“Pork Chop Island” Vanishes

Two hard-won traffic islands have disappeared from the planned reworking of streets around the $140 million ​“Downtown Crossing” project — meaning pedestrians might have to cross five lanes of traffic in one shot.

That is the latest twist in an ongoing debate over whether Downtown Crossing and the attendant reconfiguring of the Route 34 Connector ​“mini-highway-to-nowhere” shortchanges walkers and cyclists at the expense of cars.

The inclusion of the two islands in the plans — at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Church Street — was seen as a victory for the project’s ​“safe streets”-oriented critics.

City spokeswoman Elizabeth Benton said officials edited some traffic-calming elements out of the plans because they were ​“not technically feasible or in conflict with other bike/ped[estrian] improvements.”

Among the deletions: a traffic island on Church, at MLK, dubbed ​“Pork Chop Island” by state traffic engineers because of its shape.

The other island, on Church Street north of the intersection, was never properly submitted on the plans, said a DOT staffer.

Benton’s rationale of bike/ped improvements being in conflict with each other is a false premise, said Ryan Lynch, policy director for an advocacy group called the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. The real problem is that engineers are starting with the assumption that the road needs five lanes of automobile traffic, and forcing bike and pedestrian infrastructure to fit around that, he said.

That has been a persistent complaint raised by critics of Downtown Crossing, which calls for the Rt. 34 corridor to be converted into two ​“urban boulevards.” With state and federal money, Route 34 will be filled in with new buildings, the first phase of which will be new labs and offices for bio-tech companies at 100 College St.

In the more than three years that Downtown Crossing has been in the works, the plan has come under fire from cycling and pedestrian advocates. They say that it will not meet its stated goal of reconnecting downtown and the Hill with a walkable and vibrant neighborhood. Critics have said that the redesign of Route 34 remains too car-centered, without sufficient accommodations for bikers and walkers.

Proponents say that the plan will expand the city’s tax base and bring jobs to the city. Faced with design criticisms, they point to the fact that design and planning have been the subject of dozens of public meetings.

Last August, some of the critics — including 11 aldermen and a state representative—called on the city to make the project more amenable for cyclists and pedestrians. By November, they had won a number of changes to the plans, including curb ​“bump-outs,” narrower lanes, raised intersections, and traffic islands to shorten crossing distances for pedestrians.

Two of those islands were inked into a ​“Draft Bike Plan” dated July 18, 2011. They were drawn in red as ​“Features added post 30% design,” according to a legend on the plan. Click here to see the design.

One island was inked in just east of the intersection of Church and MLK, between the bike lane and right-turn lane on the north side of MLK and the other four lanes of traffic south of it. Another island was placed on the north side of the intersection, between two lanes each of north and south bound traffic. The entire intersection was also marked as a raised intersection or ​“speed table”.

In the latest plans, however, both of the islands are conspicuously absent. The intersection is still raised. The plans, which show the design at 90 percent complete, were received by the City Plan Department on July 3 and have been on display in the office since then.

According to city spokeswoman Benton, state ​“bike planners” determined that ​“while the island would improve the crossing experience for pedestrians, it would be dangerous for bikers who would have to cross the right turn lane traffic in order to go straight.”

Other planned traffic-calming measures made the island unnecessary, she said. ​“In the end, we all agreed that the narrowed travel lanes, textured cross walks, raised intersections, and queuing implemented together would result in significantly slower traffic speeds, greater pedestrian and bike safety, and would negate the need for the island.”

In a conference call Tuesday, Department of Transportation spokesman Kevin Nursick and several other DOT staffers explained further why ​“Pork Chop Island” was deleted. The main reason, Nursick said; There was simply not enough room for it.

Planners could not find a way to put in an island that would be big enough to safely accommodate people in wheelchairs, Nursick said. ​“The size of the Pork Chop Island would be so minimal that it would not provide an effective area of refuge.”

An undersized island could actually make such people less safe than no island at all would, he argued: They could get clipped by passing cars while stopped there. An island would also create complications for blind pedestrians, he said.

What’s more, an island would ​“channelize” the right hand turn lane, Nursick said. It would ​“give people the feeling that they have the right of way.” When right-turners are channeled with a traffic island, ​“they tend to blow through those right turns. That’s not a good thing.”

Dave Head, a DOT planner, said engineers were dealing with ​“a perfect storm” at that intersection. Pedestrians, cyclists, and cars all come together there as a bike lane transitions from one separated by a curb to an ​“on-road facility.”

“There’s just a lot going on there. That island just exacerbated those conflicts,” Head said.

“An Outdated Thought Process”

“Now the crossing is much longer for the pedestrians,” said East Rock Justin Elicker, who helped lead the charge for bike- and pedestrian-friendly changes to the plans last year.

That’s problematic for two reasons, Elicker said. First, traffic islands slow down cars. Second, they allow pedestrians to break up a long crossing into two sections.

So, for instance, a mother with a stroller wouldn’t have to walk all the way across five lanes, just four and then one.

Elicker said there’s no reason designers can’t move the traffic island on MLK Boulevard to the south side of the street, if it otherwise would be too close to the bike lane on the north side. DOT staffers said there’d be no room for it there either.

“I don’t think anyone is disingenuous in the process. But there’s not a can-do attitude by the powers that be to say, ​‘let’s figure this out,” Elicker said.

“There are five lanes of traffic on one side of that intersection and four lanes on the other. There’s room to work there. Can we narrow the road? Can we put other traffic calming measures in there?”

“You talk to any community head and bicycle advocate in the city and they would express deep frustration with this process,” Elicker said. The traffic island was part of the compromise that happened at the Board of Aldermen last year, he said. Now it’s just been taken out and nothing has been added to compensate for its loss, he said.

“It’s disappointing,” said Lynch, who works for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, which advocates for more ​“balanced” and environmentally friendly transportation networks in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. Tri-State has been acting as an observer, supporter, adviser, and occasional critic of the Downtown Crossing plan.

Lynch rejected the ​“rationale” that the islands had to be removed because of conflicts with other bicycle or pedestrian improvements.

“The reason we can’t do this is because there are five lanes of traffic,” he said. ​“That’s the problem. They’re framing this as bikes and pedestrians in conflict with one other. … The ultimate issue is that they’re over-accommodating automobile traffic at the expense of infrastructure that supports a safe walking and biking environment. … The problem is the baseline. The baseline is that there are five lanes of traffic. It’s an outdated thought process.”

Lynch said Tri-State still supports the overall project, which will be ​“better than what exists now.” He said he hopes to ​“continue working with the city and Conn DOT on a solution that prioritizes” biking and walking over ​“moving cars as fast as possible through that intersection.”

He acknowledged that it’s more difficult to make changes now that the project’s design is 90 percent complete. ​“They dropped this information pretty late in the game.”

“The design all but guarantees that many ​‘multiple threat collisions’ will occur,” said bike and pedestrian advocate Mark Abraham. ​“I am not sure why our engineers and policy makers continue allow the creation of roadways that kill people, especially roadways funded through Federal ​‘livability’ grants that are specifically intended to reduce these hazards.”

Officials: Cars Have Been Giving and Giving

“The intersection at Church and MLK has always been the biggest challenge for the project team,” said city spokeswoman Benton. Working with Nelson/Nygaard planners (“our bike/ped consultant”), the city convinced the state to accept a number of improvements, she said. ​“ConnDOT [the state Department of Transportation] eased their lane configuration requirements, agreed to raised intersections (never before done on an arterial anywhere in the country as best we can tell) and agreed to allow longer queuing lengths in anticipation of traffic ​‘evaporation’ as drivers choose other routes or means of transportation.”

Benton rejected the notion that Downtown Crossing is designed for cars over bikes or walkers: ​“To say that the plan gives priority to the automobile is grossly unfair and simply incorrect. The city, with the cooperation of ConnDOT has pushed the limits of transportation engineering practices to develop a plan that meets the bare minimum standards for vehicular accommodations while maintaining eligibility for financing through the Federal Highway Authority’s funding program.”

According to traffic design standards, ​“ideally you’d be looking at seven lanes of traffic there,” Nursick said. ​“Many great concessions were made here to allow for more and better bike/ped amenities. One of those was reducing the lanes to five and reducing the [lane] width from 12 feet to 10 feet.” That makes a much shorter distance to cross there, Nursick said.

He later said that it would have been impossible to put in seven lanes there anyway, because of the way the space is already built out.

Nursick talked up the intersections ​“exclusive phase” pedestrian crossings, ​“so when you press the button all traffic on all legs is stopped.”

He mentioned the intersection’s bike boxes, areas at the front of the car lanes set aside for bikes stopped at lights. The bike boxes will allow cyclists to safely move over to prepare for left-hand turns, Head said. The bike boxes will have video detection systems so that bikes will trigger green lights, Nursick said.

What Happened To… Meatloaf Island?

As for the other island on the ​“Features added post 30% design” plans, Greg Soja, a project engineer with state DOT said the city never submitted plans with that island, in the middle of church street on the north side of the intersection. ​“I don’t really ever recall the city submitting an actual plan that showed that. I’m not sure that island on the north leg there ever really got developed. I think those were just concepts.”

Elicker said he’d thought that the north island was more than simply a concept. ​“Our understanding is that was the city’s proposal for what they’re going to submit to the state.”

Elicker said he, Downtown Alderman Doug Hausladen, and state Rep. Roland Lemar will meet with city and state officials on Thursday at 4 p.m. to talk over the plans.