Emily Hays Photo
Stoplight here on the way?
New stoplights on George Street, lights that sync with each other on MLK, new walk signals with countdowns on Derby Avenue: These are parts of a suite of upgrades that could come to Dwight with the Yale New Haven Hospital’s planned neuroscience center.
New Haven Transportation Director Doug Hausladen offered the Dwight neighborhood this draft list of 39 intersections at the most recent monthly meeting of the Dwight Central Management Team’s monthly meeting, held last week at Amistad Academy.
“We drew a line around the Saint Raphael Campus and said that inside of that box, every intersection should be pedestrian-friendly,” Hausladen said.
Transportation director Doug Hausladen.
The list includes five intersections the hospital initially offered in its bid for the city permissions necessary to build the center. Transportation staff added around 20 more to the draft list as well as a reference list of other intersections the city is planning to improve itself.
YNHH will now consider the draft list and attach a final copy to its neuroscience center application during the last administrative checkpoint – detailed site plan review at the City Plan Commission in the next few months.
“You’re going to see some variation of that list when it comes in for detailed plan review,” said New Haven Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli.
Orchard Street.
Traffic is a top concern for Dwight neighbors.
The neuroscience center would rise eight stories on the corner of Sherman Avenue and George Street. With that new facility and an expanded emergency department, the Saint Raphael Campus would attract around 1,000 more drivers, according to YNHH estimates.
Neighbors recently compiled a report of health concerns, including a potential increase in asthma rates from these additional cars idling at stop lights. (Read about that here.)
The city has asked the hospital to add new software to 10 intersections in the neighborhood so they work like people expect lights to work, Hausladen explained. The lights will synchronize with each other and react to traffic to reduce stops for drivers.
Then there’s the fear citywide of more pedestrian fatalities and car accidents. Four people have already died this year after being hit by cars, compared to nine people in all of 2019.
Dwight neighbor Deirdre Dailey (right) takes a brochure at the Dwight Central Management Team meeting.
This fear is real to Dwight neighbor Deirdre Dailey, who said her father was hit at the corner of Sherman and George in 2018. He survived without many internal injuries, she said, but the memory is still vivid.
Dailey had just gotten home from work when her father said he was going to Walgreens. Though elderly, he walks daily, she said.
“I was getting ready to take off my uniform,” she said, when someone knocked on her door and asked whether that was her father on the ground.
She recalled the blood and a raccoon-like bruise around his eye. The driver was trying to beat the light on Sherman and George, she said, and did not see her father.
A car turns right at the corner of Sherman and George.
The Sherman and George intersection is one transportation staff recommended for improvements. The city has asked the hospital to completely replace the traffic light and walk signals at the intersection with state-of-the-art equipment. If possible, the city would also like the hospital to bump out the curbs at the corners of the sidewalks to slow traffic.
In all, the hospital’s transportation improvements would likely cost over $1 million, Piscitelli estimated.
Management team Chair Florita Gillespie pressed Hausladen on Tuesday on how long the walk signal would last in the new intersections.
“What I’m saying is the push button times down here are too short for elderly and kids to cross,” Gillespie said.
Hausladen said that New Haven is waiting for a policy change from the state legislature that would help this problem. He pitched New York-style walk signals, where some lanes of traffic can move while pedestrians cross, as a way to reduce frustrations for walkers and drivers.
Dwight neighbor Linda Townsend offered some context at the end of the meeting. She said that the neighborhood has been asking the city to make bikers and walkers in the area safer for a long time.
“There’s no reason for cars to be driving through the city that fast, especially in residential areas,” Townsend said.
She said that if Hausladen says these changes are going to happen, she believes it – until proven otherwise.
“I do know that he wants it as much as we do,” she said.
This is great news. Can we invest in syncing traffic lights across the city? My suspicion (backed only by anecdotal data) is that un-synced lights put drivers in a lousy mood, contributing to more aggressive driving.