Markeshia Ricks Photo
Jelaca consults with Festa at community meeting.
Some people come to meetings about traffic calming with complaints or suggestions. Darko Jelaca, tired of speeders at one of New Haven’s northern gateways, came with a plan.
Jelaca and about 10 East Rock neighbors met with Alder Anna Festa and other city officials this past Thursday evening at the mActivity gym on Nicoll Street to talk about the need for traffic calming in the neighborhood, particularly at Whitney Avenue’s intersections with Cold Spring Street and with Willow Street.
High on the list of priorities was slowing down traffic around schools, traffic enforcement and thwarting the use of side streets as fast cut-throughs for fleeing criminals.
Jelaca, a Yale CAD physical design methodology engineer who lives on Whitney Avenue, was particularly concerned about the speed of traffic coming into the city from Hamden.
Hausladen.
He was so concerned that he used a baseball radar gun to get a read on the speed near the intersection of Whitney Avenue and Cliff Street. He also took pictures of accidents at the intersection, brought copies of anecdotes from a See Click Fix petition, and looked at studies that show a relationship between high speed and traffic fatalities.
“Where’d you get the baseball gun?” city transit chief Doug Hausladen asked at the meeting. “Did you have that in your closet?”
Nope. He borrowed it from a friend. The gun revealed that people were driving as fast as 58 miles per hour on a stretch of street zoned for 25.
One often-mentioned response: more traffic enforcement.City Engineer Giovanni Zinn, who grew up in Hamden, recalled when a police officer used to give out tickets at Hamden-New Haven line. That helped, he said.
Zinn.
Jaleca suggested installing radar feedback signs, which tell you how fast you’re going and have been popping up in a number of places in the city. He suggested building a pedestrian safety island at the intersection of Whitney Avenue and Cliff Street with a striped sidewalk and a rapid flashing beacon.
“The speed sign for sure — thanks for doing most of our work for us,” Hausladen said. Hausladen also saw promise in addressing the crosswalk and the sidewalks at the intersection, but suggested that there is a need to address the entire corridor of Whitney Avenue.
Zinn and Hausladen will meet with neighbors again in about six to eight weeks, when they will return with some studies on the offending streets that include data on car crashes, traffic count and enforcement for intersections of concern. They also will discuss in more detail a Safe Routes to School application, street striping and signage along with streetscape recommendations.