nothin Racks, Cycletracks For Long Wharf | New Haven Independent

Racks, Cycletracks For Long Wharf

Deena Nicol-Blifford Photo

Cyclists get ready to pedal to “Paris.”

Elizabeth Nearing cycled to work at Long Wharf Theatre regularly but didn’t have a bike rack nearby for parking. So she started a campaign to get one.

Now a volunteer for the city’s May Bike Month series of events, Nearing is one of many teaming up to improve the accommodations on Long Wharf for cyclists and pedestrians to commute to the area’s many waterfront attractions.

The city applied for a grant for more than $900,000 for improvements on Long Wharf Park, including a mile of on-street bike lane and a mile of off-street, curb-protected cycletracks on Long Wharf Drive and Brewery Street, according to transit chief Doug Hausladen.

The Q Bridge highway project also included improvements on Long Wharf through the Department of Transportation. By the time the highway is fully complete in November 2016, the city will have added sidewalks to the side of the Long Wharf Drive closer to I‑95, Hausladen said.

Officials plan to improve access to on and off-street parking for drivers, as well as build amenities for food trucks, including electric plug-ins on the street, to remove the need for multiple generators, he said.

The changes will highlight the water that we have been safeguarded’ from for so many years from the highway,” he said.

The plan in the city’s grant application highlights the horizontal nature of what we see for the roadway,” Hausladen said, building amenities for other users such as pedestrians and cyclists. The grant will pay for a 10-foot two-way cycletrack on the water side of Long Wharf Drive, which will serve as a bike lane and de facto board walk, to be protected by on-street parking.

Another protected, off-street cycletrack is planned for Brewery Street, which goes past IKEA, he said.

Expected to be constructed before the winter freeze, the cycletracks will be the first two-way, off-street bike protected lane in the city—following from a law passed last year allowing cities to build bike lanes against the flow of traffic.

Overflowing bike rack outside of Long Wharf Theater.

Nearing, community engagement manager for Long Wharf Theatre, is already planning for the increase in bike traffic on Long Wharf. She successfully applied for a New Haven Green Fund grant to get a bike rack right outside of the theater, with capacity for 13 bikes. It appeared in front of the theater about three weeks ago.

The rack was over capacity after last Saturday’s Pedal to Paris,” a Bike Month-sponsored event that led riders the mile between downtown to the theater to view the play My Paris,” Nearing said.

Many of the cyclists hadn’t ridden their bikes to the theater or even to the nearby Long Wharf Nature Preserve, she said. Many of the upcoming changes to the area are on Long Wharf Drive, across the highway from the theater’s location on Sargent Drive — which Nearing called a sometimes treacherous” trip.

Some cycled from different cities to attend the ride; others drove with bikes in tow, she said.

Aliyya Swaby Photo

Caroline Smith, Nearing at Bike Month launch.

The proposed changes will make a huge difference” in bringing cyclists to Long Wharf, Nearing said, by telling them: This is an invitation. This is a place we want you to occupy.” Many who attend the theater are out of town, but there is room to strengthen the connection with downtown. That area is so clearly set up for drivers,” she said.

Nearing bikes from her home downtown to work at the theater regularly during warm weather. At night or in cold weather, she takes her car — though she said it gives her severe car guilt” when she is driving alone without heavy items in tow. There are so many people working to eliminate single-occupancy vehicles,” she said. But cycling is her meditation.

Guaranteed I feel better every time even if I get caught in the rain without a raincoat,” she said. I get to see the world when I go to work. In a car, I think I don’t. And you just get to breathe.”

Click on the audio file below to listen to Hausladen and Nearing talk about the plans for making Long Wharf Drive friendly to commuters without cars on WNHH radio’s In Transit” program.

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