Today, Hartford smells like paint and sunscreen at Capitol and Lawrence (above) and Capitol and Babcock (below).
This was being touched up because the flex posts were installed a bit after the original paint job, and people were not avoiding driving over the temporary extensions to pedestrian space.
I like this project, but it only grows my wish list for the area:
1. We need permanent intersection narrowing at Capitol and Broad. The redesign that happened there a few years ago was not progress.
2. How do we get people to stop idling their cars (everywhere, obviously, but especially) on this block of Capitol Avenue from Lawrence to Babcock where there are multiple patios and nobody needs to be breathing in exhaust fumes or trying to compete with the volume of people’s lazily running engines?
3. People can still drive at high speeds on Putnam Street, Babcock Street, Park Terrace. How do we signal to drivers that they’re in a residential neighborhood, and not on I-84?
Paul Dunahoo
> How do we signal to drivers that they’re in a residential neighborhood, and not on I-84?
I am certainly not an expert, but I wonder if part of the issue is that the pavement ultimately looks the same as a highway. If the road gets narrowed, and then a different color of pavement is used with brick-patterned stamping (increasing the noise that cars generate while driving), maybe then it’ll feel unfamiliar enough to drivers that they’ll slow down?
I don’t know have any expertise though. I just don’t have a car and I bike everywhere on an ebike in Stamford (even though ebikes are technically illegal in Stamford), and it amazes me how thoughtless drivers can be when they speed through the city streets.