Safe Campus, Unsafe Streets
An excellent op-ed from a senior at Yale University about traffic safety issues on the Ivy League campus.
Timothy Ellison's article focuses in part on the elimination of right turns on red (RTORs), a concept many other pedestrian-rich cities throughout the United States have adopted. Eliminating RTORs was a key recommendation in this year's Nelson/Nygaard gap analysis study of Downtown New Haven.
Among the comments that follow Ellison's op-ed:
- Yale students are constantly telling anyone who will listen how threatened they feel by reckless drivers, and yet nothing is ever done. Yale and New Haven, this is a life and death issue. Please take it more seriously!
- But I also agree that drivers in the city have gotten increasingly willing to drive through red lights, and when on a bike I am also aware of how crazy traffic and drivers have gotten. So its a complex problem. Traffic calming and more pedestrian friendly routes are for sure needed.
- On several occasions I've witnessed that a police officer ignoring red light violations, in particular when drivers ignore do-not-turn signs. Of course, drivers have every incentive to violate traffic laws when they don't have to fear the consequences.
- The situation on the streets around the campus, which were designed in the 1950s for high-volume auto traffic and never converted back into pedestrian-friendly streets, is completely unacceptable. Numerous students and Yale affiliates are injured or killed every year. Yale already pays tens of millions a year for security - they've done a great job increasing the feeling of security on campus late at night, and in terms of street crime, the campus is now the safest urban university in the United States. Next, Yale needs to immediately 1) step up the traffic enforcement, 2) following the model of Cambridge, MA or any number of other cities, step up and commit to financing the reconstruction of safe crosswalks throughout the campus, as they have in the past in areas where students have been killed, and 3) publish and implement a bicycle and pedestrian master plan that makes the campus accessible for everyone, not just drivers.