Allan Appel Photo
Zinn explains the design Monday night.
It not only calms traffic and enhances safety, it also creates a sense of place, is attractive and decorative, and will be a nice bookend to the speed table at other end of Audubon Street at Whitney Avenue.
That’s how City Engineer Giovanni Zinn described the newest intersection upgrade his department is designing, for Audubon and Orange Street.
The work will be timed with the construction of a “mini city” now being built bySpinnaker Real Estate Partners on the full “super-block” of Audubon, Orange, Grove and Wall. (It’s called a super-block because it once contained smaller streets within it until the city created one big block for development during the urban renewal era.)
Audubon & Orange today, before the change.
The Norwalk-based developer— who is pursuing a total of four projects in the city at an estimated combined total cost of $250 million — is paying half of the estimated $120,000 cost for the traffic, safety, and pedestrian improvements for the configured intersection.
Details of the previously unveiled intersection design—an update organized by Downtown-Wooster Square Alder Abby Roth — pleased a group of about 20 residents who gathered for a meeting Monday night at City Jall.
The closest similar traffic-calming speed table treatment is Edwards and Livingston, Zinn said.
The table elevates the full length and width of the intersection by roughly six inches to bring the street to the same level as the sidewalk. The design features thermoplastic crosswalks — which have the look of brick — along with tactical warning pads, protective bollards and rectangular rapid flashing beacons to provide a more protected intersection for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists.
In addition, mountable thermoplastic islands will be located on the north and south sides of the intersection to create one-way entrances and one-way exits into the pedestrian crossing, enhancing safety.
Work began earlier this year on the seven-story project, which will contain 269 apartments, up to 5,000 square feet of stores, and a 716-space garage. Eventually the huge pre-cast concrete rectangle will be hidden in the interior, but now it is imposingly visible as it rises. In a later phase there will also be a line of townhouses on the Audubon side of the development. The company has dubbed the project “Audubon Square.”
The speed table at Edwards and Livingston, similar to the one coming to Audubon and Orange
At Monday night’s update Zinn said that construction of the intersection will begin this fall. It will entail a closure of the intersection for only two or three days, along with a period of two or three weeks when traffic on Orange will be reduced to one lane in each direction.
All that will likely coincide with the completion of the parking garage, which Spinnaker Vice President for Development Frank Caico, also in attendance at the meeting, said should be operational by October.
At that time, employees from nearby Frontier Communications (from which Spinnaker bought the surface-lot property, formerly the site of the New Haven Register) would start using the garage. The deal includes turning over approximately 500 of the parking spaces to Frontier.
The plan was well received by attendees, although there were some questions, several quite technical. One woman asked if the intersection will be dug up to attain the curb-level height.
Zinn’s answer: No, that would be much more expensive than the budget allows. “We’re just going to add layers of bitumen” until the desired height is achieved, he said.
Looking north on the previously speed-tabled Audubon and Whitney intersection.
Another questioner asked if the new asphalt is going to be specially treated to promote melting of snow. Zinn’s answer: No, it’s plain old asphalt, but the table is crowned to promote water flow in both directions.
There will be no cameras as part of the treatment. The city plans no general repaving of Orange, only in the approaches to the intersection.
If there was a general concern percolating through the audience, it was a fundamental concern if the speed table will really work. For the intersection is especially busy at rush hour with kids from ECA/ACES on the northwest, residents of the Housing Authority of New Haven on the southwest. and the many New Haveners who use Orange as the corridor to get to the train station. Now add to that Spinnaker’s new renters.
Zinn said the design is nationally proven, and there will be lots of signage as you approach.
A series of speed tables on Clinton Avenue in Fair Haven with designs similar to the one coming to Audubon and Orange.
One skeptic, who insisted on remaining anonymous, reported that in her experience people are already ignoring the flashing beacons on Audubon and Whitney and are also blowing through the speed table on Edwards. Zinn reminded his interlocutors of “the three ‘E’s of traffic calming: Education, Engineering, and Enforcement.”
Alder Roth said she will remind police officers of the issue at Whitney and Audubon, where near-misses of pedestrians and a ‘guerilla crosswalk’ led to the current improvements.
Zinn said speed tables have been part of traffic calming in New Haven since 2012. The Audubon and Orange design incorporates a full range of features from other intersection redesigns, including flashing beacon, no fewer than eight bollards with chains to direct pedestrians to how to enter the crosswalks, and signage on the sidewalk and on the roadway including the arrows and chevrons on the pavement to guide drivers into the intersection.
“New Haveners have come to expect great traffic calming,” he added.
Audubon Square’s only driveway cut-out for its residents to emerge onto Orange Street will be towards the Grove end of Orange Street and is not a factor in the speed table design.
Zinn talks about a "sense of place." Gobblygoop - this is just another traffic calming project that may or may not be needed. As a sense of space with the solid concrete prison being built there doesn't give anyone a sense of space unless they've done time.