Pedestrian Killed in Crash Near New Haven Green

Excellent reporting from the New Haven Independent, on yet another Downtown tragedy, can be found here.

Bryan Neff collided with a moving car at 8:30 p.m. Friday. Neff was pronounced dead around 1:45 a.m. Saturday due to head injuries suffered in the crash.

Ongoing safety problems at this high-pedestrian-volume intersection were reported a year ago on SeeClickFix: http://www.seeclickfix.com/issues/1738 -- and are well known among local residents and business owners.

A number of the reader comments on the New Haven Independent article highlight the general consensus among New Haven elected officials and residents, expressed in the New Haven Safe Streets Petition and elsewhere, that specific actions must be taken to improve the safety of our transportation network:

AndersonCooper: "These downtown "T" intersections are a problem, and we're going to continue to have fatalities until they're addressed. The simple solution is the City Hall fix. Do what they did in front of Mayor DeStefano's office and put in a traffic light, along with a crosswalk, and pedestrian call buttons."

Streever: "It comes down to if you think the risk should be death or not. I am a big fan of calculated risk & being responsible for one's own well-being, but I question that the car was going 25 mph here. It'd be one of the few cars on Church street going the speed limit in my experience. Again, why not try to mark the road leading up to the crosswalk? I'm sure it could work, and it'd be worth trying. Make the whole section a pedestrian area & put in-road markings before the hill warning people to slow down. Drop the speed limit for that block to 15 mph. Seriously, the most impact that will have on travel time is probably 15 seconds."

Norton Street: "Look at New Urbanism, green architecture, look at what NYC has done on Broadway. This country is moving in a direction of smart growth, consolidation, walkability, and mass transit. If you aren't helping this transition, then you're evenutally gunna get run over by progress."