Howard Ave. unsafe for cyclists
The entirety of Howard Ave below Frontage Road on the way through the Hill is incredibly unsafe for cyclists. Motorists speed, fail to stop at red lights, throw trash onto the road. The entire right lane is made of potholes! This whole lane should be repaved.
And what of these rumors that the city has promised to create a bike lane on Howard Ave? Many cyclists as well as drivers use this road on their daily commute, and yet it looks like it hasn't been repaired in many long years.
Please fix the potholes! Please consider striping a bike lane! Please find ways to get motorists to slow down! Please clean up the heavily littered road (I've seen hypodermic needles lying in the gutter)!
Gets Comments
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Just checking in to see if there's an update on the construction schedule here.
According to meetings between the city and Elm City Cycling, a bike lane (requested in the ECC 2010 Bike Plan) will be added here by mid 2011.
Acknowledged by CTLS
Both are important but I would fix the Kimberly Avenue bridge (and the highway entrances) into West Haven before fixing Howard Ave.
That whole area is a nightmare appropriate to a rural wasteland highway interchange in Wyoming, perhaps, but certainly not a major city with pedestrian traffic.
Apologies for the hastily-worded original issue ticket and many exclamation points - I think I had just gotten home from riding Howard-Kimberly during rush hour and was understandably rattled.
I would happily be a West Haven - New Haven bicycle commuter instead of taking the bus every day, if that road were more friendly to people on bikes. Two attempts during rush hour was enough for me; now I leave it for weekends or evenings only.
Something NEEDS to slow those cars down. I see children dashing across the road all the time, right in front of the bus I now ride. If a bike lane could both slow down the cars and make it safer for bikes, that would be a huge bonus for the neighborhood.
I think that the lanes would be helpful on Howard Avenue as well as Kimberly going into West Haven. Kids from the local school clocked trucks going through this neighborhood at more than 50 miles per hour.
Lanes would narrow the street, reducing speeds. These roads are very wide, so you can probably stripe 6' bike lanes similar to those on Yale Avenue in Westville.
Also, studies have shown that cyclists ride much farther away from car doors, and drivers give cyclists more room in passing, when striped bicycle lanes are provided.
What is the timeframe for painting these? It is true that the city reports in 2003 and 2008 both had these lanes in the official budget.
Does that matter? The city already decided to put them in. If the city's course was reversed, the large citizen and institutional planning committee should have been publicly notified at the time. That was back in 2003 and residents are still waiting for the striping.
The comment above claims that the alderperson said they didn't want bike lanes on Howard Ave.
Bike lanes were planned on Howard and Kimberly in 2003, and approved by a citywide bicycle and pedestrian advisory board that was active at the time.
Why hasn't the city installed them yet?
I heard a rumor that the city approached the alderperson about putting in a bike lane on Howard Avenue, but the alderperson said they didn't want one. What's up with that?