Move over, drivers — cyclists may soon have their own protected stretch of the road on Edgewood Avenue.
The Harp administration is beginning to try to sell neighbors and affected government departments on creating a largely protected bike lane running the entire length of Edgewood eastbound all the way from Forest Road to Park Street downtown, and a second one in portions of Edgewood Avenue the other direction.
A “delineator.”
That would mean cutting out a lane of car traffic and erecting some “delineators” — i.e. those rubber duckies you see on Boulevard—to shield cyclists from a parking lane and car lane.
The Edgewood lane is one of a host of pending bike-lane plans, most of them not just painted on the street but separated from cars, that are in the works around town, according to city transit chief Doug Hausladen. Hausladen is following up on plans originally hatched by his predecessor, Jim Travers, while negotiating with the state to try make some of them happen; at least one of the plans may need a change in state law to become reality.
The plans represent the latest efforts by New Haven to promote cycling as an alternative to driving. A national advocacy group last month awarded New Haven a “bronze” star for its bike-promotion efforts while suggesting improvements — such as separated lanes, which keep cyclists safer than bike lanes or “sharrows” simply painted onto roadways shared with cars. A clear plurality of respondents to an Independent “True Vote” poll at the time of that announcement identified separated lanes as the single most important out of eight suggested steps the city can take to become bike-friendlier.
DOT Doings
peopleforbikes.org
Three of the planned lanes are already approved to be built, two by the state Department of Transportation (DOT) as part of the rebuilding of I‑95 and the I‑95/I‑91/Route 34 interchange through town.
DOT has promised to build with a two-way cycletrack (separated/protected bike path) along Brewery Street, retrofitting an oversized sidewalk which is separated from traffic by a curb. The cycletrack will be off-street alongside a pedestrian sidewalk.
DOT has also agreed to an off-road two-way “cycletrack” separated by curbs along Water Street from Brewery to East.
John Dunham, the DOT’s assistant district manager, said Wednesday that those tracks should be completed in late 2016. The whole I‑95/I‑91/Route 34 project is scheduled to be done by November 2016. The bike lanes need to be done near the end of that project because it follows from the larger work being done in the area. Otherwise, the DOT would pave the lanes, then have to rip them up and repave them.
The city, meanwhile, plans to connect to the DOT’s Water Street cycle track with sharrows along Olive Street, and then a curb-separated cycletrack on Water from Olive to Brewery, as part of its next phase of building out the Farmington Canal Trail.
Define “Roadway”
The city’s vision is to have that cycletrack run all the way to the East Shore. But there’s a hitch : How to get it over the Tomlinson Bridge.
That has prompted a game of legal parsing among all sides. Focused on words like “separated,” “protected,” and “roadway.”
The cycletrack would squeeze the bridge from four to three lanes of car traffic. To make that work, the state would have to agree to have one of those lanes switch directions during morning and evening rush hours, so that commuters heading downtown can have two lanes in the morning, then have two lanes returning home in the afternoon, according to Hausladen. The proposal has been floated during recent discussions about local transit issues (including development at Union Station) between city and state officials.
In addition, Hausladen said, the city may need to have wording in a state law changed to permit a two-way cycletrack placed in that spot. That’s because the cycletrack would be separated by striping and those rubber-ducky “delineators” — not by a curb and not placed on a separate former sidewalk. Only in the latter cases can a two-way cycletrack be built in Connecticut under state law, Hausladen said. He said New Haven would seek to have the law modified this session to include use of delineators.
The law in question is Section 14 – 286b on the state statues. It reads in part: “Every person operating a bicycle upon a roadway shall ride as near to the right side of the roadway as practicable.”
In other words cyclists can’t ride against traffic. Bike lanes have to run with traffic.
Unless they’re “separated” or “protected.”
In preliminary discussions, DOT had objected that the two-way cycletrack over the bridge as envisioned by the city — separated from traffic by paint and delineators — is still part of the “roadway.” So it would be illegal and unsafe.
Joseph Balskus, secretary of the Connecticut Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Board and a city bike-lane consultant, said he has been providing DOT administrators with information about the issue. Meanwhile, he plans to speak with legislators about clarifying the wording in the law, just in case that’s necessary.
New Haven State Rep. Roland Lemar said he’s not sure if the law needs changing — or just the DOT’s interpretation of it. Either way, he vowed to pursue the issue in the coming session. Other states allow cycletracks on the right side of the right separated by delineators rather than curbs, he said. “There’s no reason Connecticut can’t do it as well,” Lemar said.
DOT spokesman Kevin Nursick said Wednesday that the department is still “hashing out” the question.
“The basic question that needs to be answered here is what is physical separation? Is it air space? Is it a painted line? Or is it something more substantial?” Nursick said. And can “something more substantial” include delineators?
“If you’re going to put bicycles in the opposite direction of the direction of travel of the motor vehicles, therein lies the rub. What is the appropriate separation for the two?”
Nursick noted that nationally states are grappling with the question. The Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, on which they rely, has not been refined to include cycletracks, he said. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials hasn’t officially weighed in either.
Hausladen responded that another group has weighed in on the question, the National Association of City Transportation Officials. NACTO’s guidelines would permit the cycletrack envisioned by New Haven, Hausladen said. He suggested that the state follow NACTO’s guidance.
Click here to read more about the growth of protected bike lanes in the U.S.
Long Wharf & Edgewood
Nearby, Hausladen is speaking with DOT about restriping and repaving portions of Long Wharf Drive so the city can put in one-way bike lanes in each direction, running from the Vietnam Veterans memorial to East Street and separated by those duckies.
Current view of the Edgewood median “mall.”
Envisioned view.
Then comes the Edgewood Avenue plan. Hausladen released drawings the city has prepared. He plans to take them to government emergency-service and maintenance providers and to neighborhood management teams in coming months to gauge their reactions.
“Assuming everyone signs off, we’re constructing it in May,” Hausladen said.
The bike lane would be six feet wide, beside a four-foot buffer marked by the delineators and striping. Next to that would be an eight-foot-wide parking lane. Next to that would be a larger single lane for car travel.
Wide Edgewood doesn’t need the two car lanes it has now in many areas, based on the volume of traffic said Hausladen (pictured),. Planners saw this as an ideal route (as opposed to say, Whalley Avenue) to carve out a safe travel path for cyclists heading downtown from Westville, West River and Dwight.
Still, he observed, “this is a big buy-in. We have to be able to plow it and sweep it. Neighbors would have to walk a little farther” from their cars to the curb.
Conuilstant Balksus, who is working on the Edgewood project for the city, said the lane running eastbound would be separated from cars by delineators and striping for part of the way, but not the whole way. Going westbound — from Winthrop to Yale Avenues— the lane would not be separated from traffic, he said. Part of the road is too narrow for a separate lane, he said, so the city would cotninue relying on painted “sharrows” there.