Eyeing Asthma, Dwight Tracks Pollution

This is fantastic. Thank you, Pat and Richard, and all the others who made this happen. When I first moved here 42 years ago the smokestack from St. Raphs campus was spewing enormous amounts of particulates into the neighborhood. It took a major effort to get the hospital to finally upgrade its heating equipment to reduce some of the pollutions. It is still pumping out a greater percent than desirable. I do wonder if the billion-dollar renovation will include mechanicals. Unlike the big hospital in Boston that made their entire top into a rooftop garden, the new Yale project has no apparent modern green approaches to the design. It in fact is using a good percent of the space acquired to create giant spill-over garages smack in the middle of the Dwight Historic District and sterile-looking lawns that will no doubt use landscaping contractors using every chemical they can to keep them looking like artificial turf. A giant ugly industrial garage wall will grace George Street going on for blocks. And yes, the years of construction to look forward to. And in the midst of all this, the supposed neighborhood leaders who have no apparent interest in nature have chosen to make a deal with the worst housing provider in the city (The Community Builders - TCB) to take away the one spot of green that we had - Kensington Playground Park to create 15 affordable housing units v.s. to 5000 low income and elderly who live in proximity to the Park. TCB is a billion-dollar corporation operating in 20 states and expert at extracting tax dollars to pay for their equity building ventures for their billionaire investors who need a place to park their money while getting tax relief for ten years until the land reverts to their possession unencumbered. But New Haven opted to sell the Park to TCB for the grand sum of ...$1. Brilliant.

Thank you to everyone involved with this project. It may provide the data the city, the state, YNHH, Yale and other major employers need to recognize the impact of thousands of cars coming into and out of the city each day for work and play, and inspire them to find alternatives to their employees driving to work each day. Electric shuttles or buses with expanded and improved routes, improved safety of bike routes and increased bike trails, improved and expanded train service would all go a long way to reducing our vehicle pollution and it's impact on our health and the environment. With the current federal administration working on an infrastructure bill, it would be good to contact your elected representatives and encourage greener transportation funds to address these types of public transportation projects.
A special thanks to Paul La Croix who spent the last days of his life helping this project out of the goodness of his heart. The world needs more angels like this.

How about getting rid of the ridiculous walk signs that illuminate every cycle with no pedestrians in sight? The idea that it reduces Covid is ridiculous. Thousands of cars idling for minutes on end not only adds to the pollution unnecessarily, but causes people to run red lights, making it even more dangerous for pedestrians.

Am I missing something? Why are we measuring pollution when this project is already a done deal?? So we can worry more of how our health is being ruined??

@westville man:

You think treating pedestrians with respect is "ridiculous?" Why should pedestrians have to beg the traffic light to cross the street, while the lights automatically change for cars? If your concern is the amount of pollution coming from vehicles, then we can agree on something. The way to solve that problem is to stop driving. Then, when you walk instead, you'll have automatic walk lights at your convenience!

The idea that walk lights cause people to run red lights is ridiculous. That's the fault of each driver that feels like when they are in a car, they should be entitled to the speediest trip possible at the expense of everyone else. The traffic light didn't "make" them do anything. Maybe we should examine why, when people get behind the wheel, they become entitled individualists whom everyone must get out of their way for. This sense of vehicular arrogance is the real threat to pedestrians. Drivers thinking they should have a clear and speedy road through a dense, urban area, and then getting frustrated when their every need isn't catered to. A city is for people, and people are more important than cars, every time. To stop pollution we must stop driving.

I'm glad to see these pollution monitors in place. I bet we will see high levels, as expected. Hopefully this can help motivate our state leaders to remove I-95 and I-91 from our city.

The approval by the Board of Aldermen was made in haste and did not consider the health impacts of the Dwight neighborhood. The Board of Alderman voted on an expansion/ change to an existing PDD 45 ( planned development districts) the mandated minimum of cars is 1893 total car spaces for the PDD 45. The BOA approved an additional 544 car spaces as the behest of YNHH. The total number of cars on the new proposed garage will be a total of 2437. Instead of reducing the amount of cars in the neighborhood the city has increased it. This does not include the the 2 new garages on the RT 34 corridor or all the surface parking in Dwight. We have had 12 deaths in the last year. This increase of garages and vehicular traffic/cars will only increase the number of bicyclists and pedestrian deaths.New Haven needs to overhaul its thinking concerning transportation and urban planning. The City and YNHH should be trying to improve the health and well being of our city not destroy it. We are definitely moving in the wrong direction. The purple monitors will gage the negative impacts on the community. Hopefully YNHH will consider reducing the number of cars on this massive 7 story garage and review the number of work at home employees. The proposed second sky bridge should be eliminated too.WE NEED SAFE STREETS FOR ALL not more garages.

To be clear, garage construction in excess of what the Neurocenter needs is what we are concerned about. Bearing witness to the impact on human health of increased pollution is important. Data can help. Children can gather and report it and learn about how power works in New Haven. City officials and the Yale New Haven Health have been indifferent to the concerns of the Dwight neighborhood about the decision by the Hospital to shift parking from downtown to the heart of a low-income residential neighborhood despite an already high rate of asthma and other chronic health conditions in a population that is nearly two-thirds Latino and African American. There are 2400 school bus stops within a two-mile radius of the St. Raphael Campus. Children will be standing there as these cars come to work and returning to them as staff leave work. I believe this project should have been subject to review under the National Environmental Policy Act. Thus far I have been unable to get an answer to my question, where is the federal government in this? The children in Dwight deserve clean air and a playground. Public officials at the City, State and federal level are letting these things happen. Our major employer has health as its core mission but chooses to ignore the health implications of its plan for this neighborhood. Dwight will track data and hold people accountable. Thanks NHI for paying attention.

"Each sensor costs $250. All it needs to get started is electricity and an internet connection. The Yale Urban Design Workshop ordered one sensor immediately; the management team pulled together funds to buy two more."

I crack up at how Yale is able to cultivate a sense of austerity in its subjects while being one of the wealthiest institutions on the planet.

Moses, of course my post was about the idling cars adding to the pollution. Beg the pedestrian light? The rest of your post doesn't even deserve a reply.

@Robert Moses: what in Westville Man's post is disrespectful to pedestrians? I suppose if you equate pushing a button to trigger the pedestrian phase of a traffic light an act of begging then the mere mention of a motor vehicle and the act of driving it would be an act of disrespect.

Do you ever drive through New Haven? I usually have to drive across the city a couple of times a week as there is sadly no real alternative to reach places like Derby and Seymour from east of the city. I can't really recall in 50 years of driving coming across a more frustrating and dangerous place to drive, due partly to the dreadful street layout and partly to the inability of members of all classes of road user to pay much attention to the rules of the road. If my journey is during the hours of darkness I've started taking a detour to avoid the city altogether, the additional time spent being worth it to avoid race car drivers and the useless street lighting on so many roads.

I suggest you re-read Westville Man's post. Then get in your car if you have one and drive at the legal speed limit. Observe how the lights almost appear to be timed so that each one will turn to red as you approach. Notice how you will often sit there while phantom pedestrians cross the road. Repeat often enough and you might understand what Westville Man is talking about.

There is one point I can agree with you on: the interstate highways should have been routed around New Haven so that the city could reap the benefits of its waterfront and through traffic would not have to use city streets. Bit late now.

Finally, since there's little chance of ever getting you off that high horse, you might want to ponder how most of what you own or consume got to you and how that might change if the city became traffic free as you appear to suggest it should.

My great grandfather used to take the trolley from the home he rented in Mount Carmel on the edge of the Hamden-Cheshire line to downtown for his job at Yale everyday. There used to be lots of workers who took the trolleys each day, and people who took the trolleys to the Yale Bowl games. There is no reason we couldn't have electric trolleys or buses running to and from the suburbs and the city at all hours that would accommodate the employees shifts for all the major employers in the Greater New Haven Area. Imagine if you could catch a shuttle, bus or trolley to get to the train stations, airports, the bus depots to catch a connecting bus line, if they had security cameras in the bus shelters to wait in with heat lamps for winter like the train stations in Chicago, and fans for summer powered by solar batteries. Imagine those lines running every 1/2 hour and taking you to shopping, work, attractions, entertainment, etc. Instead of big tech focusing on autopilot vehicles, adding to congestion and carrying only a few people, they could work on green affordable mass transit to encourage everyone to not need personal vehicles. When I lived in Chicago we would hop on the train or the bus to go to downtown, the airport, the parks, the beach, to work. Same with when I visited friends in NYC or Boston. Trains or buses took you all over, and taxis take you where those didn't go to. When you encourage safe walking and biking you create even more opportunities for alternative transportation, plus you get more physically fit in the process. In many countries in Europe people walk or bike everywhere. The more convenient public transportation is, and the more walkable and bike-able a city is, the more desirable it is to live in.

@ DerbyRam and others - you should check out Google Maps for alternate routing options. There are multiple different routes to get to Derby and Seymour that will take you around (not through) the center of New Haven that are all only 0-2 minutes difference in drive-time.

Spot-on, Heather C. You hit the nail right on the head. Part of what needs to be done as well is to reduce the total amount of parking overall (and no I'm not necessarily saying get rid of all parking).

Such a paradox - that a hospital would want so much parking, which we know comes with automobile traffic and it's corresponding emissions/pollution and increased odds of traffic crashes, not to mention the fact parking is often the lowest-and-worst use of land.