Start Promised On Canal, Cycletrack

Could it be … that construction work may actually begin on the Edgewood Cycletrack and Farmington Canal extension?

After years of false starts and missed deadlines, officials claim that work will indeed start this spring on the two long-delayed upgrades to the city’s pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure.

New Haven bus riders, meanwhile, will likely have to continue waiting a while yet for recommendations included in a decade-long, state-funded study to take effect.

The state Department of Transportation (DOT) last week published its Transportation Capital Infrastructure Program Annual Capital Plan Report that included references and brief updates to a few of these programs.

That prompted the Independent to reach out to city and state officials with two questions: What’s the latest with these long-promised projects? And what gives with the years of delays in making them happen? Officials originally promised, for instance, to start building the two-way protected Edgewood bicycle lanes connecting Westville to downtown back in 2017.

The Covid-19 pandemic continues to drive New Haveners out of their cars and onto their feet and bicycles to commute or exercise or just enjoy the great outdoors. And pedestrians and cyclists continue to die after being struck by cars on city streets. Against that backdrop, here’s a check-in on where each of these local alternative transportation infrastructure projects stand, and on when city residents can expect to see shovels in the ground.

Canal: Final Stretch In Home Stretch

The Farmington Canal Heritage Trail runs 80 miles from New Haven to Northhampton, Mass.

For over a decade, the city has sought to build out the pedestrian-and-bicycle path’s final unfinished local stretch: from its current terminus at Temple Street through the remaining downtown below-grade sections past Whitney Avenue near Audubon Street, and then at-street level from Grove Street over to Water and Brewery Streets and down to Long Wharf pier.

The DOT capital plan report identifies building out the East Coast Greenway (ECG), of which the Farmington Canal trail is a part, as a top priority for its Multi-use Trail Implementation Plan. The only reference to the yet-unfinished New Haven stretch states, ​“Design activities are complete on a section of the ECG in New Haven under Project No. 92 – 621,” aka Phase IV.

State DOT spokesperson Kevin Nursick outlined the long and tortured history of this project in an email responding to a request for comment.

Upon receiving federal earmarks, he said, the city began designing the project in 2008. After receiving design approval in 2012, the city began acquiring easement — or access rights to the surrounding properties needed to actually build out the project.

“There were a total of 9 easements required — mostly commercial properties — and the City made progress on 7 of the 9,” he wrote. ​“The two final easements however, involved commercial properties that were very difficult to negotiate … thereby requiring additional time.”

The city has subsequently acquired easements for those final two stretches of trail land—1,175 square feet behind Audubon Street near Whitney Avenue from McLagon Foundry Condominium Association in 2018, and a remaining 4,340 square-foot portion near the Grove Street Garage from Konover Commercial Corp. in 2019.

“While the City was designing the project and acquiring the properties,” Nursick continued, ​“the CTDOT constructed a 2,100 linear-foot segment of the project’s cycle track from Route 1 to Long Wharf Drive along Brewery Street and Sargent Drive under the Q‑bridge Contract ​‘E’.” He said that, with easements acquired and plans finalized in 2019, the state DOT provided Transportation Alternatives Funds to supplement the city’s earmarks to cover the final estimated cost of the base bid and Olive Street bid work.

In October 2019, he wrote, the city received only two bids for the Phase IV work. The city rejected both of those bids for being too costly, and then re-advertised and bid again in August 2020.

“Bid results were again over the Engineer’s Estimate, but an analysis revealed that another round of bidding was unlikely to produce more favorable results,” he concluded. ​“A decision was then made to award the project to the apparent low bidder from the second bid opening.

“A Spring 2021 start of construction is anticipated.”

In separate email responses to requests for comment by the Independent, City Plan Director Aïcha Woods and City Plan Senior Project Manager Anne Hartjen confirmed the accuracy of Nursick’s account of Phase IV.

Hartjen added that CJ Fucci is the low bidder on the project, and that the city expects to finish the contract and begin construction work this spring. She added that the state only allows contracts to go to bid after all easements have been acquired.

Hartjen wrote that the designer’s estimate for the project was around $4,967,000. Fucci’s low bid, meanwhile, came in several million dollars above that, at around $7,261,000.

“We are in the process of finalizing the details of the bid award and anticipate a more public announcement in the next weeks,” Woods wrote. ​“We are very excited to commence construction on Phase IV. In combination with the remaining two other segments of the Farmington Canal Line trail that are anticipated to be constructed elsewhere in the State, this project will connect Long Wharf to Massachusetts.”

Wooster Square resident Aaron Goode (pictured), who leads a group called the New Haven Friends of the Farmington Canal Greenway, expressed concern that the lowest bid came over $2 million above the city’s estimate.

“I think the recent experience of both Phase IV and Edgewood cycle-track should be ​‘teachable moments’ in terms of figuring out why bids on these bike-ped projects are coming in way over the cost estimates even after significant value-engineering — or no contractors are bidding at all,” he told the Independent by email. ​“This is going to be a problem in limiting what kinds of traffic calming, bike-ped and trails projects are authorized and built in the future, unless we figure out better methods of cost containment.”

He said he’s glad that the city is ​“finally approaching the finish line on Phase IV.”

While there are likely things the city could have done differently that would have produced a ​“better and faster outcome,” he said, ​“I’d rather look forward and I’m appreciative of all the hard work by City officials across two administrations to get where we are. Completing Phase IV is a great accomplishment for New Haven, for the regional trail network and for the East Coast Greenway, and will make sure New Haven is no longer the ​‘weakest link’ in the southern section of the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail.

“We can turn our focus to completing the remaining gaps in Southington and Plainville so that the entirety of this magnificent rail-trail, the recreational jewel of Connecticut, will be complete from Long Island Sound to Massachusetts.”

Cycletrack: Civil Starting Soon; Signals Drag On

The Edgewood Cycletrack is a planned new 2.1‑mile protected bicycle path that will stretch from Forest Road in Westville to Park Street in Dwight.

City staff have been promoting the cycletrack since March 2016, when they first presented the idea at a Westville neighborhood meeting. After several more community meetings, the city earned City Plan Commission approval for the project in June 2017. That was followed by a final sign off from the city’s traffic commissioners in August 2017.

Though the $1.2 million project is funded in part by the state, it did not garner any mention in the DOT’s annual capital plan report. Nursick said that that’s because the cycletrack is a local project, and the ​“City of New Haven is responsible for developing and delivering the project. We are in frequent communication with the City and understand the complexity of the project has caused issues with potential bids, but it appears to be primed to move forward this spring or summer.”

In recent separate phone interviews with the Independent, City Engineer Giovanni Zinn and city Transportation, Traffic & Parking Director Doug Hausladen confirmed that the long-awaited protected cycletrack is indeed slated for a start to construction — at least in part — this March.

Zinn said the city at that point will begin the ​“civil” construction — meaning the ​“curbs, sidewalks, conduit, all the stuff that requires digging.”

“As long as the weather works, we’re going to” start civil construction in March, he said. That work will be done by Lior Excavating, a local contractor that submitted the lowest bid.

That civil work is just one part of the construction required to build out the cycletrack, Zinn said.

The other remaining work — which he described as a much more complicated engineering project, and as the major source of delays for the project — involves the ​“signal” work. That is, reconfiguring and adding new bicycle-only traffic signals at 11 different intersections on the west side of town.

“We didn’t get any bids back on the first go-around” for the cycletrack construction work in 2019, he said. ​“In feedback from prospective bidders, we heard there were some issues with the signal plans. We worked with Traffic & Parking to address those some of the technical issues that bidders had seen.”

“These type of bike signals are very new to the industry,” he added. ​“Touching these signals is very complicated. If you look at the history of signal projects across the city, they do take time. And these are some of the first bike signals in the state.” He reiterated that the city changed the approach to the proposed signal work based on feedback from potential bidders.

Zinn said the city subsequently broke out the civil and signal work into two separate contracts ​“so we could get out faster with the civil stuff.”

While that civil construction is slated to start this spring, the signal work still has to go out to bid again for the city to find a qualified and interested contractor.

He said the city’s hoping to go out to bid again on this signal work in the ​“next two to three weeks.”

Zinn added that the city had to wait to get a new project authorization letter from the state after it broke out the civil and signal work into separate contracts.

When asked when the signal work might begin construction, assuming that the city successfully gets a qualified and interested contractor to bid for the work this time around, Zinn replied, ​“Signal work would follow probably late spring or summer, as the civil work has to get significantly ahead of the signal work. The civil contractor installs foundations and conduit for the signal work.”

And when asked about specific changes made to the signal bid package after receiving feedback from contractors, Zinn said, ​“The previous designs had added equipment to existing poles. We eliminated any substantial new loads on existing poles, and instead added/combined onto new poles.”

Meanwhile, local cycling advocates have taken to Twitter — and have deployed the occasional Bernie Sanders meme —to vent their frustration with the delays.

“When you’re waiting for the City of New Haven to complete the Edgewood Avenue cycle-track and Farmington Canal Trail Phase IV,” wrote local tweeter DFA New Haven, with a photo of the Vermont socialist senator at President Joe Biden’s inauguration, mittens on hands and legs crossed.

“Still waiting on the Westville to Downtown 2‑way protected cycletrack requested for Edgewood Ave in 2009 (state laws have had to be changed to allow 2‑way cycletracks, & the project went out to bid but was too complex for local builders),” wrote Westville’s Mark Abraham. ​“Update @NewHavenEng @doughausladen? #nhv” He added a photo of Edgewood Avenue, with the Sanders meme layered on top.

“Construction starts 3/21,” Zinn replied through his department’s account, “(as soon as weather breaks).”

Move New Haven: Expect Fewer Bus Stops

The state’s DOT capital plan report also dedicates a few sentences to yet another years-in-the-making local alternative transportation project: recommended improvements to the city’s bus network, as put forth by the Move New Haven transit study that wrapped up in 2019.

What started out as a New Haven streetcar assessment in 2008 and then morphed into a ​“Move New Haven” transit study in 2016, the final report recommended a host of improvements to the current inefficient, inconsistent, and incoherent local bus system. Those include building out new express routes on Grand Avenue, Dixwell Avenue, Whalley Avenue, and Congress Avenue; new mini-hub stations in Fair Haven, Dixwell, and Westville; and dedicated ​“bus only” lanes, transit signal priority, and off-board fare collection, among other upgrades.

The state’s recent capital report says that the state DOT has convened a ​“technical committee, and preliminary design will be initiated in 2021 to implement the study recommendations. They include two new on-street bus rapid transit (BRT) services as well as improvements to bus stops and schedules on other routes. Funding is not yet available for the construction and operation of the two BRT services.”

Nursick elaborated over email that the state and city have been in close communication regarding next steps for Move New Haven.

“Many of the recommendations in the report will require funding in order to advance service expansions or capital improvements, none of which are currently in the Department’s operating or capital budgets,” he wrote. ​“Should funding be made available, the Department would work to advance service enhancements. Other improvements that do not require additional budgetary authority — such as bus stop consolidation — are being examined and would include community/stakeholder outreach prior to any decisions being made.”

He added that the technical committee is a ​“mix of transportation professionals with knowledge and/or responsibility for traffic management, traffic signals, bus operations, vehicle systems, etc. The group includes representatives from CTDOT, City of New Haven and Greater New Haven Transit District, supported by consultants. The committee would further develop the next phases of the project, including capital projects associated with the program, at which point funding could be pursued.”

While the city and state pursue funding for these improvements — including from a new federal transportation administration likely more sympathetic to paying for better public transit — Hausladen said that the city and the state have partnered to install a transit signal priority pilot at several intersections in and around downtown.

Those signal upgrades are designed to ​“help buses get through intersections faster” by having traffic lights hold the green when they sense a bus is coming.

He also said that the Greater New Haven Transit District has put together a scope of services to help with further outreach on Whalley, Grand, Dixwell, and Congress regarding ​“bus stop consolidations” — that is, scrapping existing bus stops that exacerbate delayed service because they are placed too closely together.

“We still need more outreach and engagement” before proceeding with removing bus stops on Whalley and Grand, he said, which the city has received permission to do from the local Traffic Authority. Some stops have already been consolidated on Upper Street Street, he said.

The Move New Haven report revealed that some of the city’s bus stops are often just 0.1 mile apart, rather than the best-practice distance of 0.25 miles apart.