Last year for their science project these three fourth-graders clocked an oil truck at 52 miles per hour and even a school bus racing at nearly 40 by their school, John C. Daniels Elementary. On Monday afternoon, they joined city officials and others on a “walking audit” of their Hill neighborhood to help planners calm traffic and make the streets safer for kids, pedestrians, and bicyclists.
The audit, which convened at the Wilson Branch Library, was led by Jim Travers, deputy director of the Department of Traffic and Parking, and two consultants, David Sousa of Clough Harbour & Associates of Rocky Hill and Ian Lockwood of the Glatting Jackson Kercher Anglin design firm and Walkable Communities initiative.
In other areas of the city, especially Fair Haven, under the leadership of Alderwoman Erin Sturgis-Pascale, grassroots organizers and fund-raisers have led the way in pioneering traffic calming initiative. This “Complete Streets” audit in the Hill is the first that is government funded.
Ian Lockwood (pictured) is from the same firm, Glatting Jackson, whose principal, Dan Burden, was retained by Fair Haven residents to do an audit of their neighborhood last year. Click here for those results.
Travers said his department decided to begin with the Hill because of other long-planned repavings and improvements in the adjoining areas, especially the Route 34 corridor.
The traffic calming adults took the traffic calming kids and some dozen others on a trapezoidal walking loop from the Wilson Library at Washington and Dagget along the other busy arterials in the area, Columbus, Howard, Congress, and Davenport. The route took them past hospitals and schools, the point being to notice problems along the way and to propose solutions.
Near the rising Clemente Leadership Academy on Columbus near Washington, Melissa Ernstberger, Hannah Melchinger, and Gleimy Rodriguez (pictured left to right) noted on their clipboards that Lockwood suggested a roundabout instead of the current traffic lights with their long wait times. Those waits frustrate both drivers and pedestrians.
Roundabouts are longer-term and expensive solutions, Lockwood said. Shorter term and more affordable solutions include more numerous and hardier street trees and even cars parked along both sides of the street. “Any sense of enclosure,” Sousa said, “promotes slowing down.”
The audit is a consequence of “Complete Streets” legislation passed by the Board of Aldermen in October. It is viewed as a first step to produce a “tool kit,” a collection of traffic calming ideas that, when implemented, will transform streets from the current car-centric corridors to spaces ideally shared equally by pedestrians, bicyclists, and motor vehicles.
“If cars don’t have to press a button to proceed,” said Lockwood, “why should people?” The girls wrote that on their clipboard notes.
Travers said the audit is being sponsored by the city, specifically the Board of Alderman and the Southern Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (SCROG). It is to SCROG that Sousa will present the report, with an emphasis, he said, on more short term, affordable solutions, like repainting and/or repaving crosswalks, and adding trees, or plantings.
“The idea,” said Lockwood, “is to create an atmosphere of self-enforcement. Lights and signs, he said, often fuel driver anger and fuel speed problems, and themselves do not solve them.
Near Congress and Howard, the crew paused to hear Lockwood suggest safety could be enhanced by the addition of bump-outs at bus stops, and lifting the crosswalk to the level of the sidewalk. “This ramping up puts motorists on the level of pedestrians. It also raises the heights of kids four to six inches when they cross, making them more visible, and therefore safer,” he said.
Storm water drain off from raised intersections canbe a problem, he added, so that a catch basin nearby is also recommended.
All along Congress, leading toward John C. Daniels School, Sousa suggested that long curb cuts, such as inappropriate driveways, most holdovers from a previous era when big trucks were making deliveries, should be eliminated. “You want to reward walking and incentivize it with sidewalks that attract pedestrians, not cars.”
Complete Streets approach envisions a fair balance between the car, pedestrian, and bicyclist. The current situation is a severe imbalance in favor of the car. “I think even fast food restaurants,” Sousa added, “shouldn’t even have driveways. People should park on the street and walk in.”
Before leaving the hospital area, Lockwood pointed to the aerial walkway between two medical buildings. “That’s a sure sign,” he said, “that there was failure to manage the street. That is not only ugly, it takes pedestrians off the streets. Don’t believe what they tell you in places like Minneapolis, where these walkways are widely used, that they’re built against the cold and the winter. I think they should be illegal!”
By the time, the traffic calmers arrived in front of the Daniels school, the fourth- graders had returned to their classroom. Lockwood and Sousa addressed their issue.
“Here,” Lockwood said, “I’d really ramp up the self-enforcement measures big time.” He suggested adding parking to the west side of Congress, if the school bus patterns permitted.
“If possible,” Sousa added, “eliminating the offset intersection, where Dagget and Ward come in on Congress, both one-way streets, at different and confusing points, would also be a good idea.” In general, Complete Streets proposes two-way roads, not one-ways, which retard bicycling and make driving circuitous.
In the evening, suggestions gleaned from the audit were part of a workshop held back at the Wilson Library, to develop a first draft of the area’s toolkit.
The John Daniels students said their this year’s science project would be to expand their own traffic study from the immediate aera of their school to all of the Hill.
David Sousa said his report, following more public meetings and tweakings, would be delivered to SCROG, he hoped, in May.
I agree with Sousa and the others. Curb cuts destroy a city.