Heights Pitched On New Traffic-Slowing Measures

The city has found $1.8 million for traffic-calming measures for speed-plagued Quinnipiac Avenue north of Grand Avenue to Foxon Boulevard.

Neighbors are glad to hear that. But as witnesses to repeated accidents and near-misses, they say they can’t wait the years for that money to move through the pipeline and improvements be implemented.

So they are proposing a spate of temporary, low-cost measures in the meantime.

They spoke of those ideas Tuesday night at the January meeting of the Quinnipiac East Management Team (QEMT).

One idea was for how to spend part of the community management team’s $20,000 grant from the city’s anti-blight Livable City Initiative. Local developer Fereshteh Bekhrad proposed spending $5,000 for emergency traffic calming measures for upper Quinnipiac Avenue, where she owns 23 condominium units, housing about 60 people.

Bekhrad said she regularly has tenants moving out because dangerous and quality-of-life-wrecking traffic conditions due to speed, poor and scary sight lines for turning in and out of driveways, and lights and sirens from emergency vehicles.

Six major accidents have occurred in front of her property, she said as she called on neighbors to support transforming Quinnipiac Avenue into a neighborhood street instead of the speedway and cut-through that it currently is.

Bekhrad’s package of suggested improvements included the following:

• Bold solar or brightly painted speed limit signs — - $800.

• Painted rotaries or roundabouts at some of the four existing intersections creating an elevated illusion — $2,000.

• Pedestrian crossing markings and street-narrowing textured bright paint — $500.

• Signs declaring elimination of street parking over 25 feet left of residential complexes’ exit driveways — $550.

• A set of four pavement markings and speed bumps to created raised illusion with textured bright paint — $600.

• Neighborhood traffic-alerting images painted on the railroad overpass bridge — $550.

Bekhrad and QEMT recording secretary Patricia Kane also proposed working with the police and fire departments to reduce frequency and volume of emergency sirens.

Top neighborhood cop Lt. Jason Rentkowicz said his officers in cruisers are careful about using lights and sirens. If a resident captures time and location of a siren that might not be appropriate, he’ll look into it, he said.

The group also decided to invite firefighters to a future meeting to investigate the noise pollution of fire vehicles, which, they assert, are noisier than necessary.

Bekhrad’s neighbors were generally favorable to her proposals. Old-timers said traffic in years gone by was not great, but tolerable. One longtime resident ascribed the traffic and the noise to the density of the condos and Bella Vista whereas in the past the avenue was lined largely by single homes.

“People have discovered that Quinnipiac is a convenient shortcut,” lamented Charlie Salerno, who has lived on the avenue for more than 40 years.

“So let’s make it less convenient,” replied Bekhrad. ​“With bumps. I’ve showed this to the new mayor. Let’s hope they’ll meet with us.”

Bekhrad’s proposal is one of many that the QEMT will vote on at a special meeting on Jan. 16.

In the meantime, the QEMT neighbors may not have as long to wait as they think in order to see some of the $1.8 million come to life as concrete improvements.

Zinn supplied this update on the status of the funds and the process: ​“It is LOTCIP (Local Transportation Capital Improvement Program) funding from the State of Connecticut. The scope will include traffic calming, paving, sidewalks, and curbs. We will be having public meetings in the first half of this year to work with the Quinnipiac Ave neighborhood to understand their concerns about the street and come to a community-centric design that addresses their concerns. It will also require BOA approval. This is still very early in the process.”