Thomas Breen photo
Godfrey-Hoffman Associates Engineer Marcus Puttock at City Plan.
The bike share station outside Hillhouse High School in April.
The city’s bike share program secured approval for its 40th station, which is the last, for now, for the nine-month-old rental initiative.
The approval came at the most recent City Plan Commission meeting on the second floor of City Hall.
Commissioners unanimously approved the site plan for a new bike share station and advertisement panel to be located at 150 Kimberly Ave. outside of Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School in the Hill.
“Glad to see this is done,” City Plan Commission Chair Ed Mattison told Bike New Haven Program Manager Carolyn Lusch and Godfrey-Hoffman Associates Engineer Marcus Puttock with a smile at last week’s meeting. “Great job.”
Bike New Haven, the city’s long-in-the-works short-term bike rental program, launched in February with 10 stations and 100 bicycles.
Lusch said that the program currently has 29 active stations, including ones at Union Station and State Street Station, and around 200 bicycles for rent citywide.
Last week’s approval of the station at 150 Kimberly Ave., which will house six bicycles and one eight-by-five-foot, double-sided ad panel, brings the total number of stations cleared by City Plan up to 40.
The bike share station at Elm Street and Orange Street.
Lusch said that Bike New Haven plans to build out two more stations before the end of November, and that it will install the remaining nine stations sometime in the spring, She said the spring will also see the program expand its number of available bicycles to 300 or more, depending on ridership.
“We now have 3,146 registered users in our system,” Lusch told the Independent by email. “We’ve had a total of 9,379 rental sessions, consisting of 14,274 separate trips” since February.
Lusch said that, aside from adding the last of the stations and bicycles, Bike New Haven will focus next year on community outreach and education.
“We want to encourage new riders and increase awareness of our discounted annual passes for students, seniors, and people receiving state benefits,” she said.
She said the bike share program has provided bikes for two New Haven Coalition for Active Transportation (NHCAT) rides on the Farmington Canal as hosted by the Whitneyville United Church of Christ. She said Bike New Haven also provided bicycles for a City Wide Open Studios (CWOS) tour, as well as for the Freddy Fixer parade organizers, New Haven Bike Month events, and the annual Rock to Rock Earth Day ride.
“We’ll continue partnering with the New Haven Coalition for Active Transportation to provide community rides and classes,” she said. “We’ll be doing more surveys and collecting usage data over time to better understand our riders’ mobility needs.”
Court Street Contra-Flow Lane Painted; Edgewood Lane Coming Soon
Court Street’s new contra-flow bike lane.
In other bike news, Downtown can now boast two contra-flow bike lanes, where cyclists can bike in the opposite direction of vehicle traffic on a one-way street.
This past Tuesday night, the city’s traffic, transit, and parking department finished striping the one-block contra-flow bicycle lane on Court Street between State Street and Orange Street. The city also moved the Court Street block’s parking spaces from the north to the south side of the street to accommodate the new bike lane, removed the single space parking meters, and installed three multi-space meters.
The city installed its first contra-flow bike lane on High Street in 2016.
In October, city transit deputy Michael Pinto said that the Court Street contra-flow lane will also eventually come with pedestrian improvements to the intersection of Orange Street and Court Street.
City transit director Doug Hausladen said that there is not currently a calendar or schedule for future Court/Orange intersection improvements.
“It won’t be completed in 2018 as the construction season is over,” he told the Independent by email.
Hausladen also said that the city will release a project update for the Edgewood Avenue protected cycletrack later this year. He said the city is one minor change to construction plans away from going out to bid for 2019 construction of the cycletrack.
I would love to see Bike New Haven expand to include West Rock ... our side of New Haven is a big blank spot on the bike share map. This could be part of a bigger effort to connect this beautiful neighborhood with the rest of New Haven. We've had a couple of major victories on this front: The arrival of Hill Health Center and a food market. The last remnants of the fence between Hamden and New Haven coming down. A big improvement in bus service to the neighborhood this september. Some new striping for bike lanes between housing developments and SCSU.
But West Rock residents remain really isolated: No sidewalks for large stretches of the neighborhood, speeding traffic that makes biking and walking really dangerous, no slow school zone signage around Common Ground (where I work). The city's committed to some traffic calming work, and to seek funding for more sidewalks. Those of us who love West Rock would love an update on these commitments!