A dozen hard-core bicyclists tired of near-death encounters on the road rolled in to “Mayor’s Night In” at City Hall Tuesday to urge the city to do more to protect two-wheelers from motorized menaces. Melinda Tuhus, an avid cyclist herself, was on hand and filed this report.
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A group of bicycle advocates met with New Haven Mayor John DeStefano and told him that aggressive motorists in the city are interfering with the quality of life of cyclists and pedestrians.
The meeting began and ended with applause from the cyclists for the mayor, who listened to the pleas sympathetically but didn’t offer to push immediately for more enforcement.
Filling the table inside the Mayor’s Conference Room, they presented petitions signed by 160 people, asking for the police to step up enforcement of traffic violations.
They also presented a letter that stated, in part, “As often as not, these infractions, even when witnessed by police, go unchallenged. As a result, navigating city streets has become a dangerous enterprise. This is unfortunate, since in most other respects, New Haven is a welcoming city for cyclists and pedestrians.” The letter proposed that the city undertake a public awareness campaign to educate motorists about safely sharing the road with cyclists, pedestrians and other drivers. Click here to read the letter.
Those at the meeting —”- members of Elm City Cycling and the Go-alition, a group that promotes walking and biking both on the roads and on area greenways —”- requested that the police make measurable increases in enforcement. They presented a list of some of the most treacherous intersections, with Trumbull and Orange topping the list, since drivers are coming directly off I‑91 onto city streets at that point.
The group acknowledged that some bicyclists also fail to follow traffic laws by riding against traffic or riding on the sidewalk, but they pointed out that those infractions are much less likely to be life-threatening than violations by motorists.
The mayor (pictured listening to the cyclists) noted that over the summer, the police department had invested a lot of resources in dealing with another bicycle-related problem (without mentioning specifically that it was large groups of kids on bikes who were committing various crimes). He added that he would love to get cameras up at certain intersections. “It’ll give us a lot more muscle. It will begin to solve the problem of blowing through stop signs, the rolling stops, and I think it would help calm traffic.”
To do that DeStefano needs approval from the state. He said he could use the help of a citizens’ group to support him in that effort. DeStefano heartily endorsed collaborating with the group on a public awareness campaign around transportation safety, to be rolled out next spring. He said he’d get back to them in a month with a more specific response to their concerns.
As the meeting ended, Rob Rocke (pictured), one of the bicycle advocates, said he was optimistic. “We hope there’s some progress made, and the enforcement goes up. And we hope we can work together with the city for public awareness to let drivers and bicyclists and pedestrians know the rules of the road that make it safer for everybody.”