Westvilleans Clash Over ​“Cycletrack”

Two views of protected bike lanes — as either conduits of economic and communal vitality or destroyers of needed street parking spaces — collided at the first public discussion of an ambitious plan to connect the west side of New Haven to downtown.

The two views pitted neighbor against neighbor, barista against customer, teacher against parent at a standing-room-only gathering Thursday night inside Edgewood School’s cafeteria.

A hundred people, some with bike helmets or preschoolers in tow, showed up to hear city officials describe, and then to weigh in on, a first draft of a plan to spend $1.2 million in state bond money to create a network of the protected bike lanes — aka ​“cycletracks,” largely buffered from car traffic with delineators (or ​“rubber duckies”). The cycletracks will link both Southern Connecticut State University and Westville, Edgewood and Dwight to the center of town. (Before the meeting, neighbors viewed mounted renderings of the plan and displays about the broader goals, contained in this file.) The plan reflects New Haven’s embrace of cycling and ​“calmer” lower-speed streets.

Part of the plan would install a two-way cycletrack on all of Edgewood Avenue from Forest Road down to Park Street.

The Edgewood Avenue plan is broken up into three segments. Most of the discussion Thursday night concerned the first section from Forest down to Edgewood Park.

Which the crowd applauded. And criticized. Depending on who was speaking.

The two-hour meeting summoned two visions of Westville: One, a new-urbanist magnet for a wave of young new families valuing pedestrian and bike-friendly streets, along the lines of bike lane and coffee shop-centered East Rock; the other a more semi-suburban neighborhood with plenty of room for parking without the need to walk a block or more to a business or a school or an apartment.

Brewing Opposition

One flash point centered on what some described as a parking crunch at Edgewood School. The original plan calls for separated bike lanes on either side of Edgewood Avenue. That plan would eliminate street parking on the north side of Edgewood from Forest to Yale — including in front of Edgewood School and Deja Brew Cafe on either side of West Rock Avenue.

Edgewood teacher Kim Rogers handed out a chart comparing the stretches of Edgewood Avenue and Chapel Street in the neighborhood. It noted that Edgewood has more houses without driveways than Chapel, more businesses (three versus one), more cars already parked along the street, a school, more student and parent pedestrians, and more bus traffic.

“We need to be concerned about everybody’s safety. Edgewood may not be the best choice. It may be Chapel” instead, she argued.

City transit chief Doug Hausladen responded that Chapel is designed as a higher-volume thoroughfare for cars and that bus stops enable drivers to pull out of traffic.

Deja Brew owner Carol Frawley said that in the morning some of her customers stop in for coffee while driving into New Haven from Woodbridge and Bethany. She said they already compete for spots with Edgewood teachers already have trouble finding enough spaces right in front of the school across the street. With the proposed bike lane eliminating spaces in front of her establishment, Frawley said, teachers would need to fill more spots, and she would lose those customers.

And perhaps her business altogether.

“I invested thousands of dollars in my business,” which has no parking lot, Frawley said. She stressed that she’s ​“not against bike lanes” in general, but just against this plan, because it removes parking.

“I hope,” Frawley said, that her neighbors aren’t ​“saying, ​‘We don’t care if you’re going to close.’”

Hausladen said that the plan actually frees up 150 new spaces right within a block of the school on Yale Avenue, more than compensating for spaces lost along Edgewood. Yale Avenue currently has unseparated bike lanes in both directions. The new plan would combine them and buffer them on the park side of the street (newly allowed under a state law that took effect last July); and create a new legal parking lane where beside them, where teachers could keep their cars all day. It would also widen existing lane for car traffic, with effect of slowing what now functions as a speedway.

Some neighbors owning or living in multifamily buildings along Edgewood Avenue still agreed with Frawley because they oppose the idea of losing the Edgewood spots. They said it’s hard enough sometimes already to find street parking in front of their homes. They argued that that’s particularly tough for disabled people, seniors, and parents with young children, who should be able to park right in front of their homes.

Michael Grande, who runs a technology company and owns an Edgewood multifamily, dismissed as ​“bunk” a chart Hausladen presented showing limited need for more parking on Edgewood. ​“We all live here,” Grande said. ​“We know” there’s a crunch that would worsen under the plan.

The New Urbanists

Proponents argued with equal passion that protected bike lanes will make streets safer for kids and improve Westville’s quality of life.

“This is not about Woodbridge and Bethany. This is about Westville and New Haven,” argued Ben Berkowitz, founder of the SeeClickFix problem-solving web platform and a Deja Brew regular who walks downtown to work. Based on his experience visiting other cities, Berkowitz said, echoing an argument by other speakers, bike lanes will bring businesses like Frawley’s more business.

“I’ve lived in San Francisco. I’ve lived in Pittsburgh and Tel Aviv. Wherever they put in bike lanes, life is better,” with slower car traffic and more connected neighbors, echoed Naftali Kaminski, the chief of pulmonary and critical care and sleep medicine at Yale. He said he moved his family to Westville two years ago seeking that kind of neighborhood.

Berkowitz said the promise of new protected lanes helped convince him to move his family to Westville, where he grew up and where his dad grew up. He plans to send his son to Edgewood School, he said. ​“The streets are all of ours. We need to get down them safely on our feet, on our bicycles, on our cars.”

Another parent of young children who moved back to his childhood neighborhood, Tim Holahan of Yale Avenue, said the plan ​“will protect me and my 2‑year-old daughter” on his bike.

“This neighborhood is full of young kids. It’s exciting to see the neighborhood where I grew up rejuvenated,” said Holahan, who commutes by bike to his downtown software firm. ​“If we don’t give up parking for the convenience of a few, more people will be at risk.”

Liam Brennan, a cycling activist who spoke of how 1,500 people commute to work daily by bike in New Haven, takes his 6‑year-old son Ciaran to Edgewood on two wheels. ​“The cars that come down every day on Edgewood zip by at 45 miles per hour, 50 miles per hour. That puts everybody at danger,” he said. He said as his children grow older, ​“I want them to be able to walk to school without fear of being run over by a car. I want them to live independently.”

Journalist Mark Oppenheimer of West Rock Avenue whose eldest daughter was in Kim Rogers’s 3d-grade class last year, praised Rogers for being a good teacher. Then he lit into Rogers’ argument about inadequate parking and the Chapel Street alternative.

“I live seven houses from Edgewood Avenue. No one has ever parked in front of my house,” Oppenheimer said. ​“There are hundreds of spots within a 30-second walk of Edgewood School.” He argued that some people in New Haven have unrealistic expectations for citydwellers about free parking, that if ​“parking is not literally in front our our house, we feel oppressed.”

“I don’t want [the protected lanes over] on Chapel Street,” Oppenheimer said. ​“I want them where children can bike to school. … This is going to be fabulous. It’s good for commerce. It’s great for children.”

Compromise?

Toward the end of the evening, a longtime cycling advocate, Joel LaChance, suggested a compromise: Given the division in the room, what about proceeding with the plan for Edgewood Avenue from Yale Avenue to Park Street, to make sure at least that part gets built, and hold off for now on The Westville portion?

It’s unclear whether the other portions will prove controversial too. That will become clearer on March 29, at a second hearing at Troup School. Westville Alder Adam Marchand, who hosted and helped organize Thursday’s session at Edgewood School, promised to hold a follow-up public meeting in Westville as well. He also noted that the plan remains at an early stage, with months of more meetings and needed regulatory approvals ahead.

Meanwhile, City Engineer Giovanni Zinn said he and Hausladen and their staffs received great feedback at Thursday night’s meeting. He promised they will seek to incorporate it into refinements of the plan for the Forest-to-Yale Avenue stretch of Edgewood.

In fact, given Carol Frawley’s previous opposition to the plan, Zinn and Hausladen had already prepared an alternative scheme that would preserve parking and give cyclists half a loaf.

Rather than have cycletracks on both sides of Edgewood Avenue — and thus removing the street parking on the north side that runs by the school and Deja Brew — this alternative would create a single protected cycletrack running running toward downtown from Forest to Yale Avenue along the south side of Edgewood. It would not put a cycletrack on the north side. That plan would preserve all the existing street parking.

Both versions of the plan were on exhibit in the back of the hall Thursday night, where Frawley and Berkowitz stood debating after the completion of the formal.

Shown the plan, Carol Frawley said she could support it.

Tim Holahan and Mark Oppenheimer, who were also standing by, said they don’t support it. They spoke of how, especially at dusk and into the evening, cyclists riding home westbound along that stretch get ​“doored” (smacked by drivers or passengers suddenly exiting their vehicles). If the city is going to build new cycling infrastructure, Oppenheimer argued, it should ​“do it right” from the get-go.