[Excerpt] The issue of street safety and connectivity came to the fore in another part of Wednesday night’s meeting: a discussion of a quality-of-life survey that Doug Hausladen (pictured) and Mark Abraham devised.
The online survey yielded 1,247 total responses (191 from Westville). Hausladen, chairman of the Downtown/Wooster Square Management Team, and Abraham, from Data Haven, have been reviewing the results with management teams around the city. (This was their fifth meeting.) Click here to see the surveys.
The 16 people present Wednesday broke into three groups to review sections of the Westville respondents’ answers to see what topped their lists of neighborhood strengths, major problems, suggestions for improvement, and willingness to volunteer to improve things.
The main strengths neigbhors reported: a sense of community and the beauty of the homes and tree-lined streets. The main problems fell into three categories: lack of a grocery store; lack of communication with police; and several concerns that together amounted to lack of complete streets. Those concerns include speeding cars, inadequate bus service, no bike paths (like the Farmington Canal Greenway through Newhallville and Dixwell), dangerous intersections and lack of sidewalks—i.e. lack of connectivity.
After listing all their concerns, which Hausladen duly noted on several big sheets of paper, participants were each given eight red dots and asked to place them according to how strongly they felt about the issues. Based on the plethora of dots stuck on those very issues, they obviously agreed with the survey takers on what the problems are.
Link:
http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/connectivity_is_lacking_in_/
