Gabrielle Lee Remembered: Whalley Widened

Excellent reporting from Paul Bass of the New Haven Independent on the Whalley Avenue widening project can be found here: http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2009/06/whalley_widenin.php

A year after a driver mowed down an 11 year-old girl on Whalley Avenue, the state prepared to start widening the congested road — endangering other pedestrians’ lives, in the view of neighborhood critics.

Urban planner Christopher Heitmann (at center in photo) argued Thursday that the DOT plan will accomplish the opposite of Zborek’s predicted outcomes: It will make cars drive even faster, and make walking and biking even more perilous, than it is now. He and other local traffic-calming advocates reacted in outrage to the plan. Heitmann, executive director of the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance (WVRA), organized neighborhood meetings with the DOT to try to alter the Whalley plan. He argues that their concerns fell on deaf ears.