Sidewalk Plan Sparks Safety Debate

New sidewalks are en route to Southern Hamden as part of a revived effort to protect pedestrians — leading some neighbors to question whether safer places to stroll are needed where not many people currently walk.

At a Thursday night public input session, Hamden Town Engineer Stephen White detailed those preliminary plans to patch up and improve walking paths, bike lanes, and, hopefully, community connection through infrastructure work on Benham, Augur, Treadwell and Davis Streets.

The Zoom-hosted meeting primarily concerned how to make Hamden more walkable. 

Over 40 members of the public tuned in to raise questions about what a pedestrian-friendly future could look like in Hamden — and to debate who sidewalks serve as well as whether or not it’s worth building walkways in areas not frequently navigated by foot.

White, who first came onto the job in March after an appointment by a new town administration, led the sidewalk brainstorming session alongside two consultants from engineering company GM2. He said his aim is to help pedestrians in highly populated areas of town who currently ​“walk in the road way without any sort of protection” access bolstered transportation pathways throughout Hamden.

White said the town first introduced this project several years ago. The town originally estimated the total cost of the sidewalk project to be $2.8 million. The town has also secured an 80 percent reimbursement deal with the Federal Highway Administration for Transportation Alternatives, so the town will be only be responsible for paying 20 percent of the ultimate cost of the sidewalk plan. 

That end cost will likely fluctuate, given that White has since edited the original proposal and said he intends to further change the design plans using public input. 

On Thursday, White laid out how he and a contracted consulting team have so far thought through how to finally use that money to create more ​“complete streets,” or to upgrade and redesign roadways to accommodate pedestrians, bicyclists and public transportation riders while calming car traffic.

On Benham Street, White suggested laying new sidewalks from Mix Avenue to Cherry Hill, which would line both a residential area and Sacred Heart High School while completing a pathway to Dunbar Hill Elementary, which sits to the west of those planned sidewalks.

This stretch of new sidewalk would allow ​“parents [to] walk their children to school without having to navigate this treacherous span between Cherry Hill and Circular Avenue,” he said.

White also prescribed painting sharrows along Benham’s roadway, installing two speed-awareness signs and establishing a set of five-foot-wide bike lanes on the street. 

Over on Treadwell Street, a new pedestrian bridge could create a path over Lake Whitney within the Farmington Canal Trail by the end of Leeder Hill Drive. 

A sidewalk would be constructed between Martin Terrace and Marne Street, providing a concrete path from the canal trail towards Dixwell Avenue, passing the Space Ballroom.

And, White said, the entire length of Treadwell will, like Benham, get ​“share the road” signs.

On Augur Street, new sidewalks would be laid between Rolf and Farnsworth Streets.

White said he is considering chicanes to promote traffic-calming on the one way street. That would mean adding three blocks of parking to the north side of the street in order to impose artificial curves in the road so that cars have to slow down and navigate cars parked on either side of their vehicle.

Lastly, Davis Street could see not only new sidewalks lining the walkway from Hartford Turnpike east towards Ridge Road, but also a brand new crosswalk on the way to lead pedestrians into the Hamden entrance to East Rock Park. Flashing beacons and speed-awareness signs were also suggested by White to warn cars to slow for walkers.

While White worked with consultants to draft plans for those four street renovations, he said the designs are still only tentative. His team will be editing those proposed upgrades using recommendations from the public with the aim to complete blueprints by the spring of 2023 and begin construction next fall. 

If You Build It, Will They Come?

The rest of Thursday’s meeting saw hours’ worth of project feedback thrown White’s way.

“It seems like the town is spending a lot of money on the south side of Benham for sidewalks that are gonna be barely used,” one Zoom participant named Lori stated.

“I’ve lived here for 30 years. To be honest we don’t have a lot of walkers in this area,” she said, asserting it was likely because of all of ​“the hills.”

Then she expressed a fear that a sidewalk lining her property would mean the concrete would butt into her property and ​“my fence is gonna be ripped up.”

That would only be the case if Lori’s fence extended onto town property, a project consultant explained to her on Zoom, in which case the town would replace or readjust it. He added that it seemed that there were a few feet of grass buffering between her property line and the proposed sidewalk, so her lawn was unlikely to be affected.

Well, Lori, continued, ​“from what I understand the sidewalk is gonna be five feet wide. Spring Glen doesn’t have five foot sidewalks and I don’t think they would want them to be that wide,” she said.

“That’s the standard width that we have for the town construction of sidewalk,” White responded, pointing out that five feet is the minimum width decided on by the federal government to be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. ​“Five feet is the width that would allow safe passage of, say, people in a wheelchair and another person to pass one another or walk side by side.” Other sidewalks around town are narrower because they were constructed prior to the setting of such standards, he said.

“To upset 12 properties for imaginary walkers… I’d rather see you people put the money into repairing the sidewalks on Mix Avenue. I mean, that’s a disaster… Repair the sidewalks that are in disrepair around town — it’s just not needed here,” Lori concluded. 

If anything, she suggested, just keep the plan to put sidewalks on the north side of Benham, by Sacred Heart Academy, rather than next to her home.

Then representatives of Sacred Heart came forward — and also rejected the proposed sidewalks.

“Plowing that particular distance would assuredly be an unbearable financial burden that we simply cannot afford,” Sister Barbara Thomas said. She imagined ​“costs for claims due to slips and falls on a sidewalk” during the winter that ​“we cannot see from any of our properties.”

White’s Davis Street plan also prompted debate concerning which side of the street a new sidewalk should belong on.

White had considered establishing sidewalk on the northern side of Davis Street with a crosswalk by Farnham Drive to connect passersby to East Rock Park.

Many neighbors showed up to contest that idea, asserting that the sidewalk should go on the south side, or the same side of the park entrance.

Melissa Kaplan — a Davis Street resident and the president of Hamden’s Board of Education — asserted that the sidewalk placement was an ​“issue of equity,” arguing that the north side had over 13 houses with ​“significantly smaller plots of land,” and claiming that the sidewalks would ​“be subtracting from their front yards,” while the south side features just four homes with ​“extraordinarily large plots of land” less likely to be disrupted by a new sidewalk.

Her husband, Josh Charkow, also said that it was a ​“question of safety and accessibility,” stating that ​“folks should really be crossing where there’s a light that turns red.”

White thanked each speaker for their input and promised to take it into reconsideration while editing the complete street designs.

Still, more opposed traffic calming measures that White had proposed alongside new sidewalks.

A resident named Adrienne shook her head at the prospect of chicanes on Augur Street. ​“The parked cars are just gonna get slammed into,” she said. ​“I don’t see how that’s safe.” Many others echoed her sentiment, suggesting that cars would just blow past the slow-down measures.

Some agreed with White’s general aim, but offered critiques to improve his plans’ efficacy.

Sarah Forman, for example, suggested the town look at creating a ​“vegetative barrier” between streets and sidewalks to offer better protection for pedestrians, especially those walking dogs or pushing a baby carriage. She highlighted Mather Street — which was not included in White’s four-street proposal — as a particularly precarious spot.

“I agree,” White said. ​“I’ve walked my dog there and it’s harrowing.”

He said that the town would place the spot on a list of possible alternative repairs or projects supported by separate capital dollars.

As the venting and concerns over property line problems wound down near the meeting’s conclusion, more spoke up to support the efforts undertaken by White to make Hamden more walkable and accessible.

For example, Adam Weber, a project manager with New Haven’s engineering department who lives in Hamden, responded to several claims made earlier that night.

He indirectly referenced Lori’s argument that Benham Street should skip sidewalks because the area does not see many pedestrians, stating: ​“We don’t build bridges based on how many people are swimming up a river.”

“It’s not safe to walk there and people won’t walk where it’s not safe,” he said. ​“So I really thank the town for filling in those sidewalk gaps.”

Similarly, while many resisted the prospect of chicanes, he praised the traffic-calming tactic as ​“a good way other than just paint to slow things down.” Another alternative he considered would be to convert Augur Street into a two-way road.

On that same logic, Weber noted that ​“the sharrows should probably be scrapped,” arguing that painted signage can ​“sometimes be worse than nothing at all” because ​“bicyclists think it’s giving them a sense of safety when it’s just paint and not doing anything.” (You can check out a TikTok below that Weber made about the ineffectiveness of sharrows. The civil engineer has a TikTok account dedicated to explaining everyday engineering designs, which you can read more about here.)

@everydayengineering extremely niche bike content (but sharrows are useless) 🚲⬆️ #bike #engineering #civilengineering #biketok #bikelane #bikelife #traffic #road #street #urbanism #construction #infrastructure #cycling ♬ original sound - M.M.

The better move, he said, would be to establish wide bike lanes where possible.

He said that rather than just relying on painting or signage, the town should consider working to make concrete changes to existing roads to alter drivers’ psychology — for instance, narrowing the amount of turning space by the intersection of Davis Street and Hartford Turnpike so vehicles don’t feel so empowered to speed around the bend.

Overall, Weber weighed in, ​“We want a walkable future. Everyone regardless of travel mode deserves a safe and effective way to get around.”

Nora Grace-Flood’s reporting is supported in part by a grant from Report for America.