A bright green PowerPoint presentation flashed pictures of buses and slides of transportation statistics. Tidbits of transportation-themed trivia in-formed attendees of the fastest operating speed of Japanese trains and more. Doug Hausladen, director of transportation for the City of New Haven, along with presenters from the Connecticut Association of Community Transportation, Young Energetic Solutions, among others, described the transit situation in New Haven. The event, titled “Transportation on Tap,” was one of a series of events that make up the core push of a new initiative meant to decrease reliance on cars in New Haven and, more broadly, to re-examine the use of public transportation in the city.
The initiative, GoNewHavenGo, will comprise a yearlong resource for how businesses and individuals in New Haven can commute without a car—and how, on a broader level, the city can take a renewed look at sustainable steps in public transit that pro-mote health and wellbeing of residents, too. Not only the City of New Haven, but also a coalition of partners, from CTrides to the New Haven/León Sister City Project, have come together around the initiative, which is currently holding its first annual September campaign to rally support and increase public discourse around public transit.
GoNewHavenGo is only one of a series of organizations that, citywide, are pushing for greater access to public transport. While the benefits are manifold—from reducing carbon footprint and increasing environmental awareness, to decreasing pollution and combatting obesity—it is the intersection of the issue of public transport with another central question that arises when taking the future of New Haven into consideration that, it becomes clear, makes efforts like these vital to the city’s future.
Nearly a third of New Haven residents do not have cars. A majority of households have fewer cars than adults. If residents can-not commute to work reliably, or at all, their jobs will be imperiled. New Haven’s 14 percent unemployment rate is persistently high, and nearly twice the national aver-age. Hausladen, and those who have thrown their efforts behind GoNewHavenGo, are doing so with the hope that it could serve as an avenue for combating this trend. The efficacy of these initiatives, though, remains in question.
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The intersection of unemployment and transportation is an area that has received consider-able focus in the past. A Dec. 2014 DataHaven re-port on job access and transportation in New Haven led with a quote by New Haven Mayor Toni Harp: “Transportation is a civil rights issue, it’s an economic development issue, it’s a job issue.”
The report pointed towards the reality that many jobs in Greater New Haven are based in workplaces outside of the city limits, where transportation infrastructure is more limited. In the City of New Haven, 13,000 households have no car. Nearly 90 percent of those who seek work through CTWorks cite lack of suitable transportation as a chief impediment in being able to find a job. This lack of transportation is by far the most commonly cited barrier that those seeking work identify.
Even though three-quarters of New Haven residents live within walking distance of a bus stop, the DataHaven re-port found that, during rush hour, nearly three quarters of jobs are inaccessible within an hour-and-a-half commute. As these findings make clear, even when the infrastructure ostensibly exists, it still frequently proves ineffective. In the absence of a reliable public transportation infrastructure, residents have been forced to use cars as their primary form of transportation.
Here, the split that motivated the creation of GoNewHavenGo arises. In the City of New Haven, 69 percent of residents reported that they did not have access to a car when they needed it; this statistic drops to 14 percent for all residents of Greater New Haven. People are unable to get to job inter-views and, if they are hired, may well be rendered unreliable. Their time is faultily expended, and leisure time drops. A chief aim of GoNewHavenGo, in turn, is to make access to a car irrelevant to the ability of New Haven residents to find and hold employment.
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Hausladen knows that, in terms of public transportation, New Haven is, in and of itself, an irony. It boasts a robust transportation infrastructure that makes it a hub along the eastern seaboard. But while it serves as the chief connector between Boston and New York City, the transportation within the city has, historically, been anemic at best. He described the GoNewHavenGo project as “low hanging fruit”—it is, primarily, concerned with promoting and marketing around the infra-structure that currently exists, and comes at little cost to the City itself.
Laurence Grotheer, Director of Communications for the Mayor’s office, agreed. He made clear that GoNewHavenGo is “simply an awareness campaign.” Grotheer said that the month-long marketing and events push is “organized encouragement” that is aimed to lead residents to consider, and use, alternative means of transit.
Hausladen made clear, though, that the city can by no means stop here. The broader mission that he identified, and that GoNewHavenGo promotes, lies in the push to shift from a car-reliant sys-tem to one that supports the existing infrastructure, that moves away from cars and to-wards public transit that is accessible for all.
“We are continuing to develop downtown based on the geometries of roads. Downtown is exploding with development,” Hausladen said. “But you can only fit so many cars into a downtown.”
He described “terrific bus reach” and “amazing access to transit.” But, he acknowledged that service levels—the frequency and accessibility of transit options—are lacking. And as Jacob Wasserman, SY ’15, who spent the summer interning at and coordinating GoNewHavenGo’s work as a Dwight Hall fellow, acknowledged, there has been resistance to even these these steps. “There are some people who push back, who ask, ‘Why are we investing so much in bikes, in walking infrastructure, when we could be investing more in our roads?’”
But Wasserman said that GoNewHavenGo’s work is essential, and is far from an anomaly. “It is part of a national movement,” Wasserman said. “People are moving back to cities, and people are ditching their cars, or using them less and less. We are right in that movement, at the cutting edge of it—” he pauses, and backtracks with a chuckle. “At least, I’ll claim.”
Wasserman made clear, though, that the coalition that has formed around the movement all come to it from different angles, but all believe in the centrality of improved access to effective trans-port. “It’s how you hold a job. It’s how we keep our city from being under water,” Wasserman said. “When the city is in a jobs crisis, to help the city get back working, being able to get to work consistently is really important.”
Wasserman described the outreach that GoNewHavenGo is doing to businesses, to provide incentives for their employees to use public transport, and to set up infrastructure—as small scale as bike racks in front of the businesses—to encourage these transportation practices.
This month is the coalition’s second annual push to engage the community on transportation issues. Over 30 businesses and 400 individuals have signed up to participate in the month-long competition to transport using bikes, walking, carpool, or train; the competition will be decided based on reduction in carbon emissions and money saved. The metrics they use to track the competition make clear that they are approaching the marketing of this push through the lens of sustainability. But the promise that this push holds to help tackle the jobs crisis in New Haven makes clear that GoNewHavenGo may well be a component of molding a brighter future for the New Haven itself.