Neighbors Weigh In On Sidewalks, Plazas

Would a bike path be better near busy Howe Street? Or a pedestrian walkway near the soon-to-be-constructed Yale New Haven neuroscience center?

Dwight residents weighed those options in the basement of the main library branch on Elm Street during a citywide community workshop aimed at soliciting public input on areas in the city that could benefit from pedestrian-oriented infrastructure.

The workshop Thursday night was an early step in an initiative to add ​“demonstration projects” — painted sections of the road that could serve as pedestrian walkways, plazas, or bike paths — at six intersections across the city. A demonstration project will be implemented in each of the Dixwell, Dwight, Fair Haven, Hill, Newhallville, and West Rock neighborhoods.

The city Department of Transportation, Traffic & Parking, the Cornell Scott Hill Health Center, the urban planning consulting firm Street Plans Collaborative, and Community Alliance for Research & Engagement (CARE) are cosponsoring the initiative.

Workshop participants sat at tables corresponding to each of the six designated neighborhoods. They were asked to choose either the neighborhood they lived in or a neighborhood they frequently visited. On each table sat large-scale maps of a particular neighborhood, a set of stickers, and some markers.

At the start of the program, Mike Lydon of Street Plans Collaborative explained to the room that the project planning process will center around input from community members. ​“You guys know your neighborhoods better than I do,” he said.

The demonstration projects will take cues from CityWalk, a Providence-based program in which volunteers paint temporary plazas and walkways across the city in bright colors and patterns. CityWalk volunteers use tempera paint — ​“the stuff that you’d use in preschool,” Lydon said later. Their designs wash away as soon as it rains.

In New Haven, the city plans to use paint that will last anywhere from six months to a year. While there are no specific plans in New Haven to repaint the demonstration projects once they fade away, Lydon said that ideally neighborhoods would decide to repaint projects deemed to be successful.

“These kinds of projects don’t have to cost a lot of money,” Lydon said. He later estimated that painting one intersection could cost around $3,000.

Much of the funding for the projects comes from CARE, which received a grant from REACH Community Development. Alycia Santilli, the Director of CARE, explained that the six neighborhoods that would receive demonstration projects were identified as ​“low-income, low-resource” neighborhoods in New Haven. The city is also helping to finance the project.

After an icebreaker, in which participants shared what they liked most about their own neighborhoods, the brainstorming began.

Participants were first asked to mark highly frequented locations in their designated neighborhoods with green stickers and dangerous intersections with red stickers.

“There could be markers all along the trail,” said Lee Cruz at the Fair Haven table, pointing to a street alongside Mill River.

Cruz has lived in Fair Haven for 34 years, and has long been an advocate for improving pedestrian life in his neighborhood.

Among other locations, he and others at the table pinpointed Cold Spring School and The District, a co-working space, as high-traffic spots in the area needing more attention.

Several people gathered around the Dixwell table, but none of them were Dixwell residents. Santilli explained that the lack of turnout was likely due to the Dixwell Community Management Team’s meeting that same evening. CARE and the Department of Transportation, Traffic, and Parking have decided to host a separate workshop for Dixwell residents, she said.

Still, those at the Dixwell table marked up the map with green and red dots. The Dixwell Ave. & Webster St. intersection was among the spots that ended up with both a green and a red sticker, meaning that it was both popular and dangerous.

Some residents came to the workshop prepared. Elizabeth Yarbrough, who lives in West Rock, brought a cardboard poster with over 20 photographs of streets that need stop signs and road repairs in her neighborhood.

She pointed to a photograph of a street nearby a school. ​“There’s no sidewalk for the kids to go on,” she said. ​“No four-way stop sign.”

Later on, participants were asked to rank the top three locations on their maps that could benefit from more pedestrian-friendly streets. Lydon said his firm would focus on these suggestions as potential sites for demonstration projects.

“It’s gotta be in a highly visible area,” William Long said to others at the Hill table. ​“We want to get a lot of exposure.”

Eventually, the team settled on a stretch of the Ella T. Grasso Boulevard as the area in most need of a pedestrian intervention. They marked an area at South Frontage Road as their second choice.

The Ella T. Grasso Boulevard also came up at the Dwight table. ​“There’s four lanes coming one way and five going another,” Susan Harris, a Westville resident who said she spends a lot of time in Dwight, said about the road.

But the Dwight team ultimately decided on an area of Whalley Avenue between Howe Street and Orchard Street as the location in most need of a demonstration project.

That section of Whalley Avenue was ​“probably the most dangerous,” according to Harris, who said it was a frequent site of jaywalking.

Unable to decide on whether to prioritize the Howe Street area or the Yale New Haven Hospital Saint Raphael Campus for a second choice, the group ranked both locations equally.

While many groups noted swaths of streets that could benefit from pedestrian or bike paths, Lydon said that the projects would need to be ​“small scale” due to a limited budget. The painted paths will probably be geared towards pedestrians rather than bikers, he said, and the projects will most likely be limited to a single intersection in each neighborhood.

Next, Street Plans will review maps and notes from the workshop and analyze the intersections that neighbors marked. The firm will share ideas for projects with city officials and CARE, who will in turn solicit community feedback on the proposed sites. The city plans to recruit volunteers to paint all six projects across three Saturdays: Aug. 24, Sept. 7, and Oct. 12.

At the end of the workshop, Lydon handed out flyers asking for volunteers interested in painting streets, spreading the word about the project, and lending or donating materials.

“I thought it was great,” Long, who participated at the Hill table, said after the workshop. Long lives in Downtown, but he travels through the Hill three to four days a week in order to get to the VA Medical Center in West Haven. He said he was impressed by the Hill residents’ knowledge of their neighborhood. He noted that the others in the room seemed to share his enthusiasm.

“They’re excited about seeing something being paid attention to,” he said.