Allan Appel Photo
Paul Vercillo pointing to the “death trap,” the intersection at Quinnipiac Avenue and Hemingway Street.
“Shhhhh, drive slowly. The oysters are sleeping.”
Would a sign with that slumbering shellfish sentiment slow you down if you were tearing down Quinnipiac Avenue?
Or, if you hadn’t a clue about local history and industry, would it just evoke a big question mark in the brain, perhaps a moment of distracted head-scratching, and a harder foot on the accelerator?
That question was engaged Tuesday night at the regular meeting of the Quinnipiac East Management Team (QEMT), which drew about 25 neighbors to St. James Church at 62 East Grand Ave. just off Quinnipiac Avenue.
Fereshteh Bekhrad, one of the champions of local traffic calming, with Charlie Salerno at the meeting.
The sign suggestion was part of an update on the progress of a range of projects, approved last month by ranked-choice voting, to be undertaken by Quinnipiac Meadows residents.
Of the $20,000 authorized this year through the Neighborhood Public Improvement Project (NPIP) program of the city’s anti-blight Livable City Initiative, the QEMT folks earmaraked approximately $5,000 for temporary traffic-calming measures — signs, painted bumpouts with “rubber duckie barriers” and other low-cost visual clues to slow down— on speedy Quinnipiac Avenue.
The prospect of some slow-down signs of a humorous nature was also in the mix.
However, not everyone was amused, or at least convinced, that calling passing drivers’ attention to the local bivalves would do the trick.
Q Ave area residents Chris Stewart, right, and Bill Meddick.
Chris Stewart, a resident on Quinnipiac Avenue, since 1997, argued that such a sign would not work. He said as much through a personal confession.
“I admit I’ve speeded” many times when he was younger, he said. “But will someone unfamiliar with Fair Haven get it?”
His dissension triggered a moment of thoughtfulness in the group. Then local artist Joann Moran suggested language for a sign: “Drive like your dog lives here”.
Stewart, the father of two young kids, counter-suggested, “Drive like your kids live here.”
“We’ll be trying out a series of different signs,” said Pat Kane, the recording secretary of the group.
Tactical urbanism at Ferry and Chapel streets, called unattractive.
Tongue-in-cheek signs were not the only traffic-calming measured discussed. Local developer Fereshteh Bekhrad said she is planning some painted bumpouts as well,. She bemoaned what she called the failure of the array of temporary measures the city deployed at Chapel and Ferry streets.
“The colors are awful,” she said. “And no one considered the elevations, so they’re just gathering garbage.”
“The colors should be appropriate to the neighborhood,” added artist Moran.
Bekhrad pointed out that some homeowners already have erected their own signs along the avenue. Others are considering deploying mirrors and other “tactical urbanism” devices.
Whatever it is, said Chris Ozyck, who filled in for Kurtis Kearney to chair the meeting, “you can’t break the law.”
Ozyck pointed out that later this month officials from LCI and the Traffic, Transportation & Parking department are scheduled to discuss these preliminary QEMT ideas — as well as those from the other districts across the city; some guidance should be forthcoming from that gathering.
All this could not come sooner for Paul Vercillo, a New Haven history teacher who bought an 1880s-era fixer-upper at 874 Quinnipiac Ave. and has turned it into a New Haven Preservation Trust prize-winning property.
Vercillo examines where a speeding car took out the base of a tree in front of his houe.
In the nine years he has lived there, Vercillo calculated, speeding along the avenue has resulted in a cars hitting trees or poles just in the vicinity of his house about 30 times. He has tried a number of personal approaches already. He bought 50 reflector strips, like the one pictures above, on his own nickel, and affixing them to posts along with painting his own “Children/Slow Down” signs.
He said he has reached a boiling point: The noise and danger of the speeding made him and his wife contemplate moving into their barn, safely recessed about 50 feet from the road.
For now he’s still in the house and awaiting traffic calming.
In addition to the upcoming temporary measures and $1.5 million the city has promised to spend on permanent solutions, Vercillo offered simpler, less expensive suggestions.
One suggestion: making Quinnipiac and Hemingway an all-way stop, with the addition of two stop signs,.
One week prior to the April QEMT meeting, the more refined temporary ideas will be workshopped, Ozyck said, at a gathering at his house. Then a final vote will be taken on which signs and other measures to implement.
All the funds need to be expended by the end of June, the end of the city’s fiscal year.