Cycletrack Construction Start Celebrated

The long-delayed Edgewood Cycletrack spun a wheel or two closer to fruition, as city staffers and cycling advocates gathered to celebrate the construction underway on the new 2.1‑mile protected bike path.

That celebration press conference took place Thursday afternoon at the northeast corner of Edgewood Avenue and Dwight Street.

Standing on a rebuilt and widened stretch of sidewalk — replete with new plantings, two ADA-accessible ramps, and orange traffic cones where pedestrian and bicycle crossing signals will soon stand — City Engineer Giovanni Zinn ticked through traffic safety upgrades currently in the works on Edgewood Avenue between Forest Road and Park Street.

Yes, that includes the 2.1‑mile, two-way protected cycletrack currently being built on the north side of Edgewood Avenue, he said.

The project also includes five new pedestrian crossing signals (at Ella T. Grasso Boulevard, Norton Street, Winthrop Avenue, Dwight Street, and Howe Street); 10 new bicycle crossing signals that will be able to detect when a cyclist is present and indicate when it’s safe for a bike to cross an intersection; a raised crosswalk and speed hump near Pendelton Street; seven intersections’ worth of improved sidewalks and new ADA ramps; and a traffic signal at Winthrop Avenue.

The project — officially dubbed the Downtown West Community Connectivity Corridor — will also result in a narrowing of the roadway thanks to the addition of the protected cycletrack, and new striping to indicate where cars can park.

“This isn’t a shortcut to downtown,” Zinn said about Edgewood Avenue. ​“It’s a neighborhood street. It’s a street where people live, where kids across. All the different users of the street deserve to be protected.”

The $1.2 million state-funded project has been broken out into two different sets of construction work.

The civil work — that is, the digging up of the sidewalks and intersections and the pouring of new concrete, putting down new asphalt, and building out new curbs — is being done by Lior Excavating. That work has already begun, and should wrap up by the middle of the fall.

The signal work — that is, the wiring and installation of all of the new bicycle, pedestrian, and traffic signals — is being done by Verde Electric Corp. They’re currently ordering all of the necessary equipment for the project. Due to Covid-era supply chain issues, Zinn said, some of that signal equipment is still 20 weeks away.

“We are hopeful that, come next year, as soon as the weather starts to break, we’ll be here cycling on a new cycletrack.”

Elected officials and local biking advocates joined Zinn and Mayor Justin Elicker on Thursday to applaud the long-in-the-works project finally making it to the start of construction.

“Bike lanes are things that are used by all people. Traffic calming is used by all people,” Bradley Street Bicycle Co-Op Founder John Martin said. ​“Bike lanes help calm traffic. They help cyclists have a safer experience. And they make our streets just a lot better. This is really important work.”

Dwight Alder Frank Douglass and Edgewood Alder Evette Hamilton agreed. This is ​“a very important project,” Douglass said. ​“Safety is key. It’s one of the biggest things we need to focus on.”

Douglass also called on the city to ​“put some of the energy” dedicated to bike lanes and traffic safety into stemming violent crime citywide. ​“We need safety apparatuses all over the city,” he said.

Many of those who spoke up Thursday also referenced the years and years of delays this cycletrack project has seen. City staff have been promoting the cycletrack since March 2016, when they first presented the idea at a Westville neighborhood meeting. After several more community meetings, the city earned City Plan Commission approval for the project in June 2017. That was followed by a final sign off from the city’s traffic commissioners in August 2017. The project then hit delay after delay, largely related to what city officials described as planning out and finding contractors for complicated signal work.

Asked about that very issue on Thursday, Zinn pointed to the size and scope of the project as causing those delays.

“The quantity of signalized intersections added a lot of complexity to the project,” he said. So did going back and forth with the state about approvals for all of the signal plans. And then there was all the time spent working with construction companies to make sure that the project as envisioned could actually be built.

This will be the longest on-street protected cycletrack in the state, Zinn said, and certainly the one with the most signals.

“This is something new.”

Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch the full presser.