If you’ve ever crossed the intersection of Main Street and Charter Oak Avenue/Buckingham Street on foot, you don’t need to be told that it is ridiculously wide. A lane in every direction could be removed and it would still be amply spacious. It’s wild. Did someone spend too much time at the bar and then propose an intersection large enough for a heliport to operate in its center while rush hour traffic operated seamlessly around it? Because that’s the only explanation I can think of for this.

With paint and a few flexible bollards, the intersection was improved over the weekend.

A few years ago, Transport Hartford ran a sneckdown photo contest. A sneckdown is a terrible portmanteau of snowy neckdown, a curb extension created by nature itself. These narrowed roads show how much extra space most of our streets have given over to cars, and how much more walkable they could be. Usually, sneckdowns help to reduce car speeds without creating major traffic jams. Several photos in that contest featured this intersection and the segment of Prospect Street where Pulaski Mall intersects. These were shared with CRCOG and the City of Hartford’s Department of Development Services. Later, the case was made for a tactical urbanism toolkit, but this did not gather enough Hartford Decides votes.

Last year, CRCOG provided funding to the City of Hartford for a tactical urbanism project. FHI was hired by the City of Hartford to design and implement the plan. Paid youth interns from Transport Hartford, along with volunteers from the community, painted a temporary curb extension at the southeast corner of the Main and Charter Oak intersection on Saturday. Installation of flex posts was done by FHI.

This design forces — as much as flex posts can force — motorists to slow down when taking the corner. Observing this in action, so far, it works. Drivers have been confused enough by the change to approach the intersection with the caution that should have been used all along. The bumpout also reduces time pedestrians spend exposed in the intersection

The demonstration project on Prospect Street is not as pretty or complex. An existing crosswalk was made more visible and the road was narrowed just in the area of the crosswalk. This is close to the Betances elementary school and several apartment buildings, making it an area that gets a lot of foot traffic.

The bad news is that the City of Hartford is treating this as a very temporary project, claiming that they do not know how to maintain this in the winter. Fortunately, Hartford is not the first city to have installed flexible bollards. We have models we can replicate, including northern cities, countries, and regions that see snow and have good pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure. Finland doesn’t shut down for winter. Neither does Copenhagen or Calgary.  Montreal or Minneapolis. Even the wicked exotic city of Boston is managing.

Like the changes to Charter Oak Avenue and Prospect Street? Want these to be made more permanent? Call the DPW at (860) 757-9900 and  email Walter Veselka (Director of Public Works) at walter.veselka@hartford.gov. Let them know how much you enjoy walking across these streets now that danger has been reduced. Remind them that your right to safely cross a street does not end when the snowflakes begin to fall.