Do not enter, wrong way: A warning for New Haven’s Downtown Crossing

Led by Alderman Justin Elicker, the New Haven, Connecticut, Board of Aldermen recently considered a resolution to reconfigure the current plans to redevelop Route 34 as a multimodal urban street network. Elicker’s effort is to reconsider an “auto-centric” plan for Downtown New Haven, in line with the original resolution that called for fewer lanes and greater consideration for pedestrian safety. By raising the issue, the resolution introduced by Alderman Elicker and citizen activists was a successful impetus to make Downtown Crossing safe for cars, cyclists, and pedestrians alike. Yet the revised resolution underscores the fundamental reason why the plan will be unsuccessful — a commitment to two, four-lane roads that maintain an emphasis on vehicular traffic.

Downtown Crossing is a plan inspired by the recent successful urban highway conversion projects that redevelop urban blight into revitalized, interconnected corridors. As a low-cost solution to fixing aging infrastructure, boulevard conversions have a successful track record in integrating context-sensitive transportation needs and economic development opportunities. San Francisco, Portland, and Milwaukee led similar efforts resulting in higher land values and a strong street grid.

As a recipient of TIGER II federal funding to implement such a conversion, New Haven residents believed that the city could finally unite separated neighborhoods in the downtown core. The current plan, however, is the result of a series of compromises made by the city and its residents throughout the planning process. With those compromises, the city also compromised its goals of creating a quality urban environment.

“These profound urban planning issues — scale, connectivity, transit, parks, pollution reduction, and a regulating plan for mixed-use development — are central to creating a humane urban environment,” according to Anstress Farwell, president of the New Haven Urban Design League. “The revised plan proposes modest improvements in safety for bikes and pedestrians, but does not address the fundamental issue of creating places for people. The first step to get there is to establish traffic reductions and transit improvements. Street design needs to be based on optimal connections and lane reductions. It would be a tragedy to waste money on unnecessary asphalt and parking, and lose the opportunity — rare in the history of urbanism — to turn around a degraded zone.”

“The City’s goals are admirable, but the problem is that the Connecticut Department of Transportation and their traffic engineers do not have experience with context-driven design. It’s unfortunate that experts are working with old information,” says Robert Orr, the principal of Robert Orr & Associates and leader of a workshop this past summer. “Rather than replacing Route 34 with a vibrant, bustling boulevard, the current plan merely elevates the sunken grade highway to an at-grade highway.” The message is clear to aldermen and city leadership: do not go the wrong way and waste federal dollars. Complete this $30 million dollar project the right way with reduced right-of-way.