Fountain Street’s fixers are suggesting that New Haven do the bump to keep the public safer.
Bump outs and bike lanes are among the draft recommendations that Boston engineering consultants CDM Smith presented after nearly two years of studying and listening to the public about how to protect all roadway users on Fountain.
CDM Smith was hired by the city to study the Westville thoroughfare and lay out in draft form improvements to make vulnerable users like pedestrians and cyclists safer. A draft of those recommendations was presented to the public Wednesday evening during a Zoom-held meeting. (View the presentation here.)
CDM Smith
CDM Smith analyzed a mile-and-a-half strip of Fountain Street from the intersection with the Route 15 overpass to the opposite end at Whalley Avenue.
The study additionally analyzed a part of Whalley Avenue from the Fountain intersection to Harrison Street. This strip of road was included in the study to examine the influences of surrounding traffic onto Fountain Street.
Wednesday’s meeting was the third and final community input session hosted since CDM Smith took on the project. The consultants presented the results of their study to the public and a draft of recommended improvements for the roadway based on community input and study analysis. (Read about the previous meeting here.)
CDM Smith project manager Rebecca Hall presented the Wednesday update. Hall’s team plans to continue to review the drafted recommendations based on the input provided from neighbors at Wednesday’s meeting.
Comments and ideas regarding the study recommendations must be submitted to the team via email by Dec. 23. (Send comments to [email protected]).
An analysis found that the roadway had 374 crashes from 2016 – 2018. Fourteen percent of those were bike crashes at Fountain Street and Central Avenue.
The recommendations included a permanent closure of Central Avenue to cars.
Hall also presented on concerns about pedestrian crossings and inadequate crosswalk timers, a lack of bus shelters, red light violations, underutilized parking, and signage in poor conditions.
The recommendations were based on the roadway’s variety of curb-to-curb widths, which constrained engineering, Hall said.
The public had expressed a desire for protected bike lanes and shorter crossing distance. CDM Smith’s drafted recommendations include new bike lanes on both sides of Fountain Street and bumpouts at crosswalk intersections.
The suggested bumpouts would slow traffic, decrease pedestrians’ walking distances, and increase pedestrian visibility to drivers.
Hall presented four treatments to improve the corridor based on curb-to-curb widths ranging from 32 feet to more than 51 feet.
Bumpouts at crosswalks like the one at Fountain and Emerson Street intersection are recommended to limit people from parking up against the crosswalks.
A total of 83 percent of parking spots along Fountain will be eliminated, Hall said.
Parking would remain in the more commercial areas toward Whalley Avenue and nearby Mauro-Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School.
Parking would be allowed on one side of street there, with two bike lanes on each side of the road, one of which would be protected from parked cars with a one-and-a-half-foot buffer.
Bike boxes are also recommended at the roadway’s intersections, which are designated areas at the head of a traffic lane, providing bicyclists with a safe and visible way to get ahead of queuing traffic during a red light stop.
A bumpout and parking spaces are recommended in front of the post office at 95 Fountain St. due to the current unsafe “high turnover parking” at the front of the building, sometimes blocking the crosswalk.
A roundabout is also recommended for the Fountain and Whalley intersection.
Proposed roundabout at Fountain and Whalley intersection.
After the presentation, an hour-long discussion ensued with meeting attendees.
One neighbor asked how the plans will keep Fountain traffic from diverting onto side streets during rush hour. Hall responded that the recommendations include signal-timing optimization to help traffic on Fountain flow more smoothly and remain on the roadway.
Neighbor Stasia Brewczynski said she appreciated the draft but was disappointed with several parts. Brewczynski asked that the plans include the community’s original request for hard protected bike lanes. She asked why hard protections like bollards or curbs cannot be put within the one-and-a-half-foot buffer lanes.
Proposals for Fountain Street post office intersections.
“Currently the recommendations do not include protected bike lanes with any type of bollard, they do include a buffer area. And that is because we were working with the existing curb to curb width and there’s just not enough space to accommodate those protected bike lanes with that existing curb to curb width,” Hall said.
Hall said the suggested buffer lanes cannot but used to build protection for the bike lanes due to zone requirements on state roads limiting the building of “physical impact barriers” and the requirement for a shoulder on the roadway.
CDM Smith Senior Project Manager Sharat Kalluri added that hard protections in the buffer areas would be difficult for the city to maintain during the winter and fall seasons due to snow, ice, and leaves.
“There’s certainly some maintenance concerns with that,” Kalluri said. “The best we can do is to balance out the needs and achieve what we can get.”
In response to the post office parking recommendations, Brewczynski said she has never seen the post office parking lot on Philip Street full, though drivers still park at the front of the office.
“I think it’s really important for us to be careful as a community to be thinking about what behavior we want and not rewarding illegal and bad behavior,” she said.
Hall said the team will discuss different solutions to tackle the parking at the front of the post office.
Watch the meeting here.
Bike lanes are a waste of space. I’ve work in the long wharf area since they put those bike lanes in and in since that time I’ve seen 2 bikers use them .