Isaac Yu Photo
“Safe Routes” gathering Wednesday evening in Scantlebury Park.
En route to New Haven: a blueprint for city streets that prioritizes walkers, bikes, and bus riders with, among other ideas, miles of new bike lanes and bus “mini-hubs.”
That blueprint is called the “Safe Routes for All” plan.
On Wednesday evening, more than 50 transportation enthusiasts descended on Scantlebury Park for pizza — and to disclose details of the emerging plan, which the consulting group Street Plans has been developing for the city since 2019.
According to a Street Plans’ presentation, Safe Routes for All identifies 76 intersections of concern to pedestrian safety, proposes 88 new miles of bike lanes as part of a citywide network, and suggests two new CTtransit “mini hubs” in Fair Haven and Westville.
Proposed bike network.
Many who showed up have been attending various biking/walking tours of the city’s many neighborhoods that have been held throughout the last year to identify safety improvements.
“We took the feedback from those handlebar-and-walkabout surveys and scored each street,” said Street Plans consultant Dana Wall. It was so important to get an understanding of how people felt while walking on the streets, and that helped us prioritize.”
The plan does not include specific steps or a timeline for implementation of its proposals. Instead, SFRA is to act as a “blueprint” for the city in the coming years, making it easier to implement projects in a timely manner.
For example, the bike lanes and stripes in the SFRA plan could be more easily added each time a road is routinely repaved, suggested engineer Neil Olinski.
Mayor Justin Elicker with Street Plans chief Mike Lydon.
The event was well attended by government officials, nonprofit partners, and community activists. Advocate Andrew Giering of the Safe Streets coalition underscored the efficiency of public-nonprofit partnership. He said that having a partner like the Community Alliance for Research and Engagement (CARE), which has done community outreach for SFRA, humanizes the work of the city’s transportation and engineering departments.
“Often what the city is doing and what nonprofits are doing are different,” Giering said. “This here is a model that could be replicated in a lot of areas.”
Plan-gineers Olinski and Lusch.
The plan also has support from New Haven’s brightest transportation minds; in addition to parking authority chief Doug Hausladen and City Engineer Giovanni Zinn, Olinski and planner Carolyn Lusch expressed enthusiasm about the plan.
“I’m excited about the bike network. Often these kinds of improvements can feel piecemeal, so to know that there’s a whole vision is really exciting,” Lusch said.
Safe Streets organizer Lorena Mitchell.
In some way, the citywide focus and excitement mirror that of the original Complete Streets plan, which was adopted in 2009 but ultimately failed to produce tangible results. This time, activists in groups like the Safe Streets Coalition of New Haven, CARE, and the New Haven Coalition for Active Transportation aim to keep the plan from collecting dust on the shelf.
“I appreciate the equity focus. They’re leading with that front and center,” Lorena Mitchell of Safe Streets said. “I hope they continue that equity focus with a robust implementation phase.”
CARE reps Tammy Chapman and Alycia Santilli.
“What’s going to come next is really key,” added Tammy Chapman of CARE. We’ll continue to gather and submit feedback from the community and get everyone involved.”
“Pizza! Pizza!”