Description
Issue : Yale has repeatedly failed to meet its legal obligation to promptly repair roads following construction, most notably on High Street which for the past decade has resembled the siege of Vicksburg.
New Haven Code of Ordinances (Article III, Ch.27, Sec27-71 through 27-84) is clear that street excavations have to be patched to the specs for the street and the repairs cannot fail for at least several years.
Issue : Yale has (most probably without permission) taken it upon themselves to paint a crosswalk midblock on High Street (btwn Chapel and Elm) with the daily net effect of an elderly person standing in the middle of the street focusing his or her camera on Harkness tower, unaware of impending vehicles.
CT State Statutes (Section 14-297) define a crosswalk as the extension of a public sidewalk across a street to another sidewalk. The path from Old Campus Quad to Harkness Tower fails to meet that definition.. Although the BOA was foolish enough to sell the rest of High Street, this portion still remains public property and should not be commandeered by the University.
Issue: Yale has also taken it upon themselves to tamp a large pile of asphalt on the Harkness side of the street sloping from street to sidewalk. Although this resembled a handicap ramp, it fails to actually meet the ADA definition, is the inversion of a curb cut extending out into the street and therefore puts vehicles in grave danger. A peninsula of curb height pavement extending several feet out into a city street (already constricted by Yale’s dorm renovations) recklessly endangers the public.
High Street is public property and should not be used or abused by private entities.
3 Comments
A downtown resident (Guest)
This complaint strikes me as quite unreasonable. The campus area has very high densities of pedestrians (Yale students, staff, tourists, and many New Haveners who like me enjoy the walkability and beauty of the area). If we were not one of the last developed societies on earth to discourage cars from ravaging our inner cities, much of the downtown campus area, along with the restaurant district west of the Green and Broadstreet, would be pedestrianized. In the meantime, drivers who pass through this area should feel apologetic for exposing pedestrians and cyclists to noise and danger for their own convenience. I write this as someone who does sometimes drive through High St, but to complain about a pedestrian crossing in the middle of a road, connecting two residential and classroom complexes with thousands of residents, staff, and students is breathtakingly selfish.
That said, I agree that Yale's construction processes are often quite inconsiderate (especially in terms of the noise they generate), and that the roads should be better maintained.
robn (Registered User)
ADR,
Not unreasonable. If Yale wants their way with a public property they need to ask permission in a very public way (from the BOA), not use lackadaisical construction as a back door to manipulate such public property. BTW, all over the city there are great civic mechanisms for crossing streets; they're called crosswalks and they occur at corners; not midblock at Yale photo-ops.
Κλειστό Manager of Operations, Process Improvement - Transportation, Traffic, & Parking (Verified Official)