Markeshia Ricks Photo
City Engineer Zinn, left, with Deputy Director of Transportation, Traffic & Parking Mike Pinto.
After years of waiting for a roundabout at the intersection of Crescent and Munson Streets, neighbors got a date: July 1, 2019.
That’s when the city plans to start the work that neighbors hope will finally slow down speeders.
City Engineer Giovanni Zinn delivered that news to neighbors of the Whalley Avenue/Edgewood/Beaver Hills Community Management Team during the most recent regular monthly meeting at the police substation near Minore’s Market.
It was kind of a good news-bad news proposition.
Zinn said a lot of work had happened to complete the design of the proposed roundabout. Plans were finalized in early July.
But they weren’t finalized in time to squeeze the construction in before Hillhouse High-schoolers returned for the new academic year, and closing off a portion of the street during construction simply wouldn’t be feasible for buses trying to transport students. So the new plan is to wait until after school lets out next summer.
The design calls for a 40-foot wide roundabout in the middle of the intersection, with a mountable curb around the edge and green space at the center. Around the roundabout, the team has proposed splitter islands (traffic islands) designed for speeds of 17 and 15.5 miles per hour. This design allows school buses, fire trucks, and even large tractor-trailer trucks to get through the intersection. (Read more about the roundabout here.)
July 1 was chosen because statutorily school has to be done by that date, Zinn said. He also noted that the estimated cost of building out the roundabout is right at $300,000. As part of the traffic-calming plan, a raised crosswalk also will be added for pedestrians between Hillhouse High and Bowen Field. The bike lanes that currently exist on both sides of Crescent Street will become a cycle track on one side of the street, he said.
“That helps to calm traffic throughout the Crescent Street corridor because the size of the travel lanes will appear narrower,” he said. “All that is planned for next summer.”
In other traffic-calming news, neighbors learned that four, speed humps are coming to Winthrop Avenue and Carmel Street between Percival and Goffe Terrace/Goffe Street this fall. But the city is still stumped on a fix for the intersection of Goffe Terrace and Ella T. Grasso Boulevard, though that intersection will soon be repaved.
Zinn admitted that so far the city is stumped on a way to make it safer and slow down traffic. But neighbors will get the decorative crosswalks that they’ve requested. If the weather permits, the crosswalk could go in at the end of October. If not, it will have to wait until the spring.
“We spent a huge amount of time trying to figure out some kind of traffic calming measure that would fit in that intersection,” he said. “We came up completely empty because it’s on a hill and the intersection isn’t quite 90 degrees and the sightlines are bad.”