A year after a driver mowed down an 11 year-old girl on Whalley Avenue, the state prepared to start widening the congested road — endangering other pedestrians’ lives, in the view of neighborhood critics.
Thursday marked the first anniversary of the hit-and-run death of Gabrielle Alexis Lee (pictured). The driver of a Volkswagen Jetta fatally struck the girl as she was crossing Whalley Avenue at Davis Street at 9:35 p.m. on June 4, 2008 to pick up clothes at Top Kat Super Laundromat.
The tragedy helped spark a citywide “traffic-calming” movement aimed at making New Haven streets safer.
City officials gathered at the Laundromat Thursday to mark the anniversary by seeking public help in the still-active investigation of her death and touting efforts they’ve made in the past year to slow traffic.
Meanwhile, the state Department of Transportation (DOT) readied plans to begin a $9 million project next week to widen eight-tenths of a mile of the congested avenue, including the intersection where Gabrielle died. The state expects to finish widening the three-lane road between Emerson Street and the Route 63/69 interchange into four smoother-flowing lanes by Dec. 2010. The work will be broken into eight segments to try to minimize disruption to businesses and drivers.
“When it’s all finished and done we’re going to have a facility there that everybody will be happy with,” Richard Zborek, DOT’s supervising engineer on the project, declared Thursday.
“It is going to provide traffic calming. It is going to make pedestrians feel safer. For the businesses, it’s going to provide them with a shot in the arm. It’s going to improve the appearance of the neighborhood.
“We just need to be patient and wait until it’s finished. There’s going to be some havoc with construction. It’s going to be a little tough out there.”
Urban planner Christopher Heitmann (at center in photo) argued Thursday that the DOT plan will accomplish the opposite of Zborek’s predicted outcomes: It will make cars drive even faster, and make walking and biking even more perilous, than it is now. He and other local traffic-calming advocates reacted in outrage to the plan. Heitmann, executive director of the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance (WVRA), organized neighborhood meetings with the DOT to try to alter the Whalley plan. He argues that their concerns fell on deaf ears.
“We want to avoid another tragedy like we had here,” Heitmann said outside Top Kat Thursday.
One Man’s “Calm” …
Heitmann and DOT’s Zborek both said they want to “calm traffic,” to slow down drivers. Their difference lies in divergent views on how to do that.
Zborek said the DOT will add “extensive plantings” along the street. That slows down drivers, he said. So does making the area more “visually appealing” rather than “an urban lot.”
DOT will also raise the height of curbs in front of shopping strips so that “anybody who wants to drive off into a private parking lot or business is going to visually see the driveway. It’s not going to be a case where there’s a couple of inches of curbing and the driver can pull off at any place and endanger the pedestrian,” Zborek said. “As you are driving by you will see the full six inches of curbing. You will see the stenciled concrete between the sidewalk and the curbing, so you know you don’t belong there as an automobile.”
He argued that these measures can cut average driving speeds by 10 miles per hour.
In addition, pedestrians will have an easier time crossing Whalley Avenue, Zborek predicted. That’s because the DOT will better “delineate” crosswalks. It will add walking signals and improve existing traffic signals. Walk signals will last longer so elderly people will have more time to cross.
A big improvement will come with the reconfiguring of Ramsdell and East Ramsdell streets (pictured), according to Zborek. Right now the streets don’t flow into each other; drivers have to turn right on Whalley, then left again in traffic, to cut across. The intersection has more accidents than “normal” as a result, Zborek said. And pedestrians have a “false sense of security” when they cross, because they don’t know if drivers will “make the S” turn to continue of Ramsdell or East Ramsdell, or turn to drive on Whalley.
The DOT plan will make the Ramsdells flow directly into each other into a newly sensible intersection. The DOT will also eliminate a convenience store driveway at the southwest corner of the intersection that used to lead into a gas station.
“As far as pedestrian safety is concerned,” Zborek said,” I think we really did a marvelous job there.”
The Percentages
Tell that to Heitmann. Or rather, don’t.
For starters, he criticized the DOT’s decision to remove a heavily-used crosswalk at Anthony Street near a Dunkin’ Donuts and a bus stop. Zborek said the DOT decided to move crosswalks where there are traffic and cross lights.
People will still cross there, Heitmann said. They do now, light or no light. Only it’ll become more dangerous.
“There goes someone walking across the street right now!” he said, pointing to a pedestrian down the road.
The bigger problem lies in making the avenue into four lanes, Heitmann argued. That means cars will drive faster. He said cars already average 32 miles per hour on this stretch of Whalley, which is marked for 25. A person hit by a car traveling 45 has virtually no chance of survival, said Heitmann, who before taking the WVRA job did neighborhood and public space planning for the Project for Public Spaces. At 35 miles per hour, a pedestrian has a 40 percent chance, he said; at 25, an 80 percent chance.
Heitmann’s preferred alternative, which DOT rejected: Make the stretch of Whalley all three lanes, with one lane traveling in each direction and a center turn lane to keep traffic flowing steadily but slowly.
Then there’s the bicyclist question. Heitmann noted that the state government is about to “de-list” that stretch of Whalley from its updated map of bike routes. The four-lane redo will make Whalley even less bike-friendly, he argued.
DOT’s Zborek agreed that bicyclists, especially families taking “leisure” rides, should take “parallel streets” instead. But he countered that the Whalley plan will improve biking safety by adding signs — both picture signs and signs with words — to tell drivers to share the right lane with cyclists.
Heitmann, an avid rider, wasn’t reassured. “I don’t think it’s going to be a safe route to ride. I wouldn’t ride on it. I don’t think signage will do anything,” he said.
Enforcement Stepped Up
The city’s take on the plan?
City traffic chief Michael Piscitelli (at right in photo) called the DOT plan “a major step forward. It creates a much safer environment on both sides of the roadway.”
Piscitelli, Mayor John DeStefano, and Lt. Joseph Witkowski (at left in photo), the police department’s traffic chief, spoke at Thursday’s Top Kat press conference about other measures they’ve taken to protect pedestrians since Gabrielle Lee’s death.
The cops have issued 8,400 traffic tickets so far this year, compared to 5,800 at this point last year.
Eight hundred people signed pledges to be “smart drivers” as part of a city “Street Smarts” campaign.
The city will replace 41 traffic signals in 2009. It replaced 22 in 2008. It made changes to roads like Long Wharf Drive, River Street, and Perkins Street to slow down traffic. It improved two crosswalks in 2008 around the medical school area where another pedestrian, Mila Rainof, was killed last year; it plans to improve 10 more this year.
Witkowski Thursday renewed a call for people with information about Gabrielle Lee’s killing to contact the police department at 946‑8584 or 946‑6314. The driver, who was behind the wheel of a dark colored 1999 – 2005 Jetta, remains at large. The department offers a $10,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
“We’re going to find you,” Witkowski said of the driver. “We have not given up.”