Eureka! Zinn Discovers Bike-Lane Fix

New Haven’s city engineer found a way to please opposing sides in Westville with an updated plan to build two-way protected bike lanes — then moved on to absorb a different flavor of public feedback up Edgewood Avenue in Dwight.

City Engineer Giovanni Zinn unveiled his fix Wednesday night at Augusta Lewis Troup School, where he and city transit chief Douglas Hausladen held a second community meeting about their evolving plan to build the two-way ​“cycletrack” offering cyclists a clear ride removed from cars along the north side of Edgewood Avenue from Forest Road all the way down to Park Street and back.

The cycletrack is part of a $1.2 million state-funded plan to connect cyclists from the west side of town and Southern Connecticut State University to downtown, part of a new era in which urban planners now look to design streets for bicycles and pedestrians rather than first and foremost for cars.

Zinn and Hausladen first presented details of the plan last month in Westville. Many people there applauded the move to encourage safer cycling and slow traffic.

But a vocal minority objected to the loss of parking spaces on two blocks of Edgewood between Yale and Central avenues, particularly outside Deja Brew Cafe, whose owner feared the loss of business from suburban commuters who want to park directly in front of the shop. The plan originally called for the removal of street parking from the north side of Edgewood in that area.

After that meeting, Zinn went out for another look at those two blocks. He discovered a way to put in the cycletrack without removing parking on those blocks: By bumping the curb another five to six feet into the street. That way the city could move the cycletrack onto the curb bump-out for those two blocks, amid the tree belt, rather than have it in the street. Meanwhile, there’d be just enough room left in the street to preserve parking on both sides (To protect the tree belt, the city would pour porous concrete to collect more water for the roots, Zinn said.)

Carol Frawley, the Deja Brew owner who led the vocal opposition to the cycletrack last month, praised the new plan.

She wasn’t ready to embrace a cycletrack or her neighbors’ overall advocacy of bike-oriented street improvements. (“If one more person says, ​‘If you live in Brooklyn, you walk six blocks to park …’” she said. ​“We don’t live in Brooklyn. We don’t want to live in Brooklyn.”) But she called Zinn’s fix ​“a huge improvement.”

Husband Mike Frawley went further in remarks made during the official part of Wednesday night’s presentation at Troup.

He asked the 40 or so people present how many support the plan. Most hands went up. A few others indicated they felt less supportive. Frawley encouraged those dissenters to speak up, based on the results he and his wife got form the last meeting.

“Your concerns are not falling on deaf ears. … I have faith in these guys,” Frawley said, referring to Zinn and Hausladen.

Mall Hugged

At Wednesday night’s meeting at Troup, in the Dwight neighborhood, no one focal objection surfaced similar to the parking complaint about the two blocks in Westville. The meeting centered on the two stretches of the proposed cycletrack to run through the Edgewood and Dwight neighborhoods.

The cycletrack would ​“hug” the Edgewood Avenue ​“mall” — the grassy median area that separates the road between Winthrop Avenue and Pendleton Street — with a bike lane in each direction. At Winthrop and Edgewood, it would resume as a two-way cycletrack on the north side of the road all the way downtown, eliminating one lane of car traffic.

Surprisingly, no one Wednesday night objected to the fact that the plan will reduce car traffic from two lanes to one all the way through the Edgewood and Dwight neighborhoods. Or that that will slow down cars even more when school or city buses stop to pick up or drop off passengers, thus stopping traffic.

In fact, the questions from citizens entered on whether the plan will do enough to slow down car traffic and make walking the streets safer. Rather than worry about the ability of suburban commuters to zip down Edgewood and park at ease, the neighbors expressed long-running complaints about commuters speeding recklessly through their area, endangering pedestrians, especially schoolchildren.

“It feels like a [Indy] 500 on Edgewood,” said Florita Gillespie of the Dwight Management Team. ​“Some bumpers need to happen. Some lights need to happen.”

“The traffic is roaring out there. We have trouble getting out of our driveway,” said Mike Kidd.

Some neighbors also expressed concern about having to walk through a bike lane to get to their homes.

Margaret Nelson, a retired mail carrier who lives on Edgewood near the Boulevard, suggested running the cycletrack through the middle of the grassy median instead of using up some of the road on either side.

“No one uses” the median anyway, she argued. ​“I don’t ride a bike. Everybody in the house drives. I get it. They all [need room] to ride. But why take over the driver’s section?”

Zinn later responded that that would be hazardous, because cyclists would emerge in the middle of the block on cross streets, rather than at intersections with traffic lights. But he said Nelson’s and other neighbors’ comments gave him and Hausladen work to do to revisit the blocks and examine ways to address concerns about parking and pedestrian accessibility.

Hausladen said the plan includes many traffic-calming measures. Among them: narrower, more direct, crosswalks with more visible striping. A new traffic light at a reconfigured Winthrop-Edgewood intersection.

Most of all, he said, those bike lanes will slow down car traffic by narrowing the road. He said studies have shown that the combination of the striping and the ​“rubber ducky” delineators that separate the road subconsciously convince drivers to slow down because they make the lane look narrower.

Also, Hausladen said, pedestrians will now have to cross only 11 feet of road (one lane) on which cars travel, rather than 22 feet (two). The plan also includes money to repair handicapped ramps.

Finally, Hausladen said, the fact that drivers will no longer have a second lane in which to ​“zip” around stopped buses will make Edgewood even safer to cross.

Edgewood neighbor Art Perlo, who both bikes and drives to work, applauded the plan overall. But he questioned whether delivery trucks or other double-parked vehicles will make Edgewood impassable once it loses a second car lane. Perlo cited one convenience store in particular where delivery trucks often double-park. Hausladen responded neighbors can alert the city to those problem spots, and the traffic authority can create loading zones outside stores to give the trucks room to park.

A New World

The evening overall saw none of the heated debate that revealed ​“old” versus ​“new” Westville fissures at the previous cycletrack meeting. But, as at that meeting, neighbors Wednesday struggled to visualize what’s a new phenomenon for Connecticut.

Connecticut hasn’t had separated two-way cycletracks. State law used to rule out building them. Then the Harp administration successfully lobbied to get state law changed last year. New Haven is now the first city trying to build one.

Three neighbors — Curlena McDonald, Oliva Martson, and Jonathan Hopkins— sought to imagine how that will change Edgewood Avenue during a friendly debate after the official portion of the meeting.

McDonald said she fears for the safety of Troup schoolchildren crossing Edgewood with bike lanes going two-way. It’s already dangerous enough with cars zooming by, she said. The kids aren’t used to looking in both directions for traffic. (Edgewood is a one-way road in Dwight and Edgewood.) McDonald wondered if they’d get used to the new two-way bike travel.

“If this were a high school, I wouldn’t have as much concern,” McDonald said.

Hopkins noted that cyclists are supposed to stop at traffic lights. McDonald said that’s fine at Orchard Street, but Beers Street, right by the school, doesn’t have a light. It does have a crossing guard, Hopkins noted.

Martson predicted that kids and other pedestrians will be safer because the narrowing from two lanes to one will force cars to move more slowly. In fact, she predicted drivers will ​“switch to George Street” to seek faster travel.

In the brave new world bike-friendly city planning, that educated guess may soon be put to the test.