ethanjrt

  • Signs Archived
    Legion Ave & Orchard St New Haven, Connecticut, 06519 - New Haven - Ward 03

    The (formerly) red circle with the slash through it on the "no left turn" sign is completely faded to white, so that on first glance it can be mistaken for "turn left."

    P.S. Already called Transportation, Traffic, & Parking, but after waiting on hold for a minute or so I got a brief period of silence and was then transferred to someone's voicemail. Did not leave a message since I figure that's roughly equivalent to adding this issue here.

  • City Hall - Town_Green

    Board of Alders legal notices include a line like, "If you wish to present testimony at the meeting, you must register in advance at https://bit.ly/[xyz] or by calling (203) 946‑6483 or emailing publictestimony@newhavenct.gov before 2:00 pm on the day of the meeting."

    However, the link is just a Zoom call that is not active until the meeting actually starts (so, not actually a way to submit or register for public comment). I sent an e-mail six days ago to the e-mail address listed and have yet to receive a response. It's also not at all clear whether the testimony itself must be submitted in advance, or if citizens are just meant to give their names to get on a list to testify.

    Please do better at informing the public about how to participate.

  • 723-787 Chapel St New Haven, CT, 06510, USA - 770 Chapel Big

    Metal access doors in sidewalk on Chapel near State are rusting through. Someone's foot is going to go through these someday and it will not be pretty.

    Also, it looks like this has been reported multiple times on SeeClickFix in the past two years and is still not resolved.

  • Webster St & Winchester Ave New Haven, CT, 06511, USA - Dixwell

    The intersection at Winchester & Webster is dysfunctional & dangerous, especially for cyclists.

    1. 80% of drivers coming from Webster blow way past the stop line. If they do stop after the stop line, they run the risk of being hit by cars turning left from Winchester. (And if they don't stop at all, they end up in the ground floor of the house opposite, which has happened at least three times that I know of and is the reason those barricades were put up.)

    2. Drivers coming up Webster ignore the No Turn on Red sign and turn whenever they feel like it. To be fair, once you're past the stop line -- which, as I mentioned, most people are -- you run the risk of being clipped by cars turning left from Winchester, so this isn't totally illogical. What's crazy is when you turn on red *into* cross traffic, as the car in the photo did, narrowly avoiding hitting me on my bike. (I followed him down Sachem and took this photo at the light.)

    3. Drivers treat the light like a stop sign. Less than two hours after this photo was taken, I was behind a driver who turned left on red from Winchester onto Webster.

    4. The light doesn't change at all sometimes, especially for cyclists. I've had the most luck with a bright front light at night, which seems better at tripping what I assume is the camera sensor, but if I'm biking up Webster during the day and turning left, the light never changes for me. I just have to edge out onto Winchester (VERY little visibility) and hope for the best... which is not how traffic should work. The sensor also occasionally doesn't trip for cars either, which is especially absurd when you see a Yale shuttle driver (who's just trying to follow the rules and keep their job) stuck at a neverending red light with a line of ten honking cars behind them. This unreliability also contributes heavily to drivers ignoring the light and blowing the stop line / treating it like a stop sign, as mentioned above.

    Please fix this!

  • Farmington Canal Heritage Trl New Haven, CT, 06511, USA - Dixwell
    A pickup truck full of what appeared to be broken furniture somehow managed to smash through the wooden fence between the Farmington Canal Trail and Canal St (closest to 136 Canal St) yesterday. I'm told it tried to drive away down the trail, was stopped by the barriers, backed up through the hole it had made, and drove off.
  • 55 Foote St New Haven Connecticut - Monterey Place
    I don't know whether the responsibility for wayfinding at a polling place falls on the city's Registrar of Voters or on the local party apparatus, but whoever it is, it seems like they're not even trying. The only wayfinding for the Wexler-Grant gym, which is only accessible through the side entrance, was a little "no campaigning within 75 feet" sign on the gate. (Once you got to the side entrance there were a few paper 8.5x11 "vote here" signs.) 3 out of 3 people I saw who parked in the lot tried the (locked) front door first; they were clearly having trouble finding the actual polling area, which is way off to the left in this photo, through the gate. An older woman leaning on a cane asked me where to go, and when I pointed the way, she responded, annoyed, "I have half a mind to turn around and go home." Couldn't really blame her. In fact, the only indications from the front of the building that you were in the right place at all (besides the "75 feet" sign, which as you can see from the photo is basically invisible until you get much closer) were the police cars and the campaign signs. But you shouldn't have to be a detective to figure out where to cast your ballot. So, New Haven registrars and Democrats: If you think that state elections count, please *act like it*.
  • 67 Sachem Street New Haven, Connecticut - Prospect Hill
    East-west (Sachem St) traffic is constantly waiting at a red light while there are no cars on Prospect St as far as the eye can see. The max length of the E-W green light is also pretty short, and the sensor that determines the length of that green light is SUPER aggressive -- if there's a bike, or even too much a gap between cars, it goes right to yellow/red, and everyone coming from Sachem St just has to settle in for another interminable wait until the next green light.
  • 103 Whitney Avenue New Haven, Connecticut - Yale University Campus

    The city web site states that "Bikes park free on all City of New Haven parking meters." But when the parking meter coin collectors come by, if a bike is in the way of them collecting the change, they will just wrench it around to the other side of the meter -- whether or not doing so damages the bike. For a securely locked bike, this kind of treatment is going to damage the spokes, brakes, and possibly even the wheel. Today, my seat post was wrenched about 20 degrees clockwise, so that's just how I'm riding for the rest of my day until I can get home to fix it. Since I never know when the collectors are going to come by (seems to be a different day of the week every time), there's no good way for me to plan for this. It's the equivalent of doing street sweeping at random intervals and using a bulldozer to remove any cars that are parked on the side of the road.

    This seems to be a department-wide policy because it's been done to my bike by multiple meter coin collectors over multiple months. I have video of the most recent event from my business's atrium security camera. (10:10 AM today on Whitney just north of Trumbull, in front of Escape New Haven.)

    Possible solutions:
    - Publicize a meter coin collection schedule (similar to street sweeping)
    - Instruct meter coin collectors to *just leave it* (and flag for later follow-up) if they can't access the coins without manhandling someone's bike; create accountability so that this isn't just a policy in name only

    Non-solutions:
    - Remove parking meters as on option for bike parking in New Haven. (There are not enough bike racks.)
    - Tell bikes to park on the street side of the meter. (Ever seen a bike wheel that looks like a pretzel because a driver let their trunk go over the curb while they were parallel parking? I see it all the time in New Haven.)

    I've also just left a voicemail about this issue at your office.

  • Winchester Ave New Haven, Connecticut - Newhallville

    Someone at the City of New Haven thinks it's okay to provide <24 hours notice to move cars in even-side street parking spaces. After posting notices around midday Thursday, cars were towed from the even side of Winchester Avenue in the early morning hours on Friday. No EONP for Winchester Ave was posted on this web site (based on my search for "EONP + Winchester").

    I guarantee that if the department in charge of posting EONP signs had to pay even 1/3 of the same-day retrieval costs for every car towed -- out of its own departmental budget -- they'd be infinitely more conscientious about providing ample notice to residents before seizing their primary means of transportation and holding them hostage on the other side of town for large sums of money.

    This one's for the Board of Alders: Let's institute a towing cost-sharing policy policy ASAP, or at the very least mandate 24 or even 48 hours' notice. <24 hours' notice is unacceptable.