A Westville project originally planned to bring the community together has actually caused quite a division along Edgewood Avenue. What could have been a simple presentation of a new two-way “cycletrack” quickly turned into a heated debate, bringing a hundred people to the last town meeting, according to a report in the New Haven Independent. This issue has pitted neighbor against neighbor in a fight over conflicting views of the character of this neighborhood just west of campus.

Since July 2014, plans have been in the works to construct a bike lane along 2.5 miles of Edgewood Avenue, extending from York Street to Yale Avenue. Now, after months of zoning debates, law adjustments, and design changes, the $1.2 million project has arrived at what New Haven’s Director of Transportation, Traffic and Parking Doug Hausladen calls “The Input Listening Phase.” While most of the community agrees they want a more connected, active community, the specifics of the design have proven unexpectedly contentious, exposing larger questions about the direction of Westville as a neighborhood.

The current proposals call for a two-way bike lane separated from the street by physical barriers called “rubber duckies,” or delineators. Proponents speak wistfully about the idea, conjuring images of young professionals biking safely to work, families leaving the car at home on their way to pick up groceries, and kids riding to school.

Some vocal dissenters worry about potential issues, however—like the loss of a parking lane in front of Edgewood School and local businesses. According to Elihu Rubin, an associate professor of urbanism at the Yale School of Architecture, the introduction of bike lanes can be especially controversial because they can indicate broader changes that disrupt an area’s social composition and cultural practices. In the case of Westville, he said, the project causes natural tension between the residents who bike frequently and those who never do.

Hausladen, however, doesn’t see such a clearly defined dichotomy. “This is not just a bike lane project,” he says. “The bulk of improvements are about pedestrianism. All of the signals will be redone with time counters, and where there’s a bike lane, crossing distances will be narrowed. This is really about linking neighbors with each other, and re-envisioning what Edgewood is about.”

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Projects like these highlight Westville’s commitment to reimagining New Haven as a more livable city. But residents disagree on what that livability actually looks like, and which aspects of their neighborhood they want this project to protect and enhance.

For business owners like Carol Frawley, whose café Deja Brew stands to lose its on-street parking to the project, the biggest issue is keeping her business accessible to her customers.  John Nixon, FES ’08, also has a personal stake in the project: last year, he was almost run off the road while biking with his two-year-old son along Edgewood Ave last year.

“Someone in a minivan pulled by, stopped, and came up next to me and my son. Then they gunned it, swerved into us, yelled and pulled off,” Nixon said. “There have been other people with similar blow-bys—they’re not uncommon, but this was particularly egregious. No one feels particularly welcomed by cars.”

Lifelong New Haven resident Ben Berkowitz has also experienced firsthand the need for better bike lanes. Berkowitz is more of a walker than a biker himself, but he comes to the debate as a son who watched his mother abandon her bike commute after getting hit by a car. He said she is one of many Westville residents he predicts would resume or try out bike commutes if a protected bike lane were constructed.

Berkowitz, who is the CEO of SeeClickFix, an online platform to connect citizens reporting non-emergency issues with the government, favors a fully connected two-way cycle track, arguing that its benefits to the community outweigh the lost parking. He sees a bike lane like this as an important step in solidifying the neighborhood’s residential atmosphere. “Westville is moving back to what it was when it was first developed—one of the first American suburbs,” Berkowitz said. “Suburbs had a very different meaning back then. There are a lot of young families with a higher level of diversity than a place like East Rock, with families that are committing to the city in a way that is less transient than other upper-middle class neighborhoods.”

Residents have also taken to contributing through online platforms, including on blogs and through threads of comments on the New Haven Independent’s coverage of the proposals. Jonathan Hopkins, a lifelong resident of New Haven, used city proposals to create his own digital renderings of the project and defend it to other online commentators. In his prolific online commenting, Hopkins repeatedly arrives at the same utopic vision.

“At the end of the day, I think that the benefits of a protected two-way cycle track outweigh a loss of convenience for some parkers, and the manageable conflict with two bus stops on one side of the street,” Hopkins posted in response to the New Haven Independent’s March 18 article, “Westvilleans Clash Over ‘CycleTrack.’”

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This project has implications that reach beyond the daily experiences of Westville residents. According to Hausladen, it has the potential to shape how New Haven is perceived by both residents and non-residents. As the first protected two-way cycle track in Connecticut, the Edgewood project could set an example for infrastructure policy for many other communities.

“There’s a lot of New Haven sweat in that bill,” Hausladen said. “We’ve got to prove to people that Connecticut is capable of this kind of infrastructure, that New Haven is a city on the move, that it is ready to be a melting pot for the next generation of entrepreneurs and immigrants.”

While some have critiqued the idea of spending so much money on this nonessential piece of infrastructure in a state experiencing budget issues, Hausladen considers the project a bargain. Even though only  2.7% of residents bike to work every day, New Haven actually has the highest percentage of bike commuters in the state of Connecticut. Hausladen said if the city is willing to spend over $1 billion on a recent highway bridge project, spending $1.2 million to improve the quality of commutes for over 2000 daily riders should seem a reasonable price.

“Quality of life is something hard to put your finger on, but transportation is really about can you get to where you’re going,” Hausladen said. Before Westville can get where it’s going, the community will have to decide what quality of life means for them and how this bike lane fits into that ideal.