City of New Haven
Sidewalks so narrow you’ll have to choose between wheelchairs and trees.
Roadways so tight you’ll have to choose between a bike lane and giving up large swaths of parking.
A single major intersection so problematic it has clocked more than 100 crashes in a year and a half.
The intersection in question is at Grand Avenue and Ferry Street. Fair Haveners described those challenges and pressed for solutions at a gathering hosted by City Engineer Giovanni Zinn, whose office is beginning a process to make the area safer.
City engineering staff and Fair Haven Alders Sarah Miller and Jose Crespo joined the Zoom meeting this past Thursday night. The aim was to gather ideas about raised intersections, bump-outs, blind corners, speeding, new crosswalks and to hear initial city thinking about the redesign of virtually all of Ferry Street from Middletown Avenue to the entryway to the bridge south of Chapel Street.
Zinn said that the city has $2.8 million from the state Local Transportation Capital Improvement program earmarked for the project. Public outreach, design and refinements are to take place this year with construction scheduled for 2023 and 2024. (Click here to view Zinn’s presentation from the meeting. Click here to access a tool the city set up to get public input.)
“One of the challenges is balancing different ideas for use of space -– travel lanes, bike lanes, pedestrian infrastructure … Certainly we want more than we can fit, so how do we develop priorities?” he asked.
Neighbor Ian Christmann had no problem deciding on some of his.
Zinn first showed a picture of the tree-clogged narrow sidewalk near little Sanford Street and said, “This section here would have to be four feet wide of sidewalk but it definitely is not. So we need to hear your ideas of balancing ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] and the need to preserve the tree canopy.”
Christmann replied, “For the record I am for safe sidewalks and then replant the trees, if there’s a balance between the two.”
The danger-generating narrowness of Fair Haven’s historic old roadways was perhaps the conversational through-line of the meeting and, Zinn said, a major challenge for designers.
Participants cited virtually every intersection from Peck Street to River Street as needing amelioration — raised crosswalks, improvement of terrible sight lines, speed tables — so pedestrians stand a better chance of crossing alive against racing traffic. The Grand and Ferry intersection drew by far the most attention, along with the extraordinarily narrow straight stretch immediately below as Ferry zooms south to Chapel and River Street.
City of New Haven
Lee Cruz asked for consideration of bump-outs at Grand and Ferry to diminish the crossing distance. Carmen Mendez of the Livable City Initiative (LCI) suggested a speed table there, historic lighting improvements, and a protected left turn signal. The latter needs to be installed, she said, to address the frequent congestion.
If the bump-outs are not possible, what about a raised intersection to make pedestrians more visible?
Zinn and Assistant City Engineer Dawn Henning took notes and pointed to the success of the redesign of Clinton Avenue as a partial model for Ferry with its traffic tables and especially raised intersections. “A raised intersection is one of my favorite things to do,” said Zinn.
The most anxiety-inflected part of the discussion had to do with how to address Ferry south from Grand to Chapel. Participants pointed out many large delivery trucks exiting from the two parking lots on both south sides of the street, the absence of lights and adequate crosswalks, the narrowness, and the speed of traffic. That all can make not only crossing but living there sometimes harrowing.
“There is no crosswalk at Saltonstall or Exchange,” noted Diane Ecton, who, along with Lee Cruz, co-chairs the Fair Haven Community Management Team. “I’ve been asking for them for the longest time. That would help a lot with our traffic there.”
“I agree that crosswalks are the minimum of what we need, raised crosswalks. You’re definitely speaking our language,” said Zinn.
Cruz suggested that the planners look into opening up a long closed-off potential exit from the C‑Town parking lot onto Exchange Street. If cars leaving the market or Dunkin Donuts can be lured to use that exit, it would ameliorate the congestion of the turners onto Ferry Street. “That would become a better alternative to get out of the lot on the south end,” he said.
“I don’t know our ability to move exits around, and one of our challenges is the trucks can’t exit onto Exchange. We have to leave something on Ferry. We’ll have to think of what we can and can’t do but no question that the intersection of the parking lot and the two streets is challenging. Time will tell if there’s a solution.”
Other suggestions included building on the experience of the painted and rubber-duckied triangles at the intersections at Ferry and Chapel and Ferry and River Streets, with Jersey barriers and an area for benches or restaurant tables.
Zinn said that another important design consideration for the Grand and Ferry intersection is that the recently completed state “Move New Haven” transit study calls for one of the decentralized end points for a new rapid bus route to be Ferry and Grand.
That would call for a “mini hub station, something fancier than a bus stop to provide info about the routes. What that would look like and where it would go in the intersection I don’t know yet. Also looking at the two plazas, how can we give them a visual backdrop so they seem part of the street rather than a spillover? Our landscape architect will give us input. It is a challenge.”
Zinn said next steps include walking tours of the area to gather the input of residents and business owners unable to attend evening Zoom meetings. He asked the alders to take steps to arrange for such tours.
In addition, to gather more public input, the Engineering Dept has created this online comment tool.
“We really want to hear from you,” said Henning, “as we create some concept plans.”
Replacing the parking with protected bike lanes and wider crosswalks would calm traffic and provide an enormous boost to business. Local retail sales would probably double or triple.
People could still park on the side streets. And with a quieter, traffic-calmed street, people would be more likely to walk an extra block or two to do their shopping, regardless of whether they arrived on foot, by bike, or in a bus or car.
Hopefully the mayor and alders can educate business owners and residents about these economic benefits (since the perception is that parking is needed, when in reality it is the exact opposite).