YPD’s Higgins at Tuesday night’s BAR health-transit panel.
Alycia Santilli has lived in the East Shore for more than a decade. And for about half of those years, she has been regularly commuting to work downtown by bike with her 4 year old in tow in a trailer. It’s an adventure.
Santilli takes a circuitous route through East Shore Park, which results in her shimmying the trailer through a gated barrier at the waste water facility, riding on the sidewalk of the Tomlinson Bridge, and giving a little scare to her fellow East Shore resident, Yale Police Chief Ronnell Higgins.
Both Santilli, who works at Yale University’s Community Alliance for Research and Engagement (CARE), and Higgins, shared New Haven biking experiences on a health-and-biking panel Tuesday night at BAR on Crown Street along with the city’s health director, Byron Kennedy, and transportation consultant Holly Parker.
Part of Go New Haven Go’s Transportation and Tap series, the panel focused on “People and Places: Active transportation for a safe, healthy and connected New Haven.” The panel was moderated by WNPR’s Colin McEnroe.
CARE’s Santilli.
When asked what would make her commute better, Santilli didn’t say more bike lanes. She’d said she’d just like a different type of barrier that would allow her bike and trailer to pass through, and for more ticketing of drivers parking on the bridge.
Santilli said she often has to maneuver around the fisherman who’ve parked their cars on the sidewalk of the bridge. Higgins said police often encourage bike riders to use the main thoroughfares, and that has become easier to do as the city has invested in more bike infrastructure. But when faced with biking Route 1 or even on Ferry Street, Santilli said thanks, but no thanks.
“I find this route far safer,” she said.
Having purchased a bike of his own for personal use about five years ago, Higgins said he understands why many people avoid riding in the street.
“I was amazed at how close people came to hitting me,” he said. “I was like ‘Where is a police officer when you need him?’”
Help Is On The Way
Go New Haven Go Program Manager Krysia Solheim, WNPR’s McEnroe.
The general consensus Tuesday night was that to create a culture less reliant on driving, or increase “active transportation” (i.e. walking, biking and using public transportation), you’ve got to design it.
Consultant Parker said the Elm City is moving away from the old standard of creating a big box destination surrounded by “a moat of parking,” which she said encourages multiple “cold start emissions, a lot of driving and idling, and a lot of sitting in your car.”
The city also is investing in more infrastructure designed to encourage people to get out of their cars, including protected bike lanes, a bike share program and new housing developments with less parking.
She urged attendees to be patient because improvements for active transit were coming, but to also keep pushing the city to make more improvements.
A city that has less parking is trying to send a message to drivers, who have historically owned the road, said Kennedy.
“Historically, there has been one type of use of the road and that is for those who drive,” he said. But he said in cities you tend to have many people who don’t drive for many reasons: they’re too young or too old; they have a medical condition that prevents them from driving; or they can’t afford to own a car. “Many of these people are taxpayers as well,” he said, but don’t get the benefit of road use.
What About The Kids?
The crowd at BAR.
Elihu Rubin, who teaches architecture and urbanism at Yale, said he enjoyed hearing a discussion of biking from the perspectives of public health and public safety, but said he was concerned that the city might be creating a dual bike culture.
“You have the responsible bikers who take the tests and get certified, bike around and drink beer with their helmets on do all this great stuff and then have kids biking around in little bike gangs popping wheelies to express their right to space, their right to be seen in public, their right to be taken seriously as citizens of this city and they’re the other bikers somehow,” Rubin said.
Rubin said in the effort to build infrastructure that caters to the first group of bikers, the city is not only ignoring the needs of the other group of bikers, but also possibly missing an opportunity to cultivate a more responsible bike culture among the other group. He said he would have liked to see someone from the school system be a part of Tuesday night’s conversation.
“My dream would be bike repair, bike awareness and bike clubs” at schools, Rubin said. “That would be coming first in many ways. Then, when they are in the neighborhood, and see bike lanes, they think, ‘This also is for us.’ I don’t know if they perceive [bike lanes] as being for them, and I am speaking as an insider who teaches at Yale and lives downtown, and comes to BAR to talk about transportation.”
Higgins instantly warmed to Rubin’s point. Higgins grew up in Hamden. As a youngster, he said, he had three choices for getting around: walk, bike or take the bus. When his bike broke down, he knew how to fix it. But those skills haven’t been as diligently passed on to the generations of children who have come behind him, including his own.
He said his officers have done some of that passing on of skill with a kid caught stealing a tire. He agreed more needs to happen, especially at schools.
“They have to learn and it is up to us to teach the next generation,” he said. “If not us, than who?”