Chris Ozyck loves living in the Fair Haven Heights neighborhood of New Haven, Conn., but he doesn't love the fact that his vehicles have been struck six times over the past 23 years while parked in front of his home on Quinnipiac Avenue.
Three of his vehicles were lost to those collisions, including pickup trucks and a trailer.
Ozyck has even resorted to his own measures to try to prevent the accidents, including carrying around a bright orange traffic cone which he places behind his pickup truck each time he parks it.
But now he has some hope that things will get better.
City and state officials, led by New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, announced July 12 that work has gotten under way on a $2.6 million state-funded infrastructure project to install traffic-calming measures to slow speeding cars and trucks and improve pedestrian safety along a 2.3-mi. stretch of Quinnipiac Avenue, one of eastern New Haven's busiest transportation corridors.
The area to be addressed runs from the Annex through Fair Haven Heights.
As part of the effort, the city will mill and pave Quinnipiac Avenue from its southern end at Townsend Avenue/Fairmont Street north to Foxon Boulevard. Along the way, crews will build raised crosswalks, raised intersections and speed tables. Additionally, the city is set to provide pedestrian crossing improvements by re-aligning intersections and shortening crossing distances as well as installing new curbs and sidewalks where necessary.
The work will take approximately 3-4 months to complete, according to New Haven officials.
Similar changes also are in store for a stretch of Valley Street on the west side of town, explained Elicker, who thanked New Haven's delegation in the General Assembly, and the Connecticut Department of Transportation's (CTDOT) Local Transportation Improvement Program for funding the work.
The Stamford Advocate reported that a separate project is being planned to upgrade and tame Foxon Boulevard, another of the city's busiest and most dangerous stretches of road.
"The reality is that we tragically have seen too much dangerous driving in New Haven," added Elicker, who was joined at the site of a news conference at Quinnipiac and Essex Street by state Sen. President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven; state Rep. Roland Lemar, D-New Haven; state Rep. Al Paolillo Jr., D-New Haven; four city alders; and several area residents.
Elicker referenced the Connecticut Crash Data Repository, compiled by the University of Connecticut, in noting that there were 50 vehicle crashes along that stretch of Quinnipiac Avenue in 2023, 85 in 2022, and 93 crashes — one of them fatal — in 2021.
In response, the New Haven Police Department recently doubled the size of its traffic enforcement unit.
Safety, Livability to Improve On Quinnipiac
Ozyck, who serves as associate director for the Urban Resources Initiative at Yale University, lives on the stretch of Quinnipiac Avenue south of the Grand Avenue bridge, between Grand Avenue and the Ferry Street bridge.
He said he knows the new project will help with more than the street's safety.
"If we make this neighborhood more walkable, people will want to move here," Ozyck explained.
Assistant City Engineer Dawn Henning told the Advocate that there is no single hot spot for traffic accidents along Quinnipiac; rather, crashes occur "all along the corridor," she explained, adding that the planned improvements will make it safer for everyone.
When asked about CTDOT's funding of the project, Looney said, "It's a significant state commitment, one which I'm more than willing to make. There's a growing need to build in more safety measures."
Paolillo and Lemar also praised the city's plans for the corridor.
"It has been an exhaustive community process" to get to this point, according to Paolillo, but "we now have something" to improve the situation.
Lemar, the Connecticut House chair of the General Assembly's Transportation Committee, lauded the street upgrade as part of a broader effort "to reorient our transportation system to be about people and not about vehicles."
Fereshteh Bekhrad, an architect and developer who lives and owns rental properties in the neighborhood, said she was thrilled to see the work go forward.
"We had so many accidents," Bekhrad said in speaking with the Advocate. "Today is a wonderful day for me."
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