BikePortland Managing Editor Elly Blue is on a swing through the East Coast. She’ll post regular dispatches from the road about the people she meets and the transportation and bike-related topics she learns about.

That’s from BikePortland.org where Blue’s brief reports have been surfacing every few days since before the holiday under Elly’s East Coast Tour. She’s back where she grew up in Hamden, and this time she’s brought with her a Brompton, plus all she’s learned from living in the progressive bicycling Mecca of Portland.

Blue’s posts give us folks here in New Haven a chance to hear from someone who truly understands what bicycle-friendly design means, given that she’s from a city where it’s increasingly been a priority focus for transportation policy over the last decade.

Recent events seem to suggest that the tide is turning here in New Haven as well. Her latest “Dispatch From New Haven”covers the Complete Streets initiative enacted a few months ago. Although, the law is more of a broad swipe at transportation obstacles, it is still a big step in the right direction for New Haven, and in turn for other communities, as it will provide a platform to launch bicycle and pedestrian projects in the future. As Blue mentions, New Haven is one of only a few communities in the country to enact such a law.

Speaking of progressive initiatives, the Farmington Canal Trail project is moving steadily toward completion on the New Haven portion. The bridge on Hillhouse Avenue was recently reopened after over a year. It was one of three bridges being rebuilt to accommodate the path near the current start of the New Haven to Northampton trail. Eventually the beginning of the trail will move further south toward Union Station and possibly Long Wharf. The date of completion for that phase is yet to be determined.

The final section of the New Haven portion running north toward Hamden is set to be completed in the Spring. This will allow 12 miles of uninterrupted riding (or walking) from downtown to Cornwall Avenue in Cheshire.

Hopefully, this will open up some real transportation and recreation alternatives to communities that reside along the trail. In the coming years, if the completion of this project proves to have made dramatic increases in the number of riders (and walkers) it will set a precedent for other communities to follow and possibly create a new way of linking our cities with the outlying suburbs. 

In other good news, the city announced that it would begin work in the Spring on the re-paving of Whitney Avenue from Canner Street to Trumbull. This is a project that was put on hold for over a year pending completion of the Ferry Street Bridge re-build. Apparently, the city can’t do two things at once.

The repaving of Whitney will finally give the Torosaurus the respect he so rightly deserves and bring relief to hundreds of cyclists who avoid that stretch of road because it is in such bad condition, particularly the right hand portion of the road, where slow vehicles like bikes are expected to travel. To the commuters who live on Whitney and have no other route alternative, this will prove to be a life changing experience for them. It means they will no longer have to ride 29ers and full suspension just to get to work.