Allan Appel Photo
Traffic should only rise by 1 percent per year, and the noise and air quality won’t get any worse, when the city builds its “Little Dig.”
That was the word Thursday from a man who worked on the environmental analysis of Boston’s Big Dig, and is now analyzing the fast-approaching excavation and reconfiguration of New Haven’s Route 34, more affectionately called the “Little Dig.”
Senior Supervising Planner Allan Hodges (pictured) of Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB), the Boston-based design and planning firm, gave that news at a sparsely attended public information session Thursday at New Haven Free Public Library on Elm Street.
PB is in charge of Downtown Crossing, New Haven’s ambitious effort to turn the Route 34 connector into four developable property sites and the perilous Frontage speedways into bike and walker-friendly “urban boulevards,” with cross streets that “stitch” together downtown, the medical district, the train station, and the Hill.
Click here for an article on the June 24 community planning workshop, with details on the plan.
The city is applying for a $21 million federal Tiger II grant to do the first phase of the work that includes reconstruction of College Street to grade level.
As the city raced to put together the grant application by August, it called on Hodges to complete a required environmental review in June and July. He said the results came back clean.
“We looked at 18 environmental categories required by NEPA[the National Environmental Policy Act] and we didn’t find anything [wrong or potentially dangerous], “ he said.
NEPA is the pioneering federal legislation that requires projects either to provide an environmental impact statement, termed an EIS.
If the work does indeed affect water supplies or endangered species, for example, a lesser level of requirement is an environmental assessment.
If the work affects none of these issues or categories, the project requests a “categorical exclusion,” or exemption. That is precisely what Hodges said was included with the documents filed by the city in its Tiger II grant.
“We don’t have to do an EIS because there are no environmental impacts. One reason a categorical exclusion is appropriate is its all state land, no private land. It should an easy project to get through,” he said.
In 2009 the Connecticut Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration came to the same conclusion, Hodges added. PB’s additional review was necessitated by the requirements of the grant.
“We’re basically downsizing this expressway to driveways,” he said, creating on the new street level four parcels to develop (pictured).
Of those 18 categories studied, Hodges said they devoted their deepest analysis to air quality, traffic, and noise. In these there was “no significant impact” found.
Traffic volume is expected to rise only 1 percent per year, he said. That’s a naturally occurring increase that would happen even without the development, he said.
In the Power Point that Hodges and PB’s Principal Transportation Specialist Bob Brooks presented, among the points prominently conveyed was: “Project will not increase existing air quality pollutant levels.”
While Hill Ward 3 Democratic Party Co-chair Ohan Karagozian was generally favorable about the plan, especially the burying of lower level traffic on roadways that lead into the Air Rights and other garages (yet to be built), he was skeptical about that 1 percent in volume of traffic increase, and the pollution.
“We’re real nervous in Ward 3 about traffic and exhaust. Asthma rates [in our neighborhood] are really high.”
Hodges stuck to his environmental guns.
Asked about some critics’ objections to a “categorical exclusion” (click here to read one of those in Duo Dickinson’s column in the Reg) because in the connector area in immigrant days tanneries and other polluting sources abounded, Hodges had this to say:
“It’s been sealed [by the previous highway construction]. It’s been disturbed but capped.”
Hodges (here pictured with Yale doc and bicyclist Gregg Furie) did admit that construction noise during excavation, grading, and demolition could be an issue, but that would be worked out with neighbors, as it was in Boston during the Big Dig, he said.
The Urban Design League’s Anstress Farwell questioned the 1 percent traffic volume growth per year. She expressed concern in that regard about the first parcel slated to be developed, parcel D, over the newly filled in College Street. “When you add 800 parking spaces to 9,000 slots in the area,” she said, letting her question hang as a challenge.
“I’d be a lot more comfortable and ready to celebrate if I saw the transit plan,” she added
Transportation and Traffic Chief Mike Piscitelli, who mc-ed the meeting, said all that was being taken into consideration, along with the medical area master plan, and that the evolving master work was in effect still a work in progress, with public input requested.
Details on the plan and previous city presentation are available on the city’s website.
The grant application along with the environmental materials are being reviewed in Washington. The PB team and Piscitelli were optimistic about a favorable outcome. News should arrive in October, if not before.
If successful, some infrastructure construction could begin as early as next year, although the finishing date is 2016. The laying of infrastructure is designed so parcels such as 100 College and others can be developed in the interim.
Didn't the big dig do exactly the opposit of what they're about to do?