Next Moves Plotted On Buses, Bike Lanes

The new protected two-way bike lane down Edgewood Avenue hasn’t been built yet, but city transit chief Doug Hausladen is already working on making sure people use it.

The Board of Alders’ City Services and Environmental Policy Committee heard public testimony last week on a grant Hausladen is seek to both track and hype the planned bike lanes, before moving on to a workshop on the city’s new transit and mobility study.

The city is one of 80 competing for 10 grants from the national not-for-profit PeopleForBikes for a ​“Big Jump Project,” which disperses $750,000 over three years to each winning city. That $750,000 is meant to improve and increase cycling in a defined focus area: in New Haven’s case, a zone that extends a half-mile out from a 2.1 mile-long ​“cycletrack” running across Edgewood Avenue. This means funding for community outreach, education and promotion. It also means the city would gather more quantitative data about cycling, such as bike counts and environmental and health statistics.

Hausladen said at last week’s hearing, which took place on Dec. 13, that the city is on track to begin construction on this two-way bike lane in summer 2017, pending approvals from the state and the City Plan Commission. The completed ​“cycletrack” would pave the way for cyclists to bike down Edgewood Avenue from Forest Road to Park Street, separated from cars. The cycletrack comprises the crux of a network meant to connect cyclists west of downtown and points to a shift in designing infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians over cars.

Construction of the cycletrack is funded by a $1.2 million bond from the state Department of Transportation. A Helen and William Mazer Foundation would also match the PeopleForBikes grant with $25,000 per year, raising the total to $825,000.

Westville Alder Adam Marchand voiced a concern with the grant: because PeopleForBikes clearly promotes bicycle infrastructure, could that conflict with its role in training staff and providing funding for gathering the data which would determine the success of the program itself? Marchand pointed to skeptics who might declare the numbers ​“cooked.”

“There will be skeptics in places where we will never win,” Hausladen conceded. But he honed in on the importance of remaining open and honest throughout the project — and of opting for the most transparent options of collecting data available.

Marchand had his own solution: enlisting community members (enthusiasts and skeptics alike) in gathering the data might help attest to the project’s credibility. City officials have already presented versions of the cycletrack to Westville and Dwight residents to mostly positive response.

East Rock Alder Anna Festa (pictured) wondered about including educational cycling safety programs in schools as part of the grant (four schools sit along the proposed cycletrack on Edgewood).

“So I don’t have to wrap my kids in bubble wrap,” she said.

Hausladen said he hopes to engage parent-teacher organizations if the city wins the grant. And he brought up an interactive traffic safety garden that’s been in the works for a few years.

Ryan O’Hara (pictured), a transportation engineer for the CT DOT who’s lived in Westville for a year, attested to the safety of having space between cyclists and cars.

“It’s truly great to the see the city spending money and spending resources to help the community adopt a cycling culture,” O’Hara said.

Poster Child Or Problem Child?

Hausladen also presented, alongside representatives from the DOT and Greater New Haven Transit District, an update on a long-awaited transit-improvement study which launched in September 2015.

Part of the ​“Move New Haven” transit study involves an intensive community survey, which Hausladen and staff are dispensing via libraries, community meetings, supermarkets and the Internet. The study’s consultants have already identified what they call the ​“poster child” of what’s wrong with New Haven’s bus system: the C North Haven Route.

The route consists of about 24 trips each day: but the route itself might vary at least 22 times over the course of the day, with a 70-minute wait between buses on the route during peak morning and afternoon times.

On top of that, the route has inconsistent wait times ranging from 10 to 70 minutes from downtown New Haven; outbound weekday service from downtown ends at 6:20 p.m.; and the route has no service on Sundays.

Lisa Rivers of the CT DOT pointed to a map of the route, which sprawls extensively into North Haven. Unwieldy, inefficient routes such as this one result from political pressure to service new facilities and buildings from local employers and ​“a lack of regional land-use planning,” Rivers said.

There’s no particular solution to the C route — yet, Hausladen said. He said that talking about solutions for the transit system as a whole means taking rail into consideration, like the new Hartford-Springfield line under construction.

“How do we integrate all modes of transit into becoming one unified public transit system that is seamless for residents and users?” he said.

Officials pulled out some of the many survey responses they’ve already gathered: that wait times are long and buses need to be more frequent.

“It’s nothing that we haven’t heard before but [the survey is] pulling it all together, creating a groundswell,” Rivers said.