Updated: Pedestrian fatality highlights safety issues on Route 34 near Yale-New Haven Hospital

Mila Rainof, 27, was killed over the weekend of April 19-20 in a traffic incident near Yale-New Haven Hospital. Discussion continues today on the ElmCityCycling listserv and the Yale Daily News article comments about how to make the Route 34 & Frontage Road area a safer place for pedestrians.

Erica writes: "Mila was one of the warmest people I've ever met, and she was about to graduate and go into emergency medicine. ... Why do we continue to let this happen and call motor vehicle accidents "accidents"? Why don't people know and talk about all these "accidents"?

One anonymous commentor writes: "If it is found that the driver of the sports car was traveling even 1MPH above the posted speed limit, he or she should be tried for murder and sent to prison for 20 years. We need to rigorously enforce the speed limit, and one way to do that is to try speeders as felons if they kill or injure anyone while speeding."

Tom writes: "This is unacceptable. Despite the mounting number of fatalities, the NHPD continues to ignore traffic violations throughout the city. How many people have to be killed before the police decide that this is a problem? In collisions involving pedestrians, once vehicle speeds exceed 20 mph, the odds of a fatality increase exponentially. The speed limit in downtown needs to be reduced to 20 mph and the police need to enforce the traffic laws."

Anonymous writes: "Sweden has adopted a plan called Vision Zero which is taking steps to ensure that zero, imagine that - zero! - people will die in motor vehicle fatalities in 2020. ... why can't we adopt a Vision Zero for Connecticut? Traffic accidents are not a force of nature - even when no particular actor is "at fault", as here, there are ways of preventing the accidents: safer crosswalks, better traffic enforcement, speed bumps etc. etc. Take a look: the Connecticut General Assembly has taken a look at Sweden's Vision Zero and came up with this report... Let's get our state behind this. http://www.cga.ct.gov/2007/rpt/2007-R-0635.htm "

Because Route 34 is a major road, cars frequently exceed the posted speed limits. Another comment on ElmCityCycling notes that a 2006 petition with 646 signatures calling for pedestrian safety in this area has largely been ignored so far, a fact that the YDN highlights in an article today about the intersection. Could the situation be improved through traffic calming?

Coverage and discussion also continues in the New Haven Independent, Student Doctor Network forum, Hartford Courant, and elsewhere.

Update 4/30/08: An op-ed piece written by three members of ElmCityCycling about traffic safety and the Swedish "Vision Zero" program, "Why Tolerate 42,000 Traffic Deaths A Year?", appears in today's Hartford Courant. On a related note, about 30 members of the community met on Monday at the Yale Medical School, and are beginning to mobilize a response to the situation. Coverage of that meeting appears here and the first set of meeting minutes was posted on the ElmCityCycling listserv.

Update 5/19/08: A community traffic safety event will be held on May 22. Details here.

Update 6/3/08: The Yale Medical Traffic Safety Group is a member of the New Haven Safe Streets coalition.

Lost City Mourns Yankee Doodle, Celebrates Perkins

New York's Lost City blog is sad over the passing of the Doodle Coffee Shop, but recommends a visit to Downtown New Haven's Perkins (not the restaurant). Nice photographs and commentary here.

Updated: Downtown New Haven “Export” Toasted

Original Post, 3/26/08: The third installment of Wine Dine Design was held last night. New Haven Independent coverage:

"The concentration of architectural firms in New Haven is extraordinary, with almost 200 firms and solo practitioners registered in the city alone. "

Update 4/28/08: The fourth installment of Wine Dine Design will be held this Tuesday at Downtown New Haven architecture firm Svigals + Partners. [Update: New Haven Independent post-even coverage appears here.] The series of Downtown New Haven events was covered in an article in this weekend's New York Times, in which architects from Downtown firm Studio ABK discussed their ideas for the Ninth Square and Shartenberg site.

NY Times: "Ninth Square has become New Haven’s hot fixer-upper district, partly because dozens of architectural firms have offices here and partly because of a number of recent high-profile development projects like the site of the former Coliseum, Gateway Community College and a new home for the Long Wharf Theater. It also doesn’t hurt that New Haven has one of the highest concentrations of architects in the Northeast."

Urban Poverty, Ethnography and The City

Conference this Saturday at Yale University, featuring an impressive roster of speakers. See this page for details on the program. For more information about featured speaker and Yale professor Elijah Anderson, see this article in the Yale Alumni Magazine.

Hollywood East

The New Haven Register reports today about upcoming movie shoots in Downtown New Haven and the surrounding area, including one with Robert DeNiro and Kate Beckinsale scheduled for next week at Union Station.

According to the Register, "Connecticut has become known as “Hollywood East” because of a 30 percent tax credit given to filmmakers who spend money here." Apparently, the enormous tax credit is already having a spillover effect in the regional real estate market.

Last summer, a significant portion of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was filmed in Downtown New Haven, pumping an estimated $10 million into the local economy and attracting thousands of tourists from all over the world hoping to catch a glimpse of Steven Spielberg. According to New York Times coverage at the time, film production in Connecticut had increased from $750,000 to $52 million immediately after the tax credit was introduced, and was expected to top $300 million this year. In other words, don't be surprised if someone even more famous than Harrison Ford hits New Haven this summer.

While we're on the subject of tourism, check out this week's article in The Independent's (UK) Business Travel section that highlights Downtown New Haven. We are guessing that the travel correspondent attended last week's Discover New England summit in New Haven. Tourism to New England from Europe is rapidly increasing, in part due to the decline of the dollar.

Update: The Courant writes about how you can volunteer your house for a movie shoot.
Update 6/3/08: DeNiro films at Yale.

Architects Taking Pictures

Enjoy photography by local architects. A percentage of the proceeds will benefit a local charity. Participating architects include Barry Svigals, Carlos Pena, Cesar Pelli, Dan Dryzgula, Dave Chen, Dave Coon, Dave Harlan, Dave Strong, Enzo Figueres, Eric Epstein, Fernando Pastor, Joe Rufrano, Jose Luis Cabello, Ke-Wei Chang, Manuel Wedeles, Mark Abraham, Mary Pont, Mihaly Turbucz, Peter Newman, Rob Narracci, Roberto Espejo, Sam Gardner, Scott Wood, and Sun Bo.

Details: Atticus Bookstore & Cafe, 1082 Chapel Street, Downtown New Haven, CT. Exhibition runs from May 1-June 15, with an opening reception on May 1 at 6.30 pm.

Visualization Lecture

Eric Mazur, the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University, will give a talk titled "How the Mind Tricks Us: Visualizations and Visual Illusions" at 7 p.m. at the Peabody Museum of Natural History, 170 Whitney Ave, today (April 23). Professor Mazur is a well-known and extremely popular lecturer who has given invited talks all over the world. His lecture will illuminate the ways in which recent research in neurobiology and cognitive psychology enables people to understand how the mind processes information, in particular, visual information. The knowledge we can gain from these fields has important implications for the presentation of visual information and student learning. See here for more information about Dr. Mazur's work.

Earth Day Bike Repair Party

Today from 6-9pm in Downtown New Haven. Get your bicycle ready for National Bike Month. More information here.

New Haven vs. Providence?

Interesting blog post at http://runawayjim.org/2008/04/18/i-heart-new-haven/ which discusses New Haven as well as a few issues related to mass transit.

"I can’t help but compare it to Providence. Unfortunately, there’s no comparison. Downtown New Haven is an urban delight. It’s very walkable, the development is very urban, it’s clean, and it’s super vibrant.... New Haven is clean and it feels safe all over downtown. The signs are inviting, the streets are lit at night. It feels like a much larger city, yet it has about 50,000 fewer people than Providence. Being in the same class of cities, Providence should be looking to New Haven as a model of how to do things correctly."

New Haven Register: Reclaim Route 34

A thoughtful masthead editorial from today's New Haven Register, supporting the plan to reclaim Route 34 for urban development:

Reclaim Route 34 for downtown (New Haven Register editorial 4/20/08)

There is no need for the Route 34 connector that funnels interstate traffic into the heart of downtown New Haven. The sunken roadway creates a dead end for downtown, gobbles up land that could be developed and doesn’t even serve the purpose for which it was built. The connector was built in 1959 as the first section of a highway that was to have extended to Route 8 in Derby. Instead, it stops abruptly at the Air Rights Garage.

The idea of reclaiming this land, which once was full of homes and businesses, has been slowly gaining support since New Haven’s quick, initial 2005 study of its feasibility. The city has estimated that development of the highway land could add almost $3.8 million in tax revenue.

A far more detailed study done by consultants for the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments was completed in October. That study, done at the city’s request, has formed the basis of preliminary discussions with the state Department of Transportation. The study estimated that the land could support 1.4 million square feet of midrise buildings for commercial, residential and retail use.

Last week, the discussion of Route 34’s future was energized by a public meeting and discussions here led by John Norquist, the former mayor of Milwaukee, who oversaw the demolition of a freeway spur in his city and its replacement with city streets.

Milwaukee is one of several U.S. cities that have replaced freeways with streets. Portland, Ore., tore down the Harbor Drive Freeway that once carried 90,000 vehicles a day. The Central Freeway in San Francisco, on which 93,000 vehicles traveled daily, was replaced by a boulevard. In comparison, about 75,000 vehicles a day use the Route 34 connector.

What happens to that traffic? According to Norquist, who is president of the Congress for the New Urbanism, it is absorbed into the restored street grid. In New Haven’s case, instead of the connector’s three exits, drivers could choose from all the city streets that now end where the highway cuts them off.

Norquist also widened the discussion. Much of the talk here has centered on a broad boulevard that would extend from roughly Church or Orange Street to the Air Rights Garage. He noted that Milwaukee replaced its highway with a two-way street with sidewalks and parking. He also suggested that all of the connector be reclaimed, right up to where Interstates 95 and 91 connect to Route 34 next to Water Street.

Albert A. Martin, the new state deputy transportation commissioner for transit-oriented development, attended the meetings here. Although the DOT has yet to be convinced of the Route 34 plan, he agreed “there is a need for change.” State support may hinge, in part, on how reclaiming Route 34’s land will support alternatives to automobile use, from the provision of bike lanes and the construction of housing within walking distance of work to how a new street plan connects to the nearby rail stations on Union Avenue and State Street.

Shore Line East ridership up 5.5%, Update: Metro North ridership skyrocketing as well

The AP reports today that ridership on the Shore Line East commuter rail line, which stops at the new State Street Station as well as Union Station in Downtown New Haven, was up 5.5 percent last year. The DOT credits an expanded weekend schedule and rail car improvements for the increase. The service normally operates on weekdays only, but was expanded this year to include weekends during the holiday shopping season.

Given the success of the weekend stops and the rapidly-rising costs of driving, should the schedule be expanded to include weekends throughout the year?

Update 4/19/08: Ridership is up 8.8% in the first part of the year and Metro North ridership is also way up. See http://blog.tstc.org/2008/04/14/connecticut-metro-north-and-shore-line-east-ridership-up/

Cherry Blossom Festival - Sunday

Check out this page at Info New Haven for details on the 35th annual festival, which draws crowds to marvel at the best-maintained and one of the oldest major collections of Yoshino cherry trees on the East Coast.

When the cherries are at peak bloom -- most likely next week -- be sure to walk down Hughes Place, at the north end of Wooster Square Park (see photo at left & click to enlarge).

Public Event: Re-creating a Community from the Oak Street Connector (Route 34)

Please join the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, the New Haven Urban Design League, ConnDOT Deputy Commissioner Albert Martin and City of New Haven Economic Development Administrator Kelly Murphy to learn more about the City of New Haven’s plan for turning Route 34’s road to nowhere into a neighborhood of workforce housing, retail and open space. Featured speaker, John Norquist, will show how this can be done. Mr. Norquist, president of the Congress for the New Urbanism, and former Mayor of Milwaukee will discuss how Milwaukee tore down the elevated Park East Freeway and created a vibrant community in its place.

Where: Career High School, 140 Legion Avenue in New Haven’s Hill Neighborhood
When: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 from 6:00 to 8:00pm

Feel free to post observations, design ideas, essays, photos and neighborhood commentary here (anonymous or credited), either by adding to the comments or sending items to downtownnewhaven [at] gmail.com.

New Haven Register post-event coverage here, New Haven Independent here.

See this article, "Death of a Neighborhood," in Mother Jones magazine for some background on the Route 34 Corridor and the neighborhood that was lost when it was built.

Update 6/6/08: A letter in favor of the removal of the Route 34 stub highway, signed by a broad coalition of community leaders, activists, organizations and others, has been delivered to Governor Rell.

Private equity firms, restaurants, biotechs, video game companies, marketing firms moving into Downtown New Haven

Residents, high-end business firms, and retail operations are increasingly drawn to Downtown New Haven's walkability and urban vitality. Class A office rents in New Haven are now approaching $30 as Yale University and other users continue to expand. An integrated marketing firm with clients including GE, IBM, Bic, Oxford Health, MasterCard and the New York Times recently leased the entire floor of a large building on Chapel Street. Venture Capital investments grew significantly in 2007, with a large proportion of the hundreds of millions of dollars in regional investment going to New Haven rather than elsewhere in Connecticut -- recipients include video game, marketing and biotechnology firms.

Check back later this week or early next week for details on these and other Downtown New Haven news items.

91 Church Street Saved?

The New Haven Register reports today on plans to resurrect the fire-damaged building at 91 Church Street.

The photos at left were taken December 17th, a few days after the fire ravaged the interior of the block (click on them for a close-up). For more information on potential ideas for how to rebuild that section, also see this New Haven Independent article on George Knight's presentation to Wine Dine Design.

"The plan for 91 Church St., only a portion of which escaped the wrecking ball following the Dec. 12 blaze, is in its formative stages, but owner Paul Denz has indicated he is committed to renovating what’s left."

"He has some rough architectural drawings to overhaul the space for two retail businesses, one at street level and the other in the basement, and about four apartments on the upper floors."

"Scott Healy, executive director of the New Haven Downtown [Town Green] Special Services District, which promotes the area’s image and business community, said that section of Church Street, with retail on both sides, is key to the city’s vitality."

Aside from its effect on retail continuity, retaining this building is important because it is a key part of the street wall along Church Street, which creates a sense of security and enclosure - an urban "living room." The Church Street corridor is a major gateway into Downtown New Haven.

The property, which prior to the fire contained a retail operation on the first floor and a beautiful abandoned ballroom on the second floor, is threatened not just because of the cost of renovation, but also because it would be a potentially convenient place to create an access lane for deliveries into the center of the block, which will most likely be rebuilt in the near future.

Artspace New Haven Auction

The Artspace Benefit Auction is scheduled for May 3, 2008. This annual Downtown New Haven event draws hundreds of artists, collectors, and civic-minded individuals interested in supporting the programs presented by Artspace, with plenty of food, wine, art and excitement (this year catered by the nearby New York Times "excellent" hotspot 116 Crown). Visit the auction website for details.

CT Smart Growth highlights DNH and Route 34

Connecticut Smart Growth is an excellent blog for smart growth advocates in our state. Topics include brownfields, downtown redevelopment, responsible land use policy, and transportation. Visit their front-page post highlighting Design New Haven, and discussing the redevelopment of the Route 34 corridor, at http://www.ctsmartgrowth.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=173.

CTsmartgrowth points out that "more than 600 businesses and families (some of whom still gather at the annual Oak Street Reunion) were displaced to make way for the Rt. 34 Connector."

If you are interested in learning more about smart growth in Connecticut, also take a look at http://www.1000friends-ct.org/.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! (updated)

A fantastic cover story appears in today's Yale Daily News about the proposal to tear down (or at least modify) sections of the wall surrounding downtown New Haven's Grove Street Cemetery, one of the nation's most historic burying grounds -- the first incorporated cemetery in the United States, and a National Historic Landmark.

Vincent Scully: “Yale is cut right through the liver by that cemetery,” the emeritus Sterling professor of the History of Art said with characteristic zeal. “It would make a great difference if the cemetery were more welcoming.”

Certainly, more local residents would be able to appreciate this incredible historical resource if a pathway were added through the site. Yale Professor David Cameron added an op-ed on this New Haven landmark in today's Yale Daily News. But would adding a simple new gate or portion of iron fence have an impact on the site's character? The proposal raises questions about the nature of historic preservation, such as the need to conserve the material and cultural qualities of a built place for future generations (since it is conceivable that improving visual access from both sides of the site could actually help the site be preserved over generations by making it more meaningful to them) and the nature of the site's original intent (an issue brought up in the article):

"Denison Olmsted 1813, a Yale science professor, speaking at the gateway’s dedication, expressed his hope that there would be strong interaction between New Haven’s residents and its burial grounds.

“Let us all come hither to think calmly but wisely on our own inevitable destiny,” he pronounced.

Townshend, in his [1947] speech, added a few words that are perhaps the perfect explanation of the importance of open walls to achieving the ideal of Olmstead’s lofty words."

In that vein (no historically-relevant cadaver puns related to the Yale School of Medicine intended), how about tearing down a section of wall and adding a museum about the cemetery? Perhaps a new community conference center or a bike path? Or a cafe, a la Boston? The view of the cemetery is certainly beautiful, especially given the landmark's extensive history of horticulture.

Paul (from YDN comments): "The concerns voiced here that providing more pedestrian and visual access to Grove Street cemetery would somehow intolerably disturb it and its dead fly in the face of many counterexamples. For example, Trinty Church in lower Manhattan has a lovely cemetery that is quite open to the public, physically and visually. Boston has many such cemeteries. The list goes on and on. Resistance to providing more pedestrian access to Grove Street Cemetery in the face of world wide counterexamples and changing needs is just reactionary."

Also, although the issue is raised by many commentators, would personal security concerns be any different from what they are now, assuming appropriate levels of patrol and continuing to limit access to daylight hours?

Call for Artists: Downtown New Haven Temporary Outdoor Artwork

The City of New Haven Office of Cultural Affairs is requesting submissions of qualifications and basic conceptual ideas from artists for the design of temporary public art in Downtown New Haven. For more information please visit http://www.cityofnewhaven.com/EconomicDevelopment/CulturalAffairs.asp. Submissions are due April 11, 2008.

Google Maps 'Bike There' highlights Downtown New Haven advocacy group ElmCityCycling

Googlemapsbikethere is an interesting advocacy group petitioning Google, Inc for better online maps. See http://googlemapsbikethere.org/2008/04/02/elm-city-cycling/

"Occasionally we try to spotlight different groups of people - often cycling advocacy groups - from around the world. We recently covered groups in Australia and Hungary. ‘What is The Elm City’, you say?"

ECC was the main driver behind the City of New Haven's recent LAB Bicycle-Friendly Community application and has several subcommittees focused on other advocacy topics throughout New Haven. Based on the online discussions and the subcommittee work, the largest issues of concern to ElmCityCycling's members include improving bicycle and pedestrian access to and from Union Station, securing bicycle access on trains, calming traffic, and improving the safety of bike routes from all of the city's different neighborhoods to Downtown. They are working closely with City Hall to accomplish these tasks. Visit the ECC website at http://www.elmcitycycling.org/ and look around for yourself.

100+ year-old Downtown business honored for being innovative

Business New Haven is reporting this week on how some independent New Haven retailers have leveraged their online presence into major business success. Delmonico Hatter, a small business that has been located in Downtown New Haven since 1906 and is quite renowned within the local community, recently received the "Hat Retailer of the Year" Award for its innovative retailing strategy.

"As soon as Delmonico launched the new site, DelmonicoHatter.com, in 2002, "Sales grew immediately, to 25 percent of our business that first year," [Delmonico] says. "They have grown every single year since then, and now account for 80 percent of our business."

Can other downtown businesses leverage their unique "bricks and mortar" into online sites in order to thrive? How long before we see frozen Louis' Lunch burgers being shipped to China? Is this strategy a "win" for Downtown New Haven? See the entire article at http://www.conntact.com/article_page.lasso?id=41842

Greater Greater Washington looks to New Haven

They seem to support the idea of boulevardizing Route 34. "New Haven next to boulevardize a freeway": http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=734

Record-low 2008 admission rates for downtown colleges

Colleges located in downtown areas - like Harvard, Yale, NYU and Columbia - continue to get more selective. Yale College's admissions rate hit 8.3% this year, breaking its former record of 8.6% in 2006 (which was, at the time, the Ivy League record-low); applications have increased by 91% since 1998. NYU received a record 37,000 applications, more than any other private university in the United States, and an increase of 51% since 1998.

Applications to colleges in urban settings, like Yale and NYU, have generally increased more rapidly than applications to their peers located in suburban or rural areas. For example, undergraduate applications to Stanford University have only increased by 27% over the past 10 years -- only slightly higher than the overall increase in college enrollment nation-wide. Reason? People are increasingly looking to live in walkable, dense, vibrant and diverse downtown settings with many 24/7 diversions -- where they don't need to spend 2 hours per day in their cars.