For New Haven, it’s been a slow transition to safer streets

Douglas Hausladen remembers the day in 2008 when he realized he needed to do something about pedestrian safety in New Haven. He described what happened to Mila Rainof, a fourth-year medical student in the city.

“She had just left the emergency room, and she had literally just saved someone’s life in the emergency room,” Hausladen said. “She was walking two blocks to go home. She crossed South Frontage Road, and she was struck by a car, landed on her head, and died.”

Hausladen, director of New Haven’s parking authority, also mentioned the death of Gabrielle Lee, 11, who was killed by a driver who ran a red light and left the scene on Whalley Avenue that same year, just blocks away from Rainof’s accident. 

“After Mila was killed, I remember being beside myself, running into this person and asking this person, ‘What can I do? How can I help?’” Hausladen recalled. He is one of many in the community who was compelled to advocate for safer streets.

Since those deaths, the City of New Haven has attempted to address pedestrian and bike safety with various initiatives. The most recent, Safe Routes for All, follows a vision to create a more bicycle and pedestrian-friendly environment by increasing focus on bike lanes, free bus fares, sidewalks and pedestrian refugee islands. However, since its adoption in September, the plan still awaits funding. City officials and advocates argue that this delay means that city streets continue to pose risks for pedestrians and cyclists.

“If you ask a typical rider, I don’t think they would feel safe,” said Sandeep Aysola, current Director of Traffic, Transportation and Parking (TTP) for the city of New Haven. “I don’t think I would feel safe riding a bike in certain sections here.”

In a joint effort, the city and The Board of Alders adopted the Safe Routes for All plan, which builds on previous studies and creates a comprehensive set of priorities and recommendations to set the city on a path to safe, active transportation improvements.

When fully implemented, it will enable residents and visitors to “walk, bike, roll and ride” throughout the city.

“We have a long way to go,” Aysola said.

Going into the details of the Safe Routes for All plan, Aysola touched upon the greater ideas behind the revision of New Haven and estimated that the timeline is still to be determined as the city creates a task force composed of members of various city departments.

“This was not just a bicycle master plan but also a pedestrian and connectivity transit plan,” Aysola said. “In terms of pedestrians… we want to make sure a lot of our pedestrian networks are complete. Our sidewalk coverage is not full, especially when you go more away from downtown.”

Hausladen, who served as director of New Haven’s TTP from 2014-2021, said that efforts to improve city streets began early in his career. He’s encouraged by the Safe Routes for All plan, which was developed over the past four to five years. 

“That (Safe Routes for All) is going to outline a lot of my vision, but it doesn’t outline it all,” Hausladen explained. 

He hopes that once it’s successful, New Haven can serve as a model for other cities around the country on how to have sustainable transportation.

“It has not worked, yet,” he said. “But I am not done myself, and neither are the people who have been fighting and working on these issues.”

The history of this struggle goes back to the deaths of Rainof and Lee, which prompted city officials to take steps toward creating a safer environment for city residents. 

That same year, New Haven became the first city in Connecticut to create a comprehensive design, Complete Streets, to balance the needs of pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists. It was officially adopted in 2009, with its design manual beginning in 2010.

By 2015, residents, commuters and employers saw painted bicycle lanes extending along parts of streets including Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Church Street, York Street, College Street and more.

Before Complete Streets became a city initiative, Hausladen helped create the New Haven Safe Streets Coalition in 2008, along with a group of other residents passionate about safe, accessible and sustainable transportation. This coalition focuses on underserved communities first, and advocates for better infrastructure policies and transportation education.

Over the years, New Haven Safe Streets Coalition has grown to cover pedestrian safety, green emissions advocacy and ghost bike memorials, which are white bicycles memorializing the places where cyclists have been killed by cars.

Maximillian Chaoulideer, one of the lead organizers running the Safe Streets coalition, believes that without this organization, things would be moving much slower in the governmental processes than they already are. 

“I think that there would be less pressure on alders, and maybe alders who have become champions… would feel less empowered to be doing this work,” Chaoulideer said.

“With city engineering and transportation, they propose redesign, and then it has to go through what’s called the Traffic Authority, which is the exact same thing as police officials,” Chaoulideer explained. “(They) review it and they will only approve it if there’s aldermanic approval for that specific region.”

COMMUNITY CONCERNS

Much of the concern among residents and city officials focus on the fact that not enough is being done in the city to protect pedestrians and cyclists on our streets.

The City of New Haven has resolved over 100,000 requests on its SeeClickFix site, which includes a number of complaints, notices and warnings regarding issues in New Haven relating to sidewalks, potholes, illegal dumping and many other issues.

However, many residents’ concerns relating to traffic signals, pavement markings and safety concerns are still left open from August and September of this year, with one stating that the poster, “just saw another biker hit by a car” at Lawrence and Orange streets.

Huda Zahid, who recently moved to New Haven from Minneapolis, commutes by bike every day.

“Drivers in New Haven are typically very aggressive and would often pass cyclists very close or honk at them,” Zahid explained. Coming from Minneapolis, Zahid wasn’t used to the reduced bike parking available and the lack of clean bike paths in New Haven. 

“In my opinion, it is not very bike-friendly for new cyclists who don’t feel confident riding on the road along with over-speeding cars and broken glass,” she said.

Zahid also touched on the fact that many areas in the city have no bike racks for locking up bikes. 

Taylor Holdaway, another resident of the city, agreed with Zahid about the debris-filled lanes.

“The bike lanes that do exist here are often filled with broken glass, or potholes, or parked cars, and the city doesn’t seem to care to fix them like it does the ‘car’ parts of the road,” Holdaway said.

William Kurtz, one of the administrators of the New Haven Bike Rides group on Facebook, gave his opinions about his city’s bike lanes.

“To its credit, planners and officials in New Haven recognize that active transportation infrastructure should be a priority and they take steps to include it, sometimes,” he said. “A lot of the bike lanes around town are substandard. Take the Orange Street ‘door zone’ lane as an example. The protected lanes have so far taken years to come to fruition.”

Many cyclist crashes and injuries are due to the placement of bike lanes too close to parked cars. This injury is called “dooring” and happens to a large number of cyclists. In 2021, the state of Connecticut adopted a law that prohibits motorists from opening an automobile’s door into traffic. This ordinance clarifies that the responsibility is on motorists not to “door” those cycling. 

With 2.5% of residents commuting by bike as of 2020, New Haven has made numerous efforts to earn the Silver-League bike friendly community medal from the League of American Bicyclists.

The League of American Bicyclists has described their mission to improve lives and strengthen communities by creating a Bicycle Friendly America. The award for the Bicycle Friendly Community reflects the ongoing efforts of local leaders working to provide a better biking environment.

New Haven earned this title back in 2018, and since then has focused on recommendations by the League of American Bicyclists, which include bike education programs and the updated bike route plan currently in effect. 

“There was a Street Smarts campaign that we did many years ago, almost a decade ago, which we are trying to bring back. We’re trying to work with AAA and other partners to do some sort of bike education program around schools,” Aysola said.

Some of those education programs are run by the New Haven Coalition for Active Transportation (NHCAT), which since 2018 focuses on bike education for people of all ages and abilities.

“The League offers the only nationally recognized bike education curriculum, called Smart Cycling,” Karen Jenkins, founder and board chair of the organization, explained. “There are books and literature materials, they’ve got information for seniors, they’ve got teaching materials for youth and children.”

When Jenkins, a Black woman, moved to New Haven about six years ago, she became the second minority League Cycling Instructor. However, the number of LCIs who are women, people of color and Spanish speakers has dramatically increased since then.

“This past spring we offered our first class in Spanish,” Jenkins said. 

Over at the Devil’s Gear Bike Shop, a mechanic and now LCI, Luis Alfonso Santiago Montiel, who goes by Poncho, has offered these bicycle classes to families.

“He offered a class in the afternoon for families, and he had three or four families of all ages taking his bike education class in Spanish. It was wonderful,” Jenkins said.

While New Haven still works to transition toward safer streets, much of the fight rests upon the funding available for these projects. Hausladen, who has been advocating for improvements for years, has seen how slow progress has been.

“Community connectivity started in 2017. It was proposed in the (20)16-17 budget, and it started in the fall of ’17 when I got $358,000 approved to install a sidewalk on Ella Grasso Boulevard, the boulevard of death, where all the pedestrians keep dying,” Hausladen said. “It’s 2022. October. And no sidewalk has been installed. I don’t want to be the negative Nancy in the room, but sidewalks aren’t that hard. Build them.”