Welcome To New Haven … & SLOW DOWN!!?!

A newly unveiled plan to finish blowing up New Haven’s downtown mini-highway enlists subtle cues to stop drivers from mowing down cyclists and pedestrians: narrower lanes, bigger sidewalks, city-style streetlights, and a green urban-design version of a ​“hug.”

City officials and city-hired engineers and consultants presented that plan to the public Monday night in the basement community room of the main library branch.

They presented details of road work of Phase Two of ​“Downtown Crossing,” the ongoing effort to wipe out mistakes of urban renewal past by filling in the Route 34 Connector mini-highway-to-nowhere, reconnecting downtown with the Hill, and spurring big new development projects along the way.

Or, as Mayor Toni Harp put it at Monday night’s meeting, ​“stitching back a neighborhood” and rebuilding ​“a seamless city.”

Phase One of Downtown Crossing, you may remember, involved filling in Exits 2 and 3 of the mini-highway-to-nowhere (now completed) and building a 13-story office tower (aka ​“100 College Street”) for Alexion Pharmaceuticals (almost completed).

Phase Two now involves spending $33 million ($12 million from the city, the rest expected/hoped to come from the state), to fill in the remaining stretch of mini-highway in order to rebuild Orange Street across Route 34. That would make way for developer Max Reim (pictured) of the Montreal-based firm LiveWorkLearnPlay to build his $400-plus million new urbanist mini-city of apartments, offices, gathering spaces, stores, and a luxury hotel on the old New Haven Coliseum site. Reim, who attended Monday night’s session, repeated what he has said previously: The project can move forward only if the state approves the money for the Orange Street road work.

The Manhattan-based firm Parsons Brinckerhoff has been working on the details of that road plan. It has reached the 30 percent completion stage — meaning it has preliminary ideas to show the public. Hence Monday evening’s presentation before about 40 members of the public.

The firm’s representatives described how Orange Street will now flow into South Orange Street, as it did until the middle of the 20th century. They described how two feeder roads will shoot off from the intersection to lead some drivers directly to the Air Rights Garage and 100 College, and keep them off Orange, MLK Boulevard and South Frontage. And they said a new network of bike lanes, pedestrian ​“refuge islands,” and other amenities will make the reconfigured streetscape an ​“urban boulevard,” a safer place to walk and cycle.

The ​“Transition Zone”

To do that they need to figure out how to get a message to drivers exiting from I‑95 and I‑91 in ​“the transition zone” (currently 4,600 vehicles each morning peak, projected to rise to as high as 6,280 vehicles in 2036). The message: Slow down! Immediately. As they hit the new non-highway gateway to the city at reconnected Orange Street.

The consultant/engineers said that needs to happen. Members of the public said that needs to happen.

Member of the public Kevin McCarthy said that to Parsons Brinckerhoff ​“Senior Urban Strategist (PlaceMaking)” Thomas C. Jost (pictured) before the formal presentation as Jost stood by easels with blown-up sketches and answered informal questions.

“Somebody is going to get killed here!” McCarthy said, pointing to a depiction of the junction of Orange Street and MLK Boulevard, where a new bike lane would meet up with five lanes of newly deposited I‑95/I‑95 vehicles.

“Walking?” asked Jost.

“Cycling!”

Technically, drivers will have to drive no more than 25 miles per hour at that point, because they’d no longer be on a highway.

“Getting anybody to go anywhere near the speed limit anywhere is a challenge,” McCarthy noted. He added: ​“People will go through the red light. This is New Haven.”

Jost proceeded to list some of his firm’s ideas for preventing that all from happening.

For starters: The lanes on the bridge over Union Avenue, which connects the I‑91/I‑95 exits to downtown, would shrink from 12 to 11 feet wide. To start slowing people down.

The drivers would pass by lots of newly planted trees and shrubbery. That make it feel more like a city.

Around them would be wider sidewalks and broad pedestrian plazas and sitting walls. Again, to signal ​“This is a city!” Rather than to signal ​“This is a highway!”

The firm referred to the plazas and greenery and sitting walls as the ​“hug” concept.

The firm also called for installing streetlights that look like city streetlights, not highway streetlights. Lights that, again, cue the driver’s brain to ​“slow-moving city street,” not ​“killer speedway.” Pictured at right is one kind of such proposed ​“pole light.”

33 Seconds? Or 120?

Once the drivers pass the transition zone and land at Orange Street, what next?

The planners described a bevy of other cues to keep the cars from speeding and the cyclists and pedestrians safe. The new Orange Street intersection at MLK and South Frontage would have islands, wider sidewalks, and spaces at each corner where people can gather and sit, they said.

Urban Design League’s Anstress Farwell asked how long it will take pedestrians to island-hop across that intersection. The response: Good question! The hope is 33 seconds. But if someone can’t make it across in that time, it could take another two-minute traffic-signal cycle to complete the journey.

One point of these ​“30 percent” planning presentations is to field those questions and, ideally, have the designers incorporate answers into subsequent drafts.

Farwell made a suggestion: Ditch those green-panel overhead signs when designing the transition highway-to-Orange Street zone. Those signs add to the idea that a driver is on a highway. She suggested instead the use of signs like the ​“very simple black” lit-up directional signs that greet drivers at New Haven’s most confusing intersection, where Tower Parkway spills into Broadway, Dixwell, Goffe, and Whalley.

“I’m with Anstress on this one,” responded city Deputy Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli. ​“I’ve had it with overhead signs.” He said later though that it will require negotiation with state or federal transportation officials to win approval of alternative signs to the standard-issue green-panel ones.

Separation? Complex

A more complicated question involves bike lanes. The previous round of public approvals for Phase One of Downtown Crossing left cycling advocates disappointed, charging that the final design ended up too much geared to cars while endangering cyclists and pedestrians. The officials and consultants Monday night strove to convince the crowd that bike-friendliness is next to godliness in their working Phase Two design.

For instance, they are planning to build a separated bike lane — two-directional, blocked off form cars — along Union Avenue heading north, then turning east onto Water Street. The eventual plan is to build a complete separated-bike-lane ​“cycle track” from the East Shore to downtown.

Because of utilities and traffic and space challenges, the rest of Phase Two’s envisioned bike lanes aren’t as clear cut. In answer to one question from the crowd, the planners said they can’t put bike lanes on State Street as it meets Union Avenue, for instance.

However, city transit chief Doug Hausladen and economic development chief Matthew Nemerson said later, the hope is that many cyclists who now head to the train station via State and Union will instead start taking the newly reconnected Orange Street. And the plans call for bike lanes there.

What kind of bike lanes? Separated (and therefore much safer) bike lanes, or bike lanes simply painted on? That’s still up in the air, they said.

The working diagram up on the easel in the back of the room and in the PowerPoint presentation showed a separated 12-foot-wide two-directional bike path branching out from Orange to MLK Boulevard toward the train station. But Nemerson said officials need to look more closely at details like the presence of utilities to figure out if that’s feasible. It might not be.

It was that sketched-out lane that Kevin McCarthy was pointing to when he warned planner Jost about the possibility of crashes.

City historian and Ninth Square business owner Rob Greenberg joined the conversation with similar nitty-gritty questions. In between, he reflected on the big picture — how longtime New Haveners like himself might finally see the horrors of mid-20th Century urban renewal fixed.

“It’s a challenge,” Greenberg noted. ​“But it’s going to be nice. I’ve been waiting for this a long time.”