by Allan Appel The New Haven independent
The long-gestating Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system that is coming to New Haven, and due to be completed in 2030, foresees many excellent features – including, at the important hub stops along Elm Street, raised crosswalks, safer ways to cross, and upgraded signals.
However, the devil is in the details, especially the sidewalk design details pertaining to boarding, queuing without crowding, pedestrian traffic flow, and wheelchair and other ADA accessibility.
How those issues are worked out – as importantly, if not more so, than routes and schedules—well might make or break the proposed new system.
That was the quietly cautionary message, along with a plea to get involved in the process, that Anstress Farwell, president of the New Haven Urban Design League, delivered to members of the Commission on Disabilities Monday night at their regularly scheduled Zoom meeting.
“They’re at the 30 percent design phase, there’s still a lot to do. How many of you have seen the plans? It’s essentially a draft,” so now is the time to weigh in.
Farwell certainly has. A veteran of decades of urban design battles and highly informed gadfly, she said she’s been speaking to city and DOT officials, “and they are receptive to having these things pointed out to them.”
Click here for a story on the funding of the BRT plan, which is ongoing.
After presenting an overview of the BRT system, including proposed changes to streets, like an eastbound lane on Elm, that are to support the designated bus rapid travel lanes, she said to the commissioners:
“The sidewalks along Elm on both sides, the Green and Library, are very narrow. The good thing is that within a two-and-a-half block range you’ll find most of your buses. . . but what do you do with the sidewalks so that you can queue for the bus and sit on benches and not interfere with people walking by, and there will often be double-parked buses here?”
On the Green side of Elm, she proposed, rhetorically, “Should the Proprietors move the iron fence back, so that you can queue for the bus and sit on benches and not interfere with people walking?”
Such a step would presumably also involve other consequences like the city having to move the mobile performance stage some six feet closer to the center of the Green.
Sidewalk on north side of Elm, with bioswales
On the Library side of Elm, the issue of frontage is equally acute, she said, “It’s so narrow there and there are two swales.”
She also pointed out that on the north side there are sections where the balustrade of the courthouse sticks over the sidewalk.
So the design challenges are many and Farwell urged Gretchen Knauff, the city’s disability services director, who co-chaired the meeting along with Commissioner Tricia Palluzi, to become involved. The time to weigh in is now, Farwell said.
“I feel like they’re just going to move the problem from one side of the Green to the other,” Palluzzi replied. “This isn’t well thought out if you have to worry about widening sidewalks! This is moving the confusion from one side to the other.”
When Palluzzli reprised the idea (which appears not to be under consideration by DOT) to have the major bus hub be near Union Station, Commissioner Beverly Kidder said, “That area is good for people who don’t live in New Haven.”
“It’s a dilemma,” replied Farwell. “One plan was to have the buses on Temple Street. That was a good idea for bus riders, but others considered it a desecration of the Green.”
“Every time we move buses,” Kidder said, “the question comes up who will be the marginalized people in the process, and we haven’t always made the right decisions. It’s historically always been a thorny problem.”
“You’ve jumped on all the questions,” said Farwell. “There’s no perfect solution.”
What Farwell does have is a next step: A kind of Measuring Event, which she is scheduling for April 29, between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m., meeting in front of the library.
It’s not a “walking session,” she said, but a measuring one, to note down the relevant distances and then “share the information and get everyone thinking together on what the best options are. “I personally don’t think they can close Temple entirely to buses without lessening service, comfort, and safety.”
She said she is looking for a crew of seven to nine people to show up with their tape measures. Knauff volunteered to be one of them. “We also need to communicate, with 3-D models to see how people will experience this,” Knauff added.
“Crowding, how people queue up, these will make people decide that buses work or not. People will vote with their feet, and ADA issues are very important in all this. It’s an ongoing process, it’s not fixed, but this is the time to address this.”