When Carolyn Christmann takes her newborn son for a walk, her all-terrain stroller proves no match for the deteriorating Quinnipiac Avenue, where a long-awaited renovation has been delayed again.
Christmann and her son, Sawyer, meet hazards at every step, from cars parked on curb-less sidewalks to litter, weeds, and broken asphalt.
Christmann’s recent trials with the stroller spurred a fiery letter to Mayor John DeStefano last week. Her letter outlined the concerns of Quinnipiac Avenue residents who live on what has become a dangerous residential speedway since the Ferry Street Bridge closed in 2002.
In the letter, she compared her hometown experience to a recent visit to Rwanda, which is on the UN’s list of the 50 poorest countries.
“Imagine our surprise when we arrived in Kigali, the capital city, to find roads in far better shape than Quinnipiac Avenue,” she wrote.
In light of news that the project might be facing further delays, she asked the mayor to “follow through on your pledge and immediately address the dangerous and disgusting condition of Quinnipiac Avenue.”
Project Bumped
On Monday morning, Christmann got an email from City Engineer Richard Miller confirming that the re-do will not begin next spring, as Miller had announced at an April meeting.
In the email, Miller explained that while the plans for Quinnipiac Avenue are in their final phase, the state has not yet completed the necessary Right of Way acquisitions of residential property. Because Surface Transportation Program (STP) funding, for which Quinnipiac Avenue is slated, must be used for its stated purpose within the year it is allocated, the city has decided to designate this year’s funds for other projects, including the State Street Bridge, which are further along and ready for construction to begin.
What baffles residents like the Christmanns is how, after nearly a decade of planning and countless delays, Quinnipiac Avenue is still far enough behind that it is getting bumped for other projects.
“It’s been on the table for so long, so to us, it’s not really fathomable why it wouldn’t be ready to be started,” Christmann said. “I don’t know who is to blame, but someone dropped the ball big-time.”
A Matter of Life and Death
When Carolyn and her husband Ian (pictured) moved to the neighborhood in the spring of 2002, neighbors were already working with the city on plans to make the narrow and poorly paved street safer for drivers, pedestrians, and bikers.
Conditions went from bad to worse in November 2002, when the Ferry Street Bridge was closed without warning. Vehicles rerouted from the bridge swarmed the Avenue, which took on an additional 12,000 cars and trucks a day.
Christmann said she remembers waking up the morning after the bridge closed to a street transformed. “It was such a huge difference,” she said. “I thought I would lose my mind.”
Six years later, after the community rallied to raise funds to repair the Ferry Street Bridge, it is set to reopen this month, but the avenue itself still awaits its turn.
Neighbors say it’s not just a matter of aesthetics or noise, but one of life and death as accidents continue to plague the avenue. A few years ago, a teenager was killed when he hit a bump in the road while going around 70 miles an hour, Ian Christmann said. He lost control of the car and crashed into the telephone pole across the street from their house. The pole was rebuilt, only to be taken down by another accident in the same spot.
As we talked, Rosemary Ozyck, who lives a few blocks up the Avenue, joined us on the porch. She had just returned from a visit to the city corporation counsel’s office, where she had tried to file a Freedom of Information request for accident statistics.
Quinnipiac Avenue neighbors successfully pursued another such request several years ago, but are looking for more up-to-date numbers as they continue to make the case for immediate relief. Ozyck said she had trouble finding someone who knew how to process an FOI request, but had written down her request and will follow up.
According to the first FOI report, accident numbers were high even before the Ferry Street Bridge closed. On Quinnipiac Avenue, between Hemingway and East Ferry, plus the short stretch of East Grand between Front and Lenox, it lists 67 accidents in 2001 and 61 in 2002. After the closure, those numbers spiked; in the month of January, 2003 alone, there were 15 accidents.
Just a few weeks ago, Ozyck said, she was getting ready to cross the street with some friends and their young children when a truck slammed head-on into a car, totaling it and hitting the street’s retaining wall. “In the 10 years we’ve lived in this house, we’ve had more accidents and more cars that crash into other cars and take off than we can count,” she said.
Strolling the Avenue
The Christmanns took me on a stroll up and down the avenue with Sawyer in his state-of-the-art all-terrain stroller. We navigated up and down non-sloping curbs, and they pointed out spots where the curb is non-existent, enticing cars to park on the sidewalk. On the far side of the street, there is no sidewalk to speak of, only a dirt path among the weeds of overgrown lots and chain-link fence.
Ian Christmann pointed out this intersection, at Oxford and Quinnipiac, where a 17-year-old lost control in the fatal accident several years ago. A bump in the road where the two roads meet sends cars airborne when they hit it too fast. Other vehicles, like this truck, swerve left to avoid the bump without slowing down.
We ran into another family out with their newborn – Nicholas and Billie-Jean Rosa, and their three-month-old daughter, Aerione (pictured). Nicholas, who has lived on the Avenue for 14 years, said he and his family are used to seeing four or five accidents outside their house each year, not to mention the cars that run into the retaining wall.
“People smack the bumps; they smack the walls,” he said. “People think as soon as they hit Quinnipiac, it’s a speedway, and they just go flying.”
The neighbors began trading accident stories. Nicholas Rosa told of a car that was going so fast over a bump that when it landed, the passenger side axle snapped. Billie-Jean described a recent accident where a tuck smashed into a car — it turned out this was the crash that happened outside Ozyck’s house.
When the bridge closed, Carolyn Christmann said, the mayor gave a lot of assurances that the heavier burdens on the avenue would be eased by the city. The neighbors asked for a number of low-cost measures, like stop signs at some intersections and better-marked crosswalks. All they got was a solid white line demarcating the road from the parking lane, and occasional street sweeping and speed trapping.
Nicholas Rosa said the radar speed traps haven’t done anything to calm traffic on the avenue, since there are no cameras and no consequences. “People don’t slow down – they go faster to see how fast they’re really going,” he said. Recently, he said, he saw the same car going past the speed trap over and over, circling back to check his speed. “It was the same silver car,” he said. “Each time it was going faster. He got up to 85.”
Not This Year
At an April meeting of the Quinnipiac River Community Group, neighbors allowed themselves to get their hopes up as Miller, the city engineer, presented the latest plans, which include traffic-calming measures like a roundabout at Ferry Street, pedestrian bump-outs and the addition of traffic islands to slow traffic, on schedule for a construction start date in spring, 2009.
But at the community group’s June meeting, Traffic and Parking Director Mike Piscitelli reported that the re-do might have to cede priority to other projects. Those concerns were confirmed with Miller’s Monday morning e‑mail.
On Tuesday, Miller said that the city was very fortunate to get the Quinnipiac Avenue project into the Surface Transportation Program and that it is still slated for those funds, just not this year.
The latest estimate for construction costs on Quinnipiac Avenue has gone up to $8 million, in keeping with the rising cost of petroleum, which is the most substantial component of pavement. And the costs of Right of Way acquisitions — the federally required compensation for entering private property during a construction job — have risen from $450,000 to $1.1 million, Miller said.
Annual STP funding for the entire region of 15 towns is around $6 million, and the city wants to make sure it uses its share of that on projects that are ready to begin construction, so the money won’t be diverted away to other parts of the region. With state Right of Way acquisitions not yet complete for Quinnipiac Avenue, the State Street Bridge project — which has been in the works since 2000 but was delayed due to the Ferry Street Bridge construction — will be given the green light for the coming year.
Miller said he understands why neighbors who have invested so much in the promise of a re-do are frustrated. But with escalating costs and limited resources, he said he’s doing the best he can to keep everything on track.
“My experience with all of these kinds of jobs is get the design done, get the right of way done, and money will flow at that point in time,” he said. “Let’s make sure we get the design completed and everything approved. Then it’s hard for anybody to turn down a project that’s ready to go.”
Miller reiterated that the Quinnipiac redo has not been canceled, and that it is still a major priority. He said the city is looking at options like doing the construction in two parts in order to move things along more quickly.
The Christmanns and their neighbors plan to keep the pressure on despite this newest disappointment. “We’re tired,” she said. “The road is fatigued, we’re fatigued — not that we’re not going to keep working and fighting for it, but at what point will the city follow through?”