Huge problem on Bradley Street. People race down the street to bypass the Trumbull and orange intersection on the way to I91 north. Maybe some speed bumps would do the trick - the industrial grade kind like they have in Sachems Head in Guilford.

I like the ones at Sachems Head.

Narrowing the street and lanes, or adding a chicane, would do a lot to reduce travel speeds here. The key isn't enforcement or speed bumps, it is much simpler: making the road look like it is designed for 15 mile per hour travel, not 55 mile per hour travel.

Grove currently looks like a superhighway, with wide lanes. The high speeds are going to kill someone at some point. In fact, there have already been a number of crashes, some very severe, on this section of Grove Street. I have almost been hit here by cars blatantly blowing red lights at 40 miles per hour.

Yale University and other stakeholders in the area should be pushing the city for improvements before another student is injured here.

Then people would complain about their tax money being used to fund over time for cops to do motor vehicle enforcement. New haven is way too busy to write out tickets all day on the cops regular shift.

Yes, I completely agree, and happy to hear someone else feels the way I do. It's the wild west out there. I don't plan to stay here very long because of it. That's not what NH needs - losing honest, law-abiding taxpayers, because we don't want to risk our lives on the roadways every day here. We need more enforcement/ticketing and PD presence, traffic circles, speedbumps, crosswalks w/ in-street signage and even red light cameras. The city, and new police chief, needs to get more serious about this. Who knows how many guns and drugs they could also get off the street in more traffic stops, too?

I agree, K - however, this isn't just an issue of safety. First off, having a vibrant economy -- a place where people can circulate, meet, form ideas, start businesses, find jobs, or talk with their colleagues, classmates and professors -- depends on a vibrant, livable network of streets and open space. Currently most of our open space is given over to speeding traffic like Grove Street, which kills these types of connectivities (and negatively impacts city and campus life). Furthermore, Complete Streets have been identified as a top priority of the Centers for Disease Control, by the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity, and by numerous other health agencies and foundations. Nearly half of the CDC’s 2009 “top 25” recommendations for reducing obesity, published in MMWR, cite improved urban design, particularly complete streets and traffic safety. The federal researchers write:

"Traffic safety is the security of pedestrians and bicyclists from motorized traffic. Traffic safety can be enhanced by engineering streets for lower speeds or by retrofitting existing streets with traffic calming measurements (e.g., speed tables and traffic circles). Traffic safety can also be enhanced by developing infrastructure to improve the safety of street crossings (e.g., raised crosswalks and textured pavement) for non-motorized traffic and for pedestrians. The lack of safe places to walk, run, and bicycle as a result of real or perceived traffic hazards can deter children and adults from being physically active. Enhancing traffic safety has been demonstrated to be effective in increasing levels of physical activity in adults and children. Research suggests that persons living in neighborhoods with higher traffic safety are more physically active. On the basis of sufficient evidence of effectiveness, [we] recommend implementing community-scale and street-scale urban design and land use policies to promote physical activity, including design components to improve street lighting, infrastructure projects to increase safety of pedestrian street crossings, and use of traffic calming approaches such as speed humps and traffic circles."

The city is finally starting to do a great job integrating these types of recommendations into its policy and everyday practice.

Now it's time to see some concrete movement towards actually implementing them. I'd like to see a timeline for how long it would take to actually do these things, given current and expected funds. If it's a really long time, like 200 years, then maybe we need to look at lower-cost measures like temporary solutions.

Most other cities use temporary traffic calming because they realize that making our public realm into a livable place again will take at least another 20 or 50 years.

Option A: learn how to drive so people don't have to pas you or speed. SO MANY people can't drive in new haven it's crazy and that makes those of us who can drive look like jerks because we get sick of you taking 5 minutes to make a right turn, and if there's no one around it's perfectly safe to drive as fast as the road (not speed limit) allows.

Option B: Stop, Look, Listen. Didn't they teach you that in preschool? And not just for crosswalks- for red lights, stop signs, jaywalkers, animals, etc.

Option C: Don't text and drive.

Nascar's "options" sum up the problem with driving in New Haven. People seem to make the rules up as they go!

The idea that the NHPD has bigger fish to fry than moving violators is sort of understandable, but there's a major quality-of-life issue at work here.

If people can violate traffic laws with impunity, they will (and they do here in New Haven!).

The slightest bit of enforcement could go a long way, and I am wrong in suggesting that enforcing traffic laws could produce the revenue to pay for enforcing traffic laws?

To many speeders, too many cops guarding construction jobs, too many students playing a role of sacrificial lamb and walking into the street to prove a point.

Unfortunately, the revenue from infraction tickets go to Hartford and isn't exactly used to further fund motor vehicle enforcement. Secondly all the cops at the construction sites should not be something to complain about. First of all the actual construction company hires and pays the cop privately. A percentage of the cost to hire the cop goes to the city. So everytime you see a cop there the city is making money too. Also the cop is there to serve a purpose. Drivers obey laws because they're scared of getting a ticket. Although it is unlikely for a cop working a construction site to chase someone down on foot for violating a traffic law, his presence still slows down a lot of traffic to make the construction zone less dangerous. If there was no one there or just a flagger, drivers will drive right through the cones and into a ditch.

Go to NHPD website and go to usefull phone numbers and make a phone call. If enough people call and complain maybe they'll hire overtime just to enforce that area.

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Social Media | "In India, Using Facebook to Catch Scofflaw Drivers" (NYT, August 1): "

Now, the city’s overburdened traffic police officers have enlisted an unexpected weapon in the fight against dangerous driving: Facebook. The traffic police started a Facebook page two months ago, and almost immediately residents became digital informants, posting photos of their fellow drivers violating traffic laws. As of Sunday more than 17,000 people had become fans of the page and posted almost 3,000 photographs and dozens of videos." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/technology/02traffic.html

I'd like to see this intersection rebuilt and made much safer - is this within the city's request system? If not, citizens should fill out a complete streets project request form.

Without the more specific data on traffic enforcement from the NHPD, it will be extremely difficult to request action and track progress on speeding or stop sign enforcement at a neighborhood level. All of the neighborhood management teams throughout New Haven, as well as more than 30 elected officials, have been requesting this since 2008, but progress was more or less nonexistent between 2008 and 2010 (with the exception of a dozen or so neighborhood speeding ticket reports from our police spokesperson over the course of those three years). Continued discussion is now being held up because our traffic division currently has no staff. See http://www.newhavensafestreets.org/2011/09/coalition-receives-response-from-mayor.html for details.

Bottom line is that the community currently has very little idea of what is going on - without ongoing high-quality information, there's no way to solve this issue.