Thomas Breen photo
Mayor Elicker (right) biking in the new Wall St. contra-flow lane.
Cyclists heading west across downtown towards Yale’s campus won’t have to take as many one-way-street detours, thanks to a new “contra-flow” bike lane on Wall Street that was the scene Monday of an official inaugural ride.
City officials celebrated what Mayor Justin Elicker described as the “inaugural bike ride” on that recently striped Wall Street route during a Monday morning press conference at the corner of Wall and Church Streets.
TT&P Director Aysola.
The new bike lane runs east-west on Wall Street from Orange Street to College Street. As city Transportation, Traffic & Parking (TT&P) Executive Director Sandeep Aysola said on Monday, the new bike lane — separated from the roadway by a double-yellow stripe and enabled by new street signage and a bicycle-specific crossing signal and sensor at Church Street — allows cyclists to travel against the flow of car traffic, which can still only go from west to east.
“You have a lot of one-way streets” downtown, Aysola said. “It takes a lot of effort for bicyclists to get from Point A to Point B.” This new Wall Street bike lane allows cyclists to cut west across downtown in a more direct and protected way than before.
Elicker (left) with Alder Guzhnay, transit Director Aysola, and Alder Sabin.
Guzhnay, Aysola, and Sabin.
“The city that we’re trying to build here is a safe city and an affordable city,” Downtown/East Rock Alder Eli Sabin said on Monday. Before this new bike lane went in roughly four weeks ago, “we saw a lot of people biking on this street on the sidewalk or in the street the wrong way. … Now they have a dedicated space to be on the street and be safe from getting hit by a car.”
He noted that 30 percent of city residents do now own a car. “We want to make sure that New Haven’s a city where you don’t necessarily need to own a car and you feel safe walking, biking, taking the bus, because that reduces traffic for everybody else and it saves folks in our city money, which is hugely important.”
New bike signs, stripes, and signals on Wall Street.
Elicker and Aysola both framed this newly completed project as in line with the bike-lane-boosting goals of the city’s recently adopted Safe Routes for All Citywide Active Transportation Plan, which calls for the city to expand and upgrade 90 miles worth of bike lanes.
“We’ve got a lot more work to do,” the mayor said. He said that projects like this new Wall Street contra-flow lane brings the city just a little bit closer to having a more connected “network of pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure.”
This lane is an example of “how important it is to get out there and build projects,” City Engineer Giovanni Zinn added during Monday’s presser. “This is an important example of one of these building blocks getting constructed. … We’re getting closer and closer to having a network” of safe and connected bike lanes.
What About Edgewood?
Zinn was asked during the press conference about the latest with the Edgewood Cycletrack, a long-delayed new 2.1 mile protected bike path along Edgewood Avenue between Forest Road and Park Street.
After years of delays, the city formally began construction on that project in July 2021. The cycletrack has been striped west of Winthrop Avenue, with delineators now up on a stretch of Edgewood Avenue in the park just west of the mall, and new bike-specific signals up west of Yale Avenue.
What’s the latest cause of delays?
Thomas Breen Photo
The Edgewood cycletrack: Striped and protected west of the mall ...
... striped east of the mall ...
... neither striped nor protected east of Winthrop.
“We’re waiting for a shipment of poles that was due in May and still has not come from the manufacturer,” Zinn said on Tuesday. “It’s supposed to be any day now, but I’ve been hearing that for a while.” The moment that the poles arrive, he promised, “they go up, and we’re done.”
What are these poles for again?
“They’re the poles for the walk signals” and bike signals, Zinn said. They’re roughly 12 feet tall each. Intersections east of Winthrop Avenue are slated to received new walk and bike signals as part, he added. “It’s not just a bike lane project.”
He said that the section of the cycletrack east of Winthrop Avenue will get striped only after the city has received the poles and put up the new intersection walk and bike signals.
“We want to get all of the signals in first, and then we will stripe it,” he said.
Watch Monday’s full press conference below.