At a crossroads
To turn Parkville into a modern, walkable urban center, you’ve got to deal with cars
HARTFORD — As Hartford transforms itself into an urban center friendly to pedestrians, cyclists and new businesses, an intersection in the city’s Parkville neighborhood shows the difficulty of making the transition in a city not necessarily designed that way.
The Parkville Market, a smorgasbord of food and drink styled after New York’s Chelsea Market expected to open early next year, is being promoted as walkable not only for the Parkville area but even beyond, given how close it is to a CTfastrak station.
But Anthony Cherolis, Transport Hartford coordinator for the Center for Latino Progress, describes crossing the intersection at Park Street and Pope Park Highway — just across from the market — as akin to the 1980s video arcade game “Frogger,” where the object is to get frogs home safely by crossing a busy street.
“If I cross here, I am looking over my shoulder and jogging,” Cherolis said, during a recent visit to the intersection. “It’s wide, it’s fast, and there’s is no pedestrian crossing island, no physical traffic calming.”
The Parkville Market would be another major step forward for a neighborhood that is working to build a reputation as a regional arts district. Dozens of apartments have been added to old industrial buildings, and there are plans for more. A brewery, a liquor distillery, a monthly food truck festival, ax throwing, dance and yoga are now part of the neighborhood, alongside entrepreneurial incubators such as reSET and the city’s first makerspace, MakeHartford.
The nonprofit arts organization Real Art Ways, a tenant on Arbor Street since 1989, is considering an expansion in the neighborhood.
The intersection across from the market was upgraded in 2016 with new paver sidewalks and pedestrian crosswalks, part of $2.9 million in street improvements near the new CTfastrak station in Parkville. But those upgrades didn’t go far enough, said Cherolis, who advocates for pedestrian, biking and mass transit alternatives in the city and the surrounding region.
“You want people to feel comfortable walking to the market,” Cherolis said. “One of my concerns is not doing the right thing here will make [the market] less successful.”
Creating a neighborhood with equal access to cars, pedestrians, bicyclists as well as mass transit is the challenge for Hartford and cities across the country, said Norman Garrick, a professor of transportation engineering at UConn in Storrs.
“It is essential, especially in a place like Hartford, because that is what Hartford has to sell,” Garrick, a former board member of the Congress for New Urbanism in Washington D.C., said. “It’s all about a difference from the suburbs, and that difference is about people being able to access things by walking and people able to live nearby and get to things.
“So, you need to be developing in a way that’s all about pedestrian, bike and mass transit.”
The push also comes as a new report showed pedestrian and cyclists fatalities in the U.S. in 2018 were the highest they have been since 1990.
In Connecticut, pedestrian fatalities rose about 20% between 2017 and 2018. The numbers in Hartford soared from two fatalities in 2017 to 10 in 2018.
According to police in Hartford, in the last decade there have been 17 pedestrians injured in motor vehicle collisions on Park between Laurel and Hazel streets, but no deaths. There have been five deaths since 2004 involving motor vehicle drivers or passengers, the last in 2016, police said.
Both the state and the city have shifted to a new, more intense focus to pedestrians and cyclists and their safety.
In Parkville, the traffic is further complicated by two overpasses, I-84 and the Amtrak trestle, that inject sudden shifts in natural lighting with which drivers must deal. For drivers heading west, the I-84 overpass comes right before the entrance to the Parkville Market.
After The Courant asked the state Department of Transportation about the adequacy of the improvements connected with the CTfastrak station, the DOT sent traffic engineers to the neighborhood. Tom Maziarz, chief of planning at DOT, said a signal light, with pedestrian crossing lights, appears to be warranted for the location, but the final decision would rest with the city.
City development officials say they have an eye on the intersection and the upcoming opening of the Parkville Market. But they say traffic calming measures are better situated to the west at the intersection of Bartholomew Avenue, where streetscape improvements are planned in the next year.
Erik Johnson, the city’s director of development services, said he is concerned about the I-84 overpass and motorists seeing a signal at the intersection of Park Street and Pope Park Highway.
“It’s trying to make sure we are doing things that are safe for people, not creating incidents that are going to be more problematic, right?” Johnson said. “Which is why I think the focus is going to be how to make the intersection of Park and Bartholomew Streets more pedestrianfriendly because you have visibility coming f rom underneath the underpass.”
As he guides a visitor through the intersection, Cherolis points to a “yield to pedestrians in crosswalk” sign that has been hit so many times, it no longer pops back up.
Cherolis says a roundabout could help solve the problem — or a slightly raised intersection.
Within a few minutes, Carlos Mouta, the developer of the Parkville Market and multiple properties in the area, appears outside the market and walks over to Cherolis.
Mouta points to a lane reserved for parking on the north side of Park Street near the market. Now, if there are no parked vehicles, it is sometimes used as a travel lane.
When the market is open, Mouta said he is confident the lane will be filled with parked cars.
“People are going to be forced to go slow,” Mouta said.
Mouta said signs that illuminate travel speeds also would help, as would stepped-up police patrols. More lighting is needed under the I-84 overpass, he said.
Johnson, Hartford’s development services chief, said there is a balance to be struck when redesigning heavily trafficked roadways.
“Today, it’s trying to balance the idea of growing and making sure places and spaces are better,” Johnson said, “but not losing track of the fact that we still have lots people who travel along these corridors, and those travel routes have to be preserved.”
“It’s trying to make sure we are doing things that are safe for people, not creating incidents that are going to be more problematic, right?”
Erik Johnson, director of development services, city of Hartford