City Transit Chief Rolls On Feedback

by Paul Bass

Haley Simpson hears you.

She wants you to know that. And she wants you to keep telling her how the city could do a better job making streets safer and travel around town smoother.

Simpson is in the home stretch of serving her first year as city government’s transit chief (official title: director of transportation, traffic, and parking). I.e., the person New Haveners tend to unload on about parking tickets, speeders, gridlock, missing delineators, bike lanes.

She stepped into the job in time to help roll out a series of generational-change redesigns and experiments, from gradually making all of Chapel Street two-way to de-highwaying State Street to helping people get around town on scooters and Uber-like Via discount rideshare vans (the latter two falling under the category of “micromobility”). Not to mention installing cameras to catch speeders and school-bus passers.

Rolling out those projects this year has reinforced the central importance of communication, Simpson said during a conversation Thursday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program. (She made a point of praising how her predecessors designed the programs.)

Simpson brings a lifetime of traversing the city to her job. The 34-year-old city native grew up in the Hill, took CT Transit buses each day to Hillhouse High School (where she was chosen “Miss Hillhouse”), then juggling undergraduate and (business) grad school classes at SCSU with an Army & Navy job on Whalley. She still lives in the Hill, where she’s raising three children. She started as transportation chief in February after serving as Mayor Justin Elicker’s deputy chief of staff, and before that working on development for the housing authority’s Glendower Group arm (where she earned plaudits working with the community on plans for a new housing complex at the old Church Street South site).

The secret to success in her current job, she concluded, “is to make sure you communicate with the residents, and make sure you communicate with the alders, and make sure you have the approvals in place before you implement any of the programs.

“The more feedback we receive, the better we are. The better we can be for the community.”

She saw firsthand the importance of city departments communicating with each other when working in the subterranean Emergency Operations Center during snowstorms that buried the city right after she stepped into the job. Then, riding along with police ticketing and towing illegally parked cars blocking snow removal, she saw the importance of communicating with the public about where to put their vehicles.

Since then:

• Simpson has overseen the rollout of cameras recording drivers ignoring stop signs on school buses. She was surprised by how many people have been breaking that law (nearly 16,000 from March to the start of October). When some people contested their tickets, she saw the importance of an appeals process where everyone can review video and an independent hearing officer can determine who’s right. In some cases, people point out that a school bus driver put out the stop sign at the last moment, or had the warning lights on too long.

• She has also overseen the installation of automated speed and red-light cameras that send citations to drivers. In the first two weeks of a month-long warning period, 2,700 citations were sent out.

• The gradual two-way conversion of Chapel moved forward. Before she took the job, the first stretch of that conversion — from College to York — was delayed for months because city officials hadn’t kept the Traffic Authority in the loop. Her office is now preparing the second-phase extension to Dwight Street, making sure to keep both Traffic Authority commissioners and neighbors apprised of every step.

• From neighbors at a recent WEB (Whalley, Edgewood, Beaver Hills) community management team meeting, Simpson heard about challenges pedestrians face with differently-timed walk signals. Now “we’re out there looking and checking the timing to make sure there’s adequate amount of time, both for the pedestrian and for the cars,” Simpson reported.

• Simpson heard from Goffe Street seniors that they like to ride the version of new city electric Veo scooters that have seats. The city then sent more electric scooters to the area’s hub. Meanwhile, Fair Haven seniors were asking for electric scooters (with seats) in their neighbhood as well; the city responded by expanding the program there.

Simpson credited New Haveners’ feedback for helping the city address the impact on nearby streets of the new two-lane shrinkage of State Street downtown; and make transit more accessible to people with disabilities. (She credited disability activist David Agosta with showing her needs-improvement infrastructure around town.)

She appeared unflustered by the sometimes harsh way New Haveners offer their transit feedback.

“I don’t take things too personal,” she said. “I think at the end of the day, everyone wants to be heard. Everyone deserves to be heard. You learn more if you just listen.

“And oftentimes people get talked down from the ledge when they see that someone is interested in just hearing what they are saying. We can all learn from someone else’s lived experience. So it’s been extremely valuable to me to listen to what residents are saying, listen to their gripes. Oftentimes we can find some sort of solution.”

Click on the below video to watch the full conversation with city transportation chief Haley Simpson. Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of “Dateline New Haven.” Click here to download the WNHH FM app.