Laura Glesby Photo
The view down South Frontage from York Street, where the sidewalk ends.
Proposed changes to South Frontage Rd. from York to College St.
What will it take for South Frontage Road to be a safe street for pedestrians and cyclists?
The city is betting on raised crosswalks, a bike lane, and an extension of York Street’s two-way stretch.
City Engineer Giovanni Zinn and city Traffic, Transportation, and Parking Director Sandeep Aysola presented those plans to constituents at a Zoom-hosted community meeting held on Jan. 11.
The city has secured $1.5 million from the state Department of Transportation’s Local Transportation Capital Improvement Program (LOTCIP) for the South Frontage Road project, as well as $250,000 for making another block of York Street two-way.
The impending improvements to South Frontage Road will stretch from the street’s intersection with Legion Avenue, Howard Avenue, and Howe Street through its intersection with College Street.
Between Jan. 1, 2020 and Jan. 1, 2023, that segment of South Frontage has seen 163 car crashes.
Prior to presenting on the planned changes, Zinn took a moment to remember Mila Rainoff, Melissa Tancredi, and Keonho Lim. All three were pedestrians or cyclists who died when cars hit them on the corner of South Frontage and York.
“These are not statistics. They are people,” Zinn said. “It’s important in what we do to remember their names, to remember who they were, and to keep their memory alive, and to be better.”
South Frontage and Park, one of the intersections where crosswalks will be "tightened" and raised.
Plans for South Frontage Road between Park Street and Legion Avenue.
City Engineer Giovanni Zinn.
According to the city officials’ presentation last week, the improvements to South Frontage Road include:
• All four intersections along that stretch are slated to feature raised crosswalks, a measure designed to encourage cars to slow down.
• The city will “tighten up the radius of the corners to cut down on the length of the crosswalk,” according to Zinn, so that pedestrians have less distance to cross within the time period of the walk signal.
• The city will add a sidewalk alongside the Air Rights Garage, on the north side of the street between York and College, where there’s currently no pedestrian path.
• Car-blocking bollards will be added (or enhanced) by the crosswalks at all four intersections.
• The city will create a curb-level bike lane, a step up from the road, along the south side of the street. Between College and York, a strip of greenery will separate the bike lane from the cars.
• Most travel lanes will be narrowed to 10 feet wide (down from their current width of 11 feet), except for the rightmost lane.
According to Traffic Project Engineer Raj Mathur, the city considered narrowing South Frontage Road from four lanes to three, but ultimately decided against that design.
Mathur explained during the meeting that a traffic study found that narrowing the road to three lanes would create slower, occasionally bumper-to-bumper traffic conditions.
He argued that drivers are more willing to flout the law and drive unsafely when they’re stuck in congested traffic. According to Mathur, the extra lane is both more convenient for cars and an added safety measure for pedestrians.
The block of York Street slated to be converted to a two-way street.
The proposed changes for York Street between Cedar and South Frontage.
Meanwhile, the city is planning to extend the two-way section of York Street from South Frontage to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, where the street runs beneath a bridge connecting the Air Rights Garage to Yale New Haven Hospital.
The city already converted an adjacent segment of York Street between South Frontage and Howard Avenue to a two-way road in order to provide a detour around nearby construction.
At York’s intersection with Cedar Street, where it’s already two-way, the city will designate a northbound lane for buses and bikes only. By the time it reaches York’s intersection with South Frontage, that bus lane will split between a right turn lane and a raised bike lane. The intersection will feature a bike box for cyclists to wait for traffic light changes several feet ahead of cars.
Across the street, York Street will be divided into two lanes, one going in each direction.
Pedestrian Safety Or Car Convenience?
Traffic, Transportation, and Parking Director Sandeep Aysola: two-way streets are safer for everyone.
The York Street two-way conversion proposal drew skepticism from some attendees of Wednesday’s meeting.
“What is actually the need, or the reasoning, to have two way vehicular traveling on that stretch of York Street?” asked Leslie Radcliffe, a long-time Hill neighborhood activist and resident who also chairs the City Plan Commission. She said that pedestrians still aren’t accustomed to the two-way stretch of York Street beginning on Howard. When crossing the street, she said, “you’re not expecting vehicles to come in the opposite direction. It doesn’t seem like any of this is going to slow down traffic on South Frontage Road. I don’t see this as helping.”
“In general, single-lane in two-direction streets tend to see lower speeds,” responded Zinn. “It helps a lot of the movement of traffic through the area and provides more paths for vehicles, so you don’t have as much saturation on certain roadways.”
Aysola added that “research has shown and practical experience has shown that two-way street conversions are safer, partly because drivers in both directions can see each other, so they’re a little more wary of traffic coming in the opposite direction.” He noted that extending the two-way section of York would reduce carbon emissions by shortening the length that cars taking certain routes through the city would need to travel.
Radcliffe pressed Zinn and Aysola. “All of the points you brought up were good, but [they] all seem to be pointing to the convenience and connectivity for vehicular traffic. I haven’t heard yet how it’s going to make it safer for pedestrians.”
“The key thing is that two-way single-lane streets tend to be slower speed-wise,” Zinn responded.
Another meeting participant, John Hagmann, argued that the extra block of York is “not an area where cars are likely to be speeding or driving recklessly.” He added that a new potential stream of cars turning left off onto York from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard could create more chaos for pedestrians to navigate while crossing the street there.
Very good proposals. Here is another idea. Mexico City has installed pedestrian signals in the sidewalk at its busiest intersections. The LED lights are red when pedestrians are not supposed to cross, green when they are, and yellow when the traffic lights are about to change. I don’t know that its residents are more law abiding than New Haveners. But the signals seem to help limit unsafe crossings.
With regard to my friend Leslie’s concerns, there is international data that shows that converting streets to two-way and reducing lane width reduces traffic speeds, which benefits pedestrians. And doing so reduces air pollution, a concern in the Hill and elsewhere. By necessity, 50% of the time drivers must go around the block to get to or from their destination on one-way streets. (Given New Haven’s particularly crazy system, the detour is often longer.)
Giovanni has faced pushback on a number of traffic calming on a number of occasions (he and his staff deal with traffic data all the time, most people don’t). I think it would be useful to identify a few performance metrics for traffic calming measures The city could use these metrics before and (say) six months after the traffic calming measures are installed. The city already does this for Level of Service, which measures traffic flow. It could also measure crash rates (pedestrian and vehicle), parking meter utilization rates, etc. I believe the traffic calming measures will prove successful. But, it would fairly simple to reverse most of them if this was not the case.
Outside of downtown, there are many wide wide one-way streets that could be converted to two-way without eliminating parking. I think the city, as a matter of policy, should convert these streets absent good reason not too. In some cases, conversions would result in intersection angles that are unsafe. In others, conversions would encourage cut-through traffic. But I think most one-way streets are good candidates for conversion.