Whitney Avenue To Undergo $1.2M Redo

Speed tables. Bike lanes. Bumpouts. Traffic signals.

Those potential pedestrian safety improvements are all now possibilities for Whitney Avenue thanks to $1.2 million in state bonding the city is slated to receive for reimagining the East Rock/Prospect Hill corridor.

City Engineer Giovanni Zinn presented news of the road improvement dollars and planned Whitney Avenue updates at the most recent monthly meeting of the East Rock Community Management Team meeting at mActivity gym on Nicoll Street.

Zinn told the nearly 40 neighbors present that the state plans to award the city $1.2 million through its Local Transportation Capital Improvement Program (LOTCIP). Those dollars will be earmarked specifically for road improvements to Whitney Avenue.

Although the money won’t be available until mid-2021, he said, his department plans on beginning the ​“community envisioning process” over the next few months so that the city has a definite design and construction plan in place by the time the state dollars are finally available to be spent.

This bonding is meant to help the city ​“figure out how to make Whitney Avenue work for all the different users of the road, not just commuters at 40 miles per hour,” he said.

The project can help knit together the two sides of East Rock currently divided by the four-lane city artery, he said. It can also provide people not in single-occupancy vehicles with a viable and safe way to get through the neighborhood. The city’s Engineering Department will be hosting meetings with neighbors over the course of next spring to solicit any and all ideas as to what the community would like Whitney Avenue to look like.

“Will you have a short-term plan as well as a long-term one?” asked East Rock Alder Anna Festa. Does the neighborhood have to wait all the way until 2021 to have any traffic safety measures taken on Whitney?

Zinn said the department plans on installing an electronic speed sign with a radar detector soon. In fact, he just ordered several more for the department recently. ​“They tend to get hit a lot, surprisingly,” he said.

Has there been any thought to installing a speed table outside St. Thomas’s Day School at Whitney and Cliff Street? asked Prospect Hill resident Lynne Street.

The speed tables at Whitney and Audubon Street and at Orange Street and Audubon Street seem to have made a big impact on slowing down traffic closer to Downtown, she said. A new speed table outside the school near Edgerton Park near the Hamden border ​“would be a great entrance to the City of New Haven” because it would encourage people to take their foot off the gas pedal, look around at the pretty houses and trees, and ​“get a grip as they come into town. Has they been discounted?”

A speed table for that section of Whitney, or any other section in New Haven, is still very much — well — on the table, Zinn said.

“I love speed tables” and have installed quite a few throughout the city, he said. Clinton Avenue in Fair Haven went from being an ​“extreme speedway” to a much safer stretch of road because of the city-installed raised crossing and speed table, he said.

“I would certainly be very open to that.”

Would the state allow that? asked management team secretary Deb Rossi.

“It’s a city road,” Zinn said with relief. All of Whitney Avenue in New Haven is owned by the city, he said. Once it crosses the town line into Hamden, then it becomes a state road.

Zinn said he has literally been laughed at by state Department of Transportation officials for proposing raised crosswalks on a state-owned road outside of Nathan Hale School in the East Shore.

“Would this budget allow for a truly separate, protected bike lane?” asked Newhallville/Prospect Hill Alder Steve Winter.

If that’s what the community wants, Zinn replied, then absolutely.

“Could another option be an explicit multi-use path on Whitney?” Winter continued. Could the city move up the curb, narrow the street, and make more space for protecting cyclists and pedestrians?

That too is a possibility, Zinn said. The one issue that his department routinely runs into when looking to narrow streets, he said, is that of street trees. Changing the curb-line sometimes involves ​“clear cutting street strees,” he said, which is ​“usually not something people are interested in.”

How much in road improvements can $1.2 million actually buy? asked Goatville resident Ben Bechtolsheim. ​“What can you do with $1.2 million?”

Quite a lot, Zinn said.

“A two-way cycletrack can be really inexpensive,” he said, since that just involves line striping and delineators.

Milling and paving isn’t too expensive, usually coming in at around $90 a ton.

And the most expensive work involves curb and sidewalk improvements and traffic signals.

Curb bumpouts at intersections can cost around $30,000 or $40,000, he said. A new traffic signal can cost around $10,000 each. And a completely new intersection can run as high as $400,000 or $500,000.

But, he cautioned, he doesn’t want East Rock neighbors limiting their suggestions based on potential costs. During the community planning sessions, he said, he wants to hear all ideas. Once those are on the table, then the community and the city engineering experts can start figuring out which solutions would be best.