7 Raised Canal Crossings Greenlighted

Strollers, joggers, rollerbladers and cyclists may soon have seven fewer reasons to worry about cars slamming into them on the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail.

During Monday night’s regular bimonthly meeting of the Board of Alders, local legislators unanimously approved an order authorizing the mayor to apply for and accept funding from the state Department of Transportation (DOT) under the federal Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act) program to build out seven new raised intersection crossings on the trail.

If the application is approved, the money would be put towards installing raised crossings and associated safety equipment at seven New Haven locations and up to nine Hamden locations where the canal intersects with crossing streets.

“These raised crossings will make it safer for everyone who lives in the neighborhood along the canal path to cross the street,” Downtown Alder Abby Roth said Monday night. The fact that 13 New Haveners have been killed this year as they were walking or riding their bikes in this city is a ​“sad reminder of why these improvements are needed,” Roth said.

Prospect Hill/Newhallville Alder Steve Winter agreed. ​“Newhallville, like much of the city, is crying out for improvements to make our streets safer. This approval will help to save lives by making our streets safer for walkers, bikers, and drivers.”

The Farmington Canal opened in 1828, then became a rail line a dozen years later. It remained in use until the 1980s. In the 1990s, a civic association formed to advocate converting the entire 84-mile canal from New Haven to Northampton, Mass., into a paved trail for hikers and cyclists. So far about half of the trail has come to fruition.

Feds Foot 80% Of The Bill

City Engineer Giovanni Zinn (pictured) explained during an early December City Services and Environmental Policy (CSEP) committee that the City of New Haven and the Town of Hamden submitted a joint application to the state for $1.5 million in FAST Act funds.

The canal-street intersections that would be lifted up to form a kind of extended speed hump for cars, and smooth sailing for pedestrians and cyclists and other users of the canal trail, would be located at Munson, Division, Thompson, Brewster, Bassett, and Ivy Streets as well as at Shelton Avenue.

The state and federal funding would cover 80 percent of the construction costs — or around $772,500 — with the city required to put in a 20 percent local match — or a total of roughly $154,500. Zinn said that that local match would come from the City Street Reconstruction section of the city’s capital budget.

Two such raised crossings already exist where the canal intersects with Hazel Street and with Webster Street.

Zinn told the committee alders that these seven subsequent trail-street intersections are crossings that the city intended to raise and build out pedestrian safety infrastructure at anyway, thanks to as-yet-unfilled Complete Streets requests from neighbors.

“This is an opportunity to get funding at 20 cents on the dollar,” he said. ​“Eighty percent comes from the federal government for a traffic-calming need that we probably would have had to budget for anyway.”

Zinn said that his staffers have already started working on designing all of the crossings in-house. He said his department will hold public outreach meetings and discussions if and when the grant is awarded.

“It’d be my hope to push ahead as quickly as possible with construction,” he said. ​“It could be as soon as sometime next year.”

How long does it typically take to build out such a raised crossing? asked Downtown Alder Abby Roth.

“The big ones are about four days of construction,” Zinn said. A regular, less complicated one takes no more than a day.

“Shelton Avenue is going to be the most expensive,” he continued. ​“There we’re going to have to raise the whole intersection.” Ivy Street, on the other hand, is ​“just a straight shot across a narrow street,” and therefore a simpler build.

And just to confirm, these streets already have Complete Streets requests for traffic calming measures? Winter asked.

Yes, Zinn replied. ​“For a lot of this, we would have done it anyway. But we’re leveraging federal money to pay 20 cents on the dollar.”

“Are you aware of what residents call Division Street and the canal?” Winter asked. ​“They call it the Indianapolis Speedway.” These blocks are in serious need of traffic calming.

Canal Use Increases By 40K Trips

Wooster Square resident Aaron Goode (pictured) leads a group called the New Haven Friends of the Farmington Canal Greenway. He said that his group — representing the thousands of walkers, bikers, joggers, rollerbladers, and other people who use the canal trail every year — are ​“in strong support of the installation of these new raised crossings, and at all at-grade intersections” along the trail.

He praised the current raised crossings at Webster and Hazel as effectively slowing traffic and alerting cars to the presence of trail users.

In 2018, he said, he was struck by a pickup truck while cycling on the canal at one of these intersections. If he had not shielded himself from impact, Goode said, he very well could be dead.

“It’s easy to get in a complacent mindset, riding along the trail, thinking you’re safe,” he said. ​“In actuality, these many at-grade crossings are some of the most dangerous.”

He referred to these crossings as ​“a ticking time bomb where there is going to be a deadly collision. It’s bound to happen, without this intervention.”

Furthermore, Goode said, trail usage has increased substantially since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2019, the New Haven stretch of the canal trail saw roughly 110,000 trips. In 2020, he said, his group projects that number of trips to exceed 150,000 — as counted by infrared sensors placed along the canal that have collected trail usage data since December 2017.

“The trail is an essential transportation asset for residents and that’s why it’s prioritized in the Plan of Conservation and Development as the spine of the city’s pedestrian and bicycling network,” he said.