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Finish Howard Avenue’s bike lane and the bike route from Westville to downtown. Put in that new 60-space bike parking area at Union Station. Teach kids about safe biking through the schools. Install a covered bike rack on Church Street. Create new bike routes linking downtown to Fair Haven, the Heights, the Annex, and the airport.
Those are among 25 ideas that some of New Haven’s most dedicated cyclists have to make the city bike-friendlier.
Under the umbrella Elm City Cycling, the group formally presented those ideas to the city’s transportation department in the form of a 39-page “2010 Bike Plan.” It released the plan to the public Wednesday.
The plan arrives after more than a year of heated debate in town over how to encourage people to travel by bike, but also how cyclists and drivers can share the road without killing each other.
At the top of the list is the proposed new Fair Haven route, which would begin with Orange Street’s bike lane. New lanes, “road markings and signage” would extend the route along Humphrey and Lombard streets to Clinton Avenue’s existing bike lane.
“Fair Haven is the second most populous neighborhood in New Haven … and lacks a safe bicycle connection to Downtown and its surrounding neighborhoods,” the report noted.
“We think the Fair Haven route should be the city’s highest priority for the upcoming year,” Thomas Harned, who headed the group of volunteers who put together the plan, stated in a press release. “The city has made progress in 2009 with the installation of over 25 bicycle racks downtown, and we hope that they will build on that progress in 2010.”
City transportation chief Mike Piscitelli agreed with the Fair Haven priority. He said the city will probably concentrate on getting that one done in the coming year.
Piscitelli praised the entire report. “It was very well done. It was reasonable. We think it’s accomplishable,” he said.
His department will “cost out” the proposed new routes, he said. And it will talk with the City Plan Department about the report’s suggestion to “amend the zoning ordinance to require property owners to provide long-term, secure bicycle parking.”
In the meantime, Piscitelli recommended that the bike advocates “walk the plan through” with aldermen to show how it would benefit their neighborhoods.