Bravo! Bike Lane Enters Stage Right

Applause rippled through the Shubert theater — not for an actor bellowing, but for an raised green bike lane that made a grand entrance onto stage one of the Downtown Crossing project.

The grand entrance took the form of a slide show at the Shubert Thursday night detailing the $140 million plan to turn the Route 34 mini-highway to nowhere off Interstate 95 into part of the city again under the ​“Downtown Crossing” umbrella. The project aims to create slower, more pedestrian and bike-friendly roads to replace the Frontage Road speedways in both directions, enhance walkability and more human scale activity, and in the process create three tracts for development between the roads. Whether the project will accomplish that goal has become a contested question at a series of public discussions.

The bike-lane slide was among a series of graphics shown to 100 people who gathered on the Shubert mezzanine for the fifth public information session on the evolving Downtown Crossing project.

The event also marked a red-letter moment: the submission to the state Department of Transportation of the first 30 percent of the design for the first phase of the project.

While the general philosophy of Downtown Crossing —the undoing of an urban renewal-era mistake — has met with widespread support in town, the design details have proved controversial. A chief question in a series of public discussions on the plan has been whether the evolving design truly includes pedestrians and cyclists, or just creates a new domain for speeding cars.

While that issue remains unresolved, the emergence of promised dedicated bike lanes along South and North Frontage (the latter to be renamed Martin Luther King Boulevard) encouraged some of the skeptics present at the Shubert Thursday night.

The updated plans also showed bike boxes permitting a left turn in front of cars waiting for the red light at three intersections: Church, Temple, and College.

Where Orange Street meets Frontage, the bike lane will be raised and separated parallel to the traffic until Church, at which point the lane will merge with the lane on the street. George Street will become two-way street, a plus for bicyclists, and College will have on-street parking plus a bike lane, although it will remain one-way south of Chapel.

“In short, making it a city street,” said Deputy Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli, who functioned as the emcee of the presentation at the Shubert. As former chief of the city’s traffic and transportation department, Piscitelli kept his door open to cycling advocates and to a ​“complete streets” philosophy, now incorporated into city ordinances.

As she leafed through the submission documents, City Plan Director Karyn Gilvarg said that a medical student living in East Rock might ride safely in dedicated bike lanes all the way down Orange, onto a raised or separated bike lane from Orange to Church, and then turn, using a bike box, down College to get to her lab or classroom.

“It’s not perfect, but with what they have to work with, it’s OK,” said safe-streets activist Mark Abraham.

He went on to add, however, that the plan thus far doesn’t deal with issues of pedestrian safety. Abraham said he looks forward to seeing the next phase, which he hopes will have the full network of bike and pedestrian amenities along the side streets meeting the spine of the frontage roads.

Cycling advocate David Streever questioned the rounded corners at the College Street intersection. ​“You’re not going to see much of a change [there] with those rounded corners. People [that is, drivers] are going to blow through there,” he said.

“We agree. It’d be cheaper to put a policeman out there,” Piscitelli responded, noting driver misbehavior at the corner. ​“It’s on our radar.”

As a bicyclist, Zack Beatty also questioned the wisdom of not turning College into a two-way street between Chapel and Crown. Piscitelli said College is narrower at this location than elsewhere. In addition, the Shubert and other businesses needed the parking.

Beatty asked if Piscitelli would commit to making College Street two-way.

“Long term, they [the consultants] are addressing it,” Piscitelli said.

“If at the end of Phase One, College is still one way, it’d be a missed opportunity,” Beatty said.

The Urban Design League​‘s Anstress Farwell had a more negative take on the proceedings: ​“Do you know what word was not spoken? Transit.” She questioned the value of bike lanes in a plan at whose heart, she said, is the central value of accommodating the most cars possible.

“I call it bike lanes in purgatory.”

Moving Ahead

Meanwhile, City Plan Director Gilvarg called the completion of the first part of the design and submission to the state ​“a milestone.” Click here for a summary of the presentation. 

(Click here, here, and here for stories about previous public hearings.)

Gilvarg said she expects the state to raise questions that might range from large engineering issues to, ​“What kind of bike box?”

Yet in the arcane world of phased design approvals, she was excited. The plan represents the inputs of the four previous public meetings on Downtown Crossing.

If it’s approved, the state will in subsequent months allow the design to go to 60 percent, then 90 percent. If all goes well, construction can begin in early 2012.

The $28 million phase is the first stage of a massive $140 million effort to erase what’s often referred to as the ​“scar” of the current Route 34, which has for decades separated the medical district and the Hill from downtown with a continuous blur of cars racing in and out of the city on a limited-access strip.

The first phase, which is being paid for with a $16 million federal Tiger II grant and matches from the city and state, will close Exits 2 and 3 on Route 34 and route medical parking traffic underground directly to the Air Rights Garage. It will replace the College Street bridge decks with a reinforced tract of land on grade with the street. That’s the site of the first of the planned major business developments, Carter Winstanley’s 100 College Street.

Winstanley said his conception of the building, which has not been designed yet, is a place where tenants in his nearby 300 George Street digs can expand, and also to be a destination for new businesses being spawned by the core Yale medical facilities. ​“You would circulate around the building, with benches and a place to get relief from cast concrete.”

He said he doesn’t know if the building will allow enough room for pocket parks. ​“But the idea is to separate traffic and pedestrians” by a variety of means, he said. ​“My goal is to create a pedestrian friendly location,” he said, likening the future site to Kendall Square in Cambridge.