City says work on State Street won’t cause traffic nightmares

NEW HAVEN — If you’re one of those people worried that the $6.7 million State Street redesign project that recently began will cause traffic nightmares, you can relax for now.

City Engineer Giovanni Zinn says the project to make a nine-block stretch of lower State Street more pedestrian- and bicyclefriendly won’t involve street closures and will ultimately improve traffic and safety.

Any traffic disruption during the work will be minimal, Zinn said. The city will maintain “bidirectional traffic” throughout construction, although there may be short periods of road closures, he said.

“It’s more lane shifts than lane closures in Phase 1, as you see out there now,” Zinn said, referring to work that recently began near the Encore by Goodfellas restaurant.

“On-street parking will be temporarily closed as we work on various areas,” he said. “We are generally keeping legal parking where it exists, with some parking shifting around within a block.”

“If anything, at the end of this, it’s going to be a great improvement on State Street,” Zinn said. The result will be a much more livable street, he said.

Among other things, he said, the traffic lights will be better synchronized, and dedicated turning lanes will be less disruptive when someone stops to make a turn.

The $6.7 million project, partially funded through a $5.35 million state Department of Economic and Community Development grant, will redesign the streetscape along a stretch of State Street between Trumbull and Water streets.

City officials have said the project will “knit back together” areas of the city that were chopped up by urban renewal. Several officials have said the project will reconnect neighborhoods such as Wooster

Square, the Hill and Downtown.

Zinn said it will also make State Street safer for the many people who aren’t in motor vehicles.

“Thirty percent of the households in New Haven don’t have cars,” Zinn said. “A lot of people walk in that area ... a lot of them ride bicycles.”

“I think the goal here is to create a street that’s much safer for our vulnerable users,” Zinn said. The city also aims to create a much smoother street for commuters, with more potential for development as parking lots along State Street’s east side are opened up, he said.

Work on Phase 1 of the project began about two weeks ago and will create a dedicated corridor for walkers and bikers, officials said at a news conference Wednesday. The project’s first phase will also include “bump-outs” to protect pedestrians along State Street, from Trumbull Street to Grove Street, with the second phase running from Grove Street to Water Street, Mayor Justin Elicker

said. Phase 1 is expected to last through the end of the summer.

Elicker said Phase 2 will include “activating” several underused parking lots for future development.

The project aims to unlock the redevelopment potential of seven parking lots, with 650,000 square feet of transit-oriented, mixed-use development, including 450 new housing units, plus retail space, officials said.

State Street, one of New Haven’s major corridors, connects the Downtown, East Rock, Hill and Wooster Square neighborhoods. The area includes the State Street train station.