Allan Appel Photo
Railroad Underpass at James and Humphrey
Underpasses – the trash that collects there and art that could be there – are hot topics on the East Side.
In recent months members of the Quinnipiac River Community Group (QRCG) and other neighbors have complained about illegal dumping beneath the I‑91 overpasses at Clinton and Middletown and Front and Middletown.
City Public Works Director John Prokop said those sites are two of about ten locations the city has been monitoring or illegal dumping, usually by small to medium-size contractors who do not want to pay the fees to dispose of materials legally.
“You’ve got big TVs, couches, concrete, steel, casement windows with glass, all kinds of construction material,” he said Tuesday.
“The illegal dump [ing] on city streets is very problematical for us. It creates an inconvenience and a hazard for local traffic. It becomes an eyesore number one, and sometimes it becomes a road hazard.”
Prokop described how drivers risk head-on collisions when veering to avoid large debris piles that have often been dropped in the middle of the road.
There’s an expense to the city as well. To remove such materials, Prokop said, usually requires a pay loader that scoops up the debris in a bucket and drops it into a waiting dump truck. That’s two drivers and two laborers, or four workers. The street usually has to be closed, perhaps for a half hour, and the cost in overtime can add up unless the clean-up crews can be folded in at the beginning of the day or the end of regular routes. The Public Works department payloaders are usually booked for normal bulk pick-ups for weeks in advance.
“It’s similar to graffiti. You want to do it [clean it up] sooner rather than later,” Prokop said.
Transformed To Gallery Walls?
At Tuesday night’s Quinnipiac River Community Group’s regular meeting, discussion turned to a different underpass.
Yale sophomore Brian Tang (pictured) arrived having ridden his bike beneath the I‑91 underpass at State Street about two and a half miles along what he called the Humphrey-Lombard corridor to the Waucoma Yacht Club on the Quinnipiac for the QRCG meeting.
Tang is active both in Elm City Cycling and the Upper State Street Association. He said the point of his ride was to pitch the idea to the QRCG of making Humphrey-Lombard, from Orange to Front, the next route for a municipal bike lane.
Tang and others from the Upper State Street Association are meeting this Saturday to flesh out their plan to beautify the I‑91 underpass at Orange and Humphrey.
As advanced thus far, the aim of the redo of the underpass is in part to link East Rock with the Jocelyn Square community along the Lombard-Humphrey corridor. Now that plan might expand.
If Tang is successful, that now well might include promoting a bike lane and community outreach from the underpass to include tree plantings, green events, bicycle safety jamborees along Humphrey and Lombard all the way to the Quinnipiac “so people meet each other,” he said.
His bike ride was stage one in background research for the work ahead, Tang added.
Area activist Chris Ozyck endorsed Tang’s project. He called it a natural for the “connecting [bicycle] corridor to be spawned from the beautification of the underpass.”