Laura Glesby file photo
Kai Addae (left) and Max Chaoulideer (right) at City Hall hearing.
The city’s planned overhaul of bike, pedestrian, and transit infrastructure is on a fast track to potential approval, as officials race to meet a mid-September deadline for a crucial grant.
It was put on the fast track Thursday evening at a meeting and public hearing held in City Hall by the Board of Alders City Services and Environmental Protection Committee.
City Transit, Transportation, and Parking Director Sandeep Aysola presented on that “Safe Routes For All” plan at the hearing. Aysola — along with a dozen supporters from the public — urged alders to “discharge” the plan for review by the full Board of Alders (rather than take a formal vote on it) to speed up the process by enabling the full board to vote on the measure at a meeting next week and enable the city to apply for an upcoming batch of federal funding to put the plan into action.
By the hearing’s close at 10 p.m., a dozen New Haveners had testified in support of the plan, and alders unanimously voted to discharge it for a faster review and full-board vote.
The Safe Routes For All plan, as Aysola explained, calls for the city to expand and upgrade 90 miles of bike lanes — and make them “protected” lanes, with a physical barrier between cars and bikers, whenever possible. It advises that the city align car and pedestrian traffic lights so that pedestrians won’t have to press buttons and wait for four-way red lights before crossing the street. And it proposes that traffic-calming interventions be implemented at dangerous intersections to reduce car crashes.
The plan’s other recommendations include adding sheltered bus stops, converting some one-way streets to two-way, and committing to a “Vision Zero” goal of eliminating pedestrian deaths.
The plan identifies seven “priority neighborhoods” with majority low-income, Black, and/or Latino residents that the city has historically overlooked for transit upgrades: Dwight, Newhallville, Fair Haven, the Hill, West Rock, West River, and Dixwell.
Read more about the city’s proposal here. The full plan can be downloaded here.
The city is applying for funding for the plan from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2022, which offers grants for cities to either design or implement plans supporting “active transportation” like walking and biking through the Safe Streets and Roads For All program. The deadline for an upcoming round of funding is Sept. 15.
The bike lane network proposed by the Safe Routes For All plan.
If successfully secured, the grant could provide $5 million to the city for five years’ worth of upgrades.
While many cities are expected to apply for this funding to develop active transit plans, “we are the only municipality in the entire state that has a plan” already drafted for improving non-driver infrastructure, said Aysola. In order for the city to apply for an implementation grant, the Board of Alders has to sign off on the Safe Routes For All plan — and allow the city to both apply for and accept any grants awarded through the federal act.
“There’s no design to it yet?” asked committee Chair Anna Festa.
Aysola confirmed that there’s no precise design affiliated with the Safe Routes For All plan yet. She noted that more community input would be solicited during the design process.
Sandeep Aysola pitches Safe Routes For All.
As Aysola presented, the Board of Alders chambers were filled with advocates for bike, pedestrian, and transit infrastructure. Members of the Safe Streets Coalition of New Haven waited as the sky grew dark and hours of other agenda items passed by to share testimony in favor of the Safe Routes For All plan.
Safe Streets activist Lior Trestman said an active transit overhaul would help people without cars maintain steady jobs.
“Transportation remains one of the biggest barriers to employment,” he argued.
One in four New Haveners do not have a car, said Trestman; in some neighborhoods, nearly half of residents are carless.
Max Chaoulideer focused on the New Haveners who have died in car crashes: “Every single life that was lost was preventable.”
Kai Addae noted that the Safe Routes For All plan would help the city meet its broader climate goals, including ending community-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, by enabling residents to rely less on cars.
“We have eight years, almost seven … if we want to meet the Climate Emergency goals,” Addae said.
I hope Dixwell Ave is the next to have a plan to create safer streets for non-vehicles users, and also Route 80, Quinnipiac Ave and Ella Grasso Blvd, where lots of high speed and volume vehicle traffic occurs, and few pedestrian, bike riders or bus rider safety measures are in place.
The city needs to pressure the state to create safe streets measures to state controlled portions of the streets, and the city needs to coordinate with bordering towns on those state controlled streets to help make the safety measures not end at the city limits. Fountain, Whalley, Dixwell, Whitney, Route 80, Quinnipiac, Middletown, Ella Grasso, Route 1, Route 34 are some of the major streets that take people in and out of the city every day to our neighboring towns, and should be made safer for all modes of transport.