Aliyya Swaby Photo
Hausladen raises his hand to show he did not drive to BAR.
How do you get more people in the Hill and on Whalley riding buses or biking to work?
First step: bring the conversations to them.
Nadine Herring, co-chair of the Whalley-Edgewood-Beaver Hills (WEB) management team, gave that piece of advice to 75 transit officials, legislators and advocates packed into the back room at BAR Tuesday night for a panel discussion on how to convince more New Haven to “think outside the car” when traveling to work.
Most in the room had not driven to the restaurant that night.
The “Transportation on Tap” panel discussion came on the heels of a city announcement that New Haven has entered a federal Smart City Challenge Grant competition, which puts it in the running to win up to $40 million to start imagining and creating an alternative long-term transit system. Transit chief Doug Hausladen said that money could mean a leap toward turning New Haven from a city where 70 percent of people drive alone to work to a city where 70 percent ride buses, walk, cycle or share rides instead. Hausladen’s staff is also involved in a year-long $1 million state-funded study on how to improve mass transit, including rethinking bus routes.
Panelists for the event “Transportation on Tap” were Sen. Gary Winfield; Anstress Farwell, founder of the New Haven Urban Design League; and Seila Mosquera, director of NeighborWorks New Horizon. Independent Editor Paul Bass moderated the event.
Herring told the group she had reached out to cycling advocate Caroline Smith to host an event for the annual Bike Month series in her Whalley-Edgewood-Beaver Hills neighborhood this May — the first time she remembers her region being included in a city-sponsored cycling program.
“Come talk to residents in the neighborhood. There are a lot of people who can’t get here,” Herring urged the crowd. “Don’t just do it out here. Do it where they are.”
Mosquera, Farwell, Winfield.
A power differential determines who can easily commute into or within New Haven, Sen. Winfield said. “People who don’t have money and people of color in general are not people who can exert power on the system.” He and others called the bus system broken.
Mosquera said 20 percent of those who go to NeighborWorks seeking affordable housing options cannot afford transportation options other than the bus. But the bus does not fit into the lifestyles of families with children, she said. A single mother with two children could spend hours commuting daily to their daycare and then to work.
Mosquera feels the limitations of the transit system in and around New Haven every day. When her ex-husband lost his car and didn’t replace it, he used a combination of bicycle and train to get from his home in Milford to his job in Bridgeport. Coordinating picking up their daughter is often difficult, she said.
“I said, ‘Please buy a car!’” she said.
Farwell called on the state Department of Transportation (DOT) to get its act together when it comes to mass transit, which she called a “stepchild” within an agency. It was “developed to serve the car, not to run a transit system,” she said. Though state officials have paid lip service to wanting to support mass transit, the money is being spent on parking garages and highways instead.
Winfield said commuters need options now. “It can’t be a conversation for these people about what we should’ve done,” he said.
CT Transit buses will be equipped starting in April with GPS devices, Hausladen noted. That will allow commuters to track vehicles along their routes. He said investments like that are a start to raising the quality of the public transit system services to the level of private systems such as Yale’s shuttle service.
Running a shuttle service is not cost-effective for institutions like Yale, he said. As the public system improves, Yale might be willing to give up control and pay for its students and employees to ride CT Transit buses, thus increasing the demand and supporting greater service. (Mayoral candidate Justin Elicker called during the 2013 campaign for pushing Yale to consider such a system, similar to how Cornell supports Ithaca. N.Y.‘s bus system.) “In two months, we will find out a lot more,” Hausladen said.
Despite New Haven’s success building bike infrastructure such as the green bike way and red bus way down Elm Street, most cyclists are “not the people in the neighborhoods we talk about” when discussing difficulties with transit, Winfield said.
Most cyclists are white, not black or Latino, he said.
From the audience, East Rock bike mechanic Joel LaChance suggested that more cycling education for young students would help build familiarity with the traffic laws earlier and reduce animosity between drivers and cyclists later.
“Every year more people are working in town who want to ride bikes but they’re intimidated,” he said. “Everyone will have learned driver’s education as a bike rider.”
Hausladen said he is optimistic about the future of transit, predicting about 10 to 15 years left of “privatized car ownership.” Instead, people will rely on microtransit systems that will feed into a larger mass transit system, he said.
In the shorter term, he said he heard those at the meeting who called for Transportation on Tap and other transit discussion sessions to be held in neighborhoods other than downtown. “Everything about our mobile options can improve and will improve,” he said.