NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A raised crosswalk was raised up Friday morning in front of the Nathan Hale School in New Haven, as the beginning of a trend in the state as the Townsend Avenue project is having its desired effect.
"We see traffic already slowing down and we see that moms and dads have already commented this week that we feel safer dropping their kids off right here," said State Rep. Al Paolillo (D-New Haven).
And, with some 600 students attending the school, that’s comforting.
"We’ve installed a lot of these types of raised crosswalks at intersections across the city but never in the City of New Haven or the State of Connecticut has one of these been installed on a state road," said Mayor Justin Elicker (D-New Haven).
So why here and now? It doesn’t hurt when the Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Transportation lives in the neighborhood.
"The City of New Haven showed us that it works on their local roads," said Garrett Eucalitto, Dep. Commissioner of the DOT. "They were patient and they worked with our engineering teams to demonstrate how it would work in the winter with our plow trucks."
This project is costing the City of New Haven some $90,000 - money well spent, they say. And the state expects to hear from many other municipalities about the same sort of projects.
And it’s not a given that cities and towns applying would have to pay for having raised crosswalks installed on their state roads.
"If we are going in and we are going to be milling and filling a roadway and doing some work on the road already we would want to work with the municipality to try and build it into the project," said Eucalitto.
But, of course, municipalities would have to pitch areas of potential danger, like schools.
Tony Terzi is a reporter at FOX61 News. He can be reached at tterzi@fox61.com. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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