Residents of Hartford’s Frog Hollow neighborhood and cycling advocates have emerged victorious in a long-running dispute with the Connecticut Department of Transportation (ConnDOT). The agency had planned to close Flower Street, a side street that crosses an Amtrak rail line and the planned CTfastrak bus rapid transit right-of-way. But on May 20, an administrative law officer ordered that the street be closed only to motor vehicle traffic — unless ConnDOT builds a pedestrian overpass over the rail line and busway.
The agency has proposed a $4 million “up-and-over” structure with several switchbacks. This will maintain access and satisfy the administrative ruling, but seems frustrating to use.
An alternative route for pedestrians and bike riders will be to go one block east, to Broad Street. But this is not much of an alternative, as advocates like BikeWalkCT have pointed out. While Flower Street is a low-traffic local street that offers a comfortable connection between Capitol and Farmington Avenues, Broad Street is a major arterial that feeds into I-84. It’s not a safe, pleasant route to walk or bike. But it doesn’t have to remain that way.
Earlier this year, ConnDOT signed off on a two-way protected bike lane in New Haven that will be the most ambitious on-street bike infrastructure in the state. Expanded pedestrian space and similar bike infrastructure would go a long way to improving safety along Broad Street — which saw 401 crashes between 2008 and 2010 — for all users of the road. Equally important, the improvements could go a long way toward maintaining connectivity.
In a few places elsewhere in the CTfastrak corridor, communities are making progress toward connecting pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure to future stations. New Britain has responded to CTfastrak by developing a complete streets and bicycle connectivity plan. Elsewhere in Hartford, the iQuilt project will marry local bus, pedestrian safety and bike improvements. Local governments are leading the way for these improvements; in order to continue these efforts across the state, better outreach and funding is needed from ConnDOT.
