Paul Bass Photo
Green bus stop. Below: City “heat map.”
City of New Haven
Could moving the bus stops that ring the New Haven Green lessen New Haven’s opioids problem? Or would that just move the addiction problem to another part of the city?
Members of the city’s Overdose Response working group kicked that question around during their regular monthly meeting at City Hall.
Meanwhile, officials produced a heat map of the city showing key places where drug overdoses happen, many on the New Haven Green. The spots center around transit nodes throughout the city.
The Proprietors of the New Haven Green, a self-perpetuating private body, actually owns the land. U.S. District Court Judge (and Proprietor) Janet Arterton reported at the meeting that her group and the Town Green Special Services District are working together to fill the Green with more public events. That strategy — along with enhanced police presence — has helped the tenor of the Green in the wake of mass K2 overdoses last summer, she said. (Read about that here.)
Markeshia Ricks Photo
New Haven Green Proprietors Janet Arterton and Anne Calabresi at working group meeting.
But Arterton said the bus stops on the Green remain a problem.
“It has been an issue that we have identified and spoken about for years,” she said. “And the amount of progress we’ve been able to make is zero.”
She pointed out that the city has been in favor of making a change to the bus routes that would take the pressure off the Green, but the state has not been in support of such changes. She said the data at right in the city’s heat map make it plain that the problem isn’t just about bus routes “but a matter of public health and safety for New Haven.”
Esther Armmand, Mayor Toni Harp’s legislative liaison, noted that the state studying the proposed reconfiguration of bus stops in the city. So she said it’s a good time to consider Arterton’s concerns.
Chief Alston.
Fire Chief John Alston Jr. agreed, noting that he had recently participated in an operations meeting that focused on the bus stop proposal but hadn’t considered the opioid piece as part of that discussion.
Town Green’s Win Davis said that the proposed reconfiguration is part of the ongoing Move New Haven study, which aims at tackling a bus system with too many stops and outdated routes and times. He pointed out that a number of people who hang out on the Green all day are often in town because they’ve come from throughout the state for drug treatment. The ongoing inefficiency doesn’t allow them to get their treatment and head to their own city in a timely enough manner to allow them to hold down a full-time job, he said.
Anstress Farwell of the New Haven Urban Design League cautioned that while moving the bus stops might dilute the problem, it also will move it to other parts of the city. She said a better approach would be to move to a “universal” bus system, which would increase ridership by people of all socioeconomic backgrounds.
She urged those connected to the city’s public health community to be part of the advocacy of a system that would see Yale University give up its shuttle service in favor of using CT Transit (the way other colleges and universities do). She said having more people not engaged in criminal activity riding the buses discourages those who want to engage in such activity.
“When I walk over and stand at a bus stop, a lot of stuff stops,“she said. “It stops because I’m standing there.”
Farwell noted that back in the 1960s, a bulldozer was seen as the solution to fighting drug trafficking and addiction. That “solution” demolished whole neighborhoods but the drugs remained. She said the city should be careful to not blow up the transportation system only to make it weaker and less convenient as a solution but should instead work toward a unified system that would be good for everyone.
The city developed the “heat map” as part of numerous responses to last summer’s rash of drug overdoses on the Green. Fire Chief Alston called the map “a work in progress, where we use non-sensitive geodata to identify where our drug-related medical calls occur.”
“Armed with this data, we can look at service delivery requirements, impact on neighborhoods, police patrols, community engagement and beneficial outreach to those suffering from substance abuse and Opioid Use Disorder,” he said.