
Justin Anderson.
So reported Justin Anderson, the GIS (geographic information systems) coordinator for the government of the 66,174-popoulation some three miles south (and on the other side of a mountain) from the Golden Gate City.
Anderson joined co-hosts Caroline Smith and Ben Berkowitz of SeeClickFix, New Haven’s civic problem-solving web company, on the latest edition of WNHH’s “SeeClickFix Radio” program.
“It ends up being a hot spot for graffiti,” Anderson said of the relatively new South San Fran urban trail. His government has received a spike of citizen complaints about tagging on homes and businesses along the trail in the past two months, including dozens of notifications posted to the community’s SeeClickFix site.
If the tagging occurs on public property, the government will clean it up, he said.
The more important response has been to try to stop the tagging before it occurs. South San Fran is using the SeeClickFix postings to decide where to install security cameras, to catch people in the act or deter them. The same goes for incidents of people depositing bulk trash.
Click on or download the above audio file to listen to the entire episode, which also touched on bicycle theft, tree-trimming, and illegal dumping news from New Haven, South San Francisco, and Burlington, Vermont.
Today’s episode of “Dateline New Haven” was made possible in part through support from Yale-New Haven Hospital.
This is a little off subject but I have put in something to the SEE DON'T FIX web sit about street lights out along Foote and Ashmun ST. a couple of times along with an email to the city and alderman and phone call to the city. These have been out for months and not just a couple about 14. It's amazing that the city has not noticed this. Just another waste of money that SEE DON'T FIX.