Jonah Center Holds Forum on Complete Streets and Bikeway Master Plan for Middletown

The Jonah Center for Earth and Art held a public forum on Middletown’s efforts to develop a comprehensive and detailed plan for making the city safer and more conductive for walking and bicycling on Tuesday night at the First Church of Christ.
The program covered a range of issues and was highly informative.

Jonah Center President John Hall began the forum by addressing the organization’s role as the “Project Advocate” for a $800,000 federal grant application to build a $1 million multi-use trail and bikeway in Middletown that would connect downtown and Wesleyan University with the residential area of Wesleyan Hills and surrounding areas in Durham and Middlefield. He discussed how the city approved $200,000 in required matching funds at the December Common Council meeting. Even more significantly, a separate $20,000 appropriation for a professional consultant to assist the city in designing a “Complete Streets and Bikeway Master Plan” was approved.

As part of this appropriation, a city committee, spearheaded by the Jonah Center, is being formed to study the issue of creating a complete streets and bikeways master plan. The committee will examine the safest and most feasible ways in which to build a multi-use trail and bikeway in Middletown.

The diverse group is also planning to discuss implementing programs which will encourage city residents to walk more and will teach bike safety to city and local riders who are practicing urban riding. Finally, the committee will discuss improvements to sidewalks, off-street trails and bike lanes. This committee has only very recently formed and is not going to start formally meeting until April. But its desire to tackle these issues was made apparent at the forum in the speakers the Jonah Center had presenting.

Kari Sullivan from the state Department of Education kicked the presentations of with a detailed description of the Connecticut Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program. A federally funded program to create safe and convenient opportunities for children to bicycle and walk to and from school, SRTS is designed to help children become more physically active and thus fight the scourge of childhood obesity. As Sullivan stated again and again, the SRTS program promotes healthy lifestyles, improves quality of life and even helps to preserve the environment. In her own words, “Middletown must create an environment which is physically healthy and better for children to live in.”

Sullivan went on to speak about how Middletown could implement the SRTS program in its schools. Her presentation focused on the five “E”s-engineering, enforcement, encouragement, education and evaluation. The engineering process would involve re-engineering neighborhood-to-school connections and traffic control measures to allow for more walking and biking routes to schools. The enforcement process would have law enforcement addressing driver behavior and enforcing traffic laws near schools. Students and parents would be encouraged to walk and bike to school by the promotion of such activities as adult-supervised walks to school and organized Walk To School Days. At the same time, students would be constantly educated on how to walk and bike safely to school and its health and community benefits.

Sullivan did not deny that the process for implementing the STRS program in city schools would be a lengthy one. She, along with the bikeway and master plans committee, is still in preliminary discussions with bringing it to Middletown schools and the federal grants for the program are competitive and in constant danger of being cut. Finally, Sullivan will need the tangible benefits of STRS to convince parents who are skeptical of and concerned with allowing their children to walk to school. However, STRS has made a great impact in communities both in Connecticut and across the country. The quality of life for children in Middletown and for the larger environment of the town will be improved when people begin biking and walking to school and elsewhere.

Local cyclist and biking educator Beth Emery was the second speaker. Emery discussed how both cyclists and motorists can make the streets of Middletown safer. After starting her presentation with a series of simple statistics about the type of crashes that occur on bikes, Emery addressed a number of points. Though she made it clear that bicyclists had to follow common sense measures such as not riding at night without lights or dark clothing and wearing a helmet, Emery argued that bicyclists should have a true understanding of riding and a sense of how to bicycle in an urban environment if they wanted to travel in the streets of Middletown.

“Helmets are like seatbelts, “Emery said. “I would never claim they aren’t very important. But they aren’t going to protect you from an accident if you don’t understand defensive measures. There are other things you need to know.”

Emery delivered the message that before a rider learned anything else about urban bicycling in the city they needed to learn how to interact with traffic. This means that they would have to consistently follow the laws of the road and be predictable in their actions. Riders being conscious of proper lane positioning and their visibility in reference to other vehicles would be key in this regard. Emery stated that it would be her mission to advance the cause of safe travel for both motorists and bicyclists in Middletown by leading the effort to educate residents the rules of safe and successful urban biking. As part of the complete streets and bikeway master plan for making city travel safer, Emery would emphasize lessons that taught riders how to maneuver and handle their bike quickly, particularly in a defensive manner, as well as how to start and break correctly. Emery, along with the committee, hopes to work with law enforcement in establishing these educational programs and to work with the SRTS program and organizations like Bike Walk CT in making the streets of Middletown safer for both children and adults.

Middletown Engineer Ton Nigosanti made the final presentation. He discussed the planned improvements for city structures, sidewalks, off-street trails and bike lanes. Nigosanti came armed with maps that indicated the proposed layout of the multi-use trail stretching from Wesleyan Hill to downtown. He also brought a large map on which those in attendance could indicate their preferred routes for walking and bicycling in the city while identifying which streets and areas they believed to be most in need of repair.

Though Nigoasanti’s presentation was the one least focused on directly addressing the multi-use trail and bikeway plan, it was the presentation which attracted the most comments and feedback from the audience. Those in attendance asked Nigosanti about a number of matters, from the work that could be done on Long Hill Road and Saybrook Road to make it safer for vehicles and bike riders to the source of dirt piles on Long Hill Road and the timetable for their removal.

After the meeting, Hall and Emery spoke with the Middletown Eye about a number of the issues discussed in the meeting. Hall emphasized that the committee coming together to focus on both this broader plan and on the development of a multi-use trail and bikeway was one that could work together strongly.

“We start working in April,” he said. “It’s a group has people from a lot of different backgrounds who are committed to this project. With the variety of strong ideas everyone will share, I can see the committee working together really well. We will have to find a way to incorporate our separate ideas into a comprehensive plan.”

Despite his strong confidence in the committee, Hall did not back away from stating that the creation of a multi-use trail and bikeway route for the city is a few years away. He estimates that the earliest date of fruition would be 2014 and says that anticipating the most convenient layout for Middletown residents, while improving primary routes on such a layout, will be a lengthy process. When you factor this into the city having to still wait for a federal grant application for the project, Hall unequivocally stated that the committee would not write a final report on the route and a comprehensive plan for safe walking and biking in the city for a significant period of time.

Both Hall and Emery visualize the efforts to make Middletown safer and more conductive for walking and bicycling as being capable of changing how both the city is laid out and how its residents live.

“If we make changes with infrastructure through engineering changes and programs than it will have a huge impact,” stated Hall. “A multi-use trail and bikeway route will connect where people live to where they go out and do activities. And it will allow residents from both Middletown and other area communities to easily travel in and out of the city.”

Emery elaborated on the educational programs she wants to introduce to residents as part of the comprehensive plan.

“We will teach riders how to safely share the road with cars,” Emery said. “The more bicyclists there are out on the streets, the more used cars will become to riders and to sharing the road with them. The STRS program will be very important. By teaching our kids to move their bodies by riding their bikes and walking, a culture of health will be established.”

The two leaders were very encouraged by the forum’s large crowd and especially by their feedback. As the Jonah Center for the Arts continues to hold meetings on the future of walking and bicycling in Middletown in the coming weeks and months it hopes that informed and energized crowds continue to turn out.

For more information on the Jonah Center’s efforts in creating a complete streets and bikeway master plan for the city of Middletown, contact John Hall at 860-398-3371 or visit www.thejonahcenter.org