Hausladen: Bikes Don’t Kill People …

As he presented a plan to bring hundreds of rentable bikes to New Haven’s streets, city transit chief Doug Hausladen invoked statistics about smash-ups on the road to respond Monday night to complaints about dangerous cyclists.

Hausladen showed up to the monthly East Rock Community Management Team to get input from neighbors about a new ​“bike share” program about to bring 300 instantly borrow-able cycles to the city.

He received lots of ideas and enthusiasm, along with complaints about New Haven’s users of fast-growing transit choice.

“The truth is, the numbers are staggering,” former East Rock Alder Dick Lyons told Hausladen. ​“If you stand at an intersection and watch how many cars disobey the rules and how many bikes disobey the rules, bikes are hands down the winners.”

Hausladen, an alternative transportation advocate who has spent much of his three-year tenure as transit chief pushing to make New Haven a more bike-friendly city, was ready with a response.

“No, not at all,” he said. ​“Every time you go over the speed limit, you’re breaking the rules. Every time you go right on red when there’s no turn on red, every time you don’t use your signal to change lanes, every time you fail to yield to the right of the way, you’re breaking the rules. Car drivers are breaking the rules of the road just as cyclists sometimes do. The one question that we need to ask ourselves is: which one kills people?”

The answer: Bikes don’t kill people. Cars do.

Hausladen noted that New Haven had 7,800 reported crashes in the most recent fiscal year for which statistics are available. Last week a driver killed a pedestrian at York Street and South Frontage Road.

About a dozen neighborhood activists showed up to the conference room of the mActivity gym on Nicoll Street for Monday night’s meeting, where the conversation centered on the merits, realities, and possibilities of alternative transportation in New Haven.

A majority of the meeting was dedicated to a presentation by Hausladen and GoNewHavenGo program manager Krysia Solheim on the city’s new bike share program, for which Hausladen said he expect to submit a contract to the Board of Alders next week.

After introducing the bike share program as offering a ​“library use of bicycles,” Hausladen situated the program within his department’s five-year plan of bike infrastructure advocacy and development. From his point of view, New Haven streets are well on their way to being able to support 300 new commonly-shared bikes. Through the program, subscribers pay to be able to pick up a bike at one of 30 stations around town, then drop it off at another. This program represents just one more step in his department’s larger push to make New Haven a city where commuters can safely and efficiently travel ​“from Point A to Point B without needing to own or rent a car,” he said.

The Road To Bike-Friendliness

Gesturing towards a slide presentation, Hausladen ran through some of the highlights from the five-year plan:

• In 2015, his department laid down its first green bike lanes on Elm Street.

• In 2016, it set up the first contra-flow bike lane on High Street and protected bike lanes on Long Wharf Drive, Water Street, and Brewery Street.

• In 2017, in addition to launching the bike share program, it hopes to complete Phase 4 of the Farmington Canal trail and build the Downtown West Cycling Network.

• In 2018, it is looking to apply streetscape improvements to neighborhood thoroughfares like Dixwell, Whalley, and Grand avenues, as well as create a ​“Traffic Safety Garden,” which will allow for a safe, enclosed area where people can learn how to ride bicycles and where drivers can learn how to safely interact with cyclists on the road.

And, in 2019, it is looking to apply streetscape improvements to State Street as well as complete Phase 2 of the Downtown Crossing project.

Put It Where?

For the latter half of Monday night’s transit presentation, Hausladen and Solheim unfurled a detailed city street map and asked people in the room to brainstorm where they would like to see the bike share stations located.

“It’s important to put these where people work, but we also want to put them where people live,” Solheim advised as the group offered an array of prospective locations, from Edgerton Park to the Broadway commercial corridor to the Fair Haven C‑Town Supermarket.

With each new place name, Hausladen used a magic marker to draw a thick, pink X on the appropriate area of map. He then pulled up a map on his computer that displayed the 90 location requests that his department has received so far through the SeeClickFix submission form, and promised to add any new suggestions to the ever-growing list. Ultimately, the city will pick from 30 different locations to house the bike share parking stations.

Despite the group’s general enthusiasm for the program, as well as for the city’s ongoing commitment to alternative modes of transportation, the conversation came back to concerns over safety: what kind of danger would so many more bikes on the streets of New Haven present to the city’s drivers?

“One thing we need to remember is that we’ve never had a bicycle kill a human in the city of New Haven,” Hausladen said. ​“We’ve only had vehicles do that. Studies show nationwide if you give cyclists infrastructure, they follow the rules.

“I want to know, when will vehicles and drivers start following the rules of the road? We’ve given them infrastructure for the past 100-plus years. Now that is a life or death question.”