Please allow me to respond to your recent article, “City begins Route 34 project,” with a description of what the beginning of the project has meant to one worker who must walk on College Street every day to get to my job in the 300 George St. building.
To be sure, crossing the College Street bridge in winter means sliding through the ice and snow left from whatever storm has been through recently as no one ever shovels or sands the sidewalks. However, I have walked this way for the past two years without incident.
Since a week ago Thursday, when College Street changed from a three-lane “boulevard” to a narrow two-lane street, all that has changed for the pedestrians and bicyclists that are supposedly to benefit from this project. Motorists coming down College Street must merge from three lanes to two to cross the bridge. No warning signs have been obvious although as of this Thursday one of the lanes approaching the bridge was shut off with a line of cones. The motorists coming off Exit 2 and trying to turn left onto College Street are frustrated at the new configuration of traffic and try to beat the light. Those who actually stop for the light have invented a new traffic rule, left hand turn on red, or my personal favorite the tandem left hand turn on red!
As a pedestrian waiting for the walk signal you are serenaded with an endless symphony of car horns from the near miss traffic accidents. Now the walk light comes on, you step off the curb and one of the cars takes that opportunity to proceed around the corner. Unforturnately, the pedestrian is in his way. Since this project started, I have been almost run down three times, in a 10-day period. Now imagine if you will the bicyclist coming down College Street toward the bridge. What happens when you have two lanes of traffice squeezing past the Jersey barriers and put a bicycle in the mix? Do people slow down and allow the bike to proceed with traffic? Is there room for two cars and a bike on that bridge? The answer is just barely. Is this an accident waiting to happen?
And what will actually happen to downtown New Haven when the only exit open is Exit 1? Don’t you see the logjams caused by the traffic to Gateway Community College? Mayor Destefano says there are other ways into New Haven but when one way has been the major entrance for 60 years that is three generations of people. You need more than a statement in a newspaper. Where are the signs? How about police directing traffic? You don’t see any of them over at the College Street bridge.
So while the mayor of New Haven and the Governor of Connecticut are congratulating themselves tossing their shovels full of dirt and patting themselves on the back for a job well done, I suggest that the architects of the proposed 100 College St. building start planning space for a memorial plaque listing the names of all the pedestrians and bicyclists killed during the construction. For that matter, after they had put away their shovels, the mayor and the governor should have tried to cross the College Street bridge. Whoever it was at the State Department of Transportation who approved of this mess, should be fired.
Paula Hurlburt
West Haven