Markeshia Ricks Photo
Lyn Sabatasso looked out of the front window of her Whalley Avenue business and cringed. “First of all,” she said, “the elderly crossing here — forget it.”
Sabatasso owns Odeon Boutique at 918 Whalley. She said for years she has watched people risk their lives trying to cross at the small stretch of Whalley Avenue intersected by Philip Street and by Blake Street.
She sometimes leaves her building to assist people across the street.
“They’re so scared,” she said. “They wait and wait, but people turn right there and they’re not supposed to.”
Some of her customers who are elderly or have a disability are dropped off in front of her store, but she doesn’t recommend it.
“I’ve seen so many trucks over shoot this light coming down that hill,” she said. “I’ve seen so many people nearly side swiped.”
Some relief could be on the way — in the form of a half-million dollars worth of traffic improvements now in the process of receiving final approvals.
Three years ago, State Reps. Pat Dillon and Toni Walker, along with then-State Sen. Toni Harp, sponsored and ultimately got a bill passed that set aside more than $400,000 in state bonding money for new crosswalks and street lighting in Westville Village. (Read about that here.)
The city has now finalized its version of those plans and forwarded them to the Board of Alders and the state for approval.
Chris Heitmann (at left in photo), executive director of the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance, said the project has been a long time coming. On a weekend morning when there are no cars parked along the street and no people walking in the village, drivers have been known to fly down Whalley at 60 miles per hour.
“If we could get them to slow down maybe they’ll stop, eat, possibly shop,” he said.
The project has three main goals: to slow traffic on Whalley Avenue; to make it easier to cross the street in Westville Village; and to define some gateways for the village. Heitmann said the traffic-calming quest is expected to happen in two phases.
The first phase will include new crosswalks near that trouble spot that Sabatasso identified near her store; and another at Whalley Avenue and West Rock, just across from Lyric Hall. Plans also include unseparated bike lanes on Whalley between Fitch and West Park.
And perhaps most promising of all for raceway-plagued pedestrians, the plan calls for constructing two car-slowing medians with planters along Whalley — one down the hill starting at Harrison to Philip, the other between Fitch and West Park, possibly with new lighting.
Lyric Hall owner John Cavaliere (at right in photo) was one of the people who took a day off to testify about what traffic calming would mean to his business. The historic hall has become a cultural hub for the village.
“It’s crucial for life and safety,” he said. “It’s like crossing I‑95.” He said people often say to him that they don’t see him having coffee at Manjares.
“I tell them it is easier for me to get in my car and drive to Manjares than it is for me to walk there,” he said.
Phase two of the project involves addressing the intersection of Whalley Avenue and Fountain Street, which Heitmann said is the second most accident prone intersection after Whalley Avenue and Ella T. Grasso Boulevard.
Phase one of the project crossed two thresholds in recent weeks.
Threshold one: The Board of Alders began the process of authorizing the mayor to accept $424,000 in state dollars to pay for it. (The city will kick in a projected $100,000 to $150,000, depending on the final design.)
Threshold two: The city has completed its final design. Now the Connecticut Department of Transportation (DOT) must approve and amend it, because Whalley is a state road.
“We’d like to see [construction] start this fall,” said City Engineer Giovanni Zinn. But it’s out of his hands, because construction can’t start until DOT signs off on the plans.
Sabatasso said she’s just relieved that something is finally going to happen.
“The speed is out of control,” she said.