Markeshia Ricks Photo
Oct. 20 ribbon-cutting at the luxury Novella apartments at Chapel and Howe, former red-light district epicenter.
Chapel West has done a remarkable job. Basically replacing the city as much as possible and providing services to us property owners. May I suggest the next step?
Moving to the final plateau: creation of a neighborhood by reducing the non-neighborhood traffic.
Everything seems to be in place except for the traffic. We are still part of the 1940s traffic grid designed to get people in and out of downtown as quickly as possible. We have a major traffic artery at the heart of our neighborhood, as well as mostly one way streets making it difficult to connect both sides of the street and encouraging high speeds and disruptive traffic noises.
I have several suggestions designed to create this final step:
* Change all our streets to two ways. At least change Chapel Street. An old idea but one whose time has come. We don’t want people driving fast through our neighborhood; they can get out of town on the highway extension. If they come in to our neighborhood they compete with bikes kids dogs and pedestrians. They should not interfere with these neighborhood activities. (Click here to read a story about a new city study with a similar approach.)
• Make this entire area a hospital zone. Complete with noise and speed regulations and lots of signage.
• Reinforce all of this with speed and noise cameras that automatically send out tickets for violations.
• Talk to hospitals and ambulance operators and work out a plan to have them use the highway access and not Chapel Street.
Changing the traffic will profoundly change our neighborhood. I hope Chapel West will devote a lot of time to this important final link to our future.
Joel Schiavone, who created the College Street residential and entertainment district, wrote the following article. He is scheduled to appear on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven” on Wednesday at 11 a.m. to discuss this and other ideas about developing the city.
The neighborhood has been requesting these types of changes for years, but the city has never had the funding needed to do anything.
The city just got a bond for over $1,000,000 to do traffic calming on Edgewood Avenue, which will help to some degree.
If you want to kill someone, just try driving at more than 15 miles per hour on Chapel Street. Any responsible driver in this neighborhood goes slowly and keeps an eye out for young people and seniors crossing the street.
Chapel Street is a dense, pedestrian rich environment - not just an artery to the suburbs - and road designs and speed limits should be adjusted accordingly.