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Bollards!
After this dry cleaners in West Hartford’s Bishops Corner was smashed through twice by cars in the last two years, massive, highly visible bollards were installed between the parking lot and sidewalk. Considering how busy this plaza is, between the cleaners, supermarket, and coffee shop, it’s a miracle nobody was struck either of those times. Perhaps nobody needed to see what would occur on a third building strike.
Steps
“Some say that we shouldn’t involve morality because it can induce feelings of guilt and guilt is not an ideal way to create change. But what else can we do? How do we address this uncomfortable subject without upsetting anyone? How can we talk about an existential human crisis created by inequality, the exploitation of workers and nature, land theft, genocide and overconsumption without any mention of morality? Should we just pretend that the greatest threat we’ve ever faced is mainly an opportunity to create ‘new green jobs’ and a better future for all without any major changes for anyone?”
Where The Missing Sidewalk Excuses End
This weekend I was up in West Hartford’s Bishops Corner and chatting with a fellow bus rider who had walked to one of the nearby synagogues from the nearest stop, and let me tell you, their face looked like they had seen things. They kept saying “it is not safe” in a way that I wish engineers could have heard directly. It wasn’t pleading or angry or entitled. It was simply factual: this is not safe.
PARK(ing) Day
Tomorrow (September 15, 2023) is PARK(ing) Day, something Hartford participated in a couple of times about ten years ago and then ceased to, perhaps prematurely. The origins of this day were fairly subversive. It began in 2005 in San Francisco with people renting parking spaces and filling them with something other than cars. As long as someone is feeding the meter, it should not matter if it’s a car or a couch that goes into that spot. Doing this highlights what parking is: storing private belongings in the public realm. It shows other ways this space can be used, helping those who struggle with imagination to actually see it. And once you do, you can’t unsee it.
World Car-Free Day
“opponents of radical change have successfully categorized efforts to protect the environment or reverse the effects of climate change as personal sacrifices. We focus on the inconvenient downsides of taking the train over a car-share service, for instance, instead of imagining or working toward a world where driving in cars simply doesn’t exist because cities are designed with people in mind. We choose to keep funding fossil fuel companies because they’ve spent billions of dollars making sure our lives appear easier when we buy their products. The status quo is comfortable for a reason: it makes daily life easier to manage, especially when the alternative doesn’t yet exist — or, more accurately, when those in power are actively opposed to making a better world a reality.”
Pride 2023
At one time, I might have questioned how an event stemming from a literal riot could exist without centering itself around hours of speeches by carefully selected activists who met some political purity criteria. And then, I realized that 90% of speeches are dull and uninspiring, and by the time...
Bike Joy
“What policies could you try to work on? You could try to stop new fossil fuel developments in your state or work to shut down coal and natural gas plants that already exist. […] On the local scale, you could work to support public transit or protected bike lanes.”
On The Level
Had we chosen to live differently with water, it’s unlikely Hartford would have been so carved up by highways. At least, not ones so bloated. We could have restricted industry from dumping waste in the Park River. We could have cut our losses and moved out of flood zones,...
Footbridge
FUN FACTS ABOUT THIS OVERBUILT MONSTROSITY AND ITS ENVIRONS. The plan in 1977 was to tear down a pedestrian bridge so that I-91 could be widened. Instead of replacing the pedestrian bridge, it was thought that throwing money at Hartford’s north neighborhoods would be enough, as if building another pool was somehow equal to connecting residents with natural, flowing water. The amount of compensation would have been $1 million. [Adding lanes does not reduce congestion. It never does. That hasn’t stopped people from insisting things will work differently each time they do it though. I-91 was intended as a replacement for Route 5. Both remain congested today.]
Strong Enough
Last month when I wrote about a leaking faucet in a cemetery, there were a few things I did not get a chance to mention. One: It does not have to be that way. There are several faucets (hydrants) along the Connecticut River path and these are not dripping endlessly. Same with what is viewed in other cemeteries.
Safe Streets Connecticut: August 2023
Around 2 PM on August 22, 2023, an unnamed driver killed a child with a vehicle in a Danbury parking lot. Police and news media bent over backwards to both not name those involved and to say that it was determined to be “accidental.” It is rare that someone intentionally harms or kills another with a motor vehicle, making this statement feel . . . something. It felt off.
Car Park
Pope Park West is a poster child for wrong-headed decisions. Bad enough that it was orphaned by I-84, the parcel on Pope Park Hwy #4 has neither sidewalk nor path leading to it. Had the objective of the park been entirely to preserve (or rehabilitate) a natural space, its inaccessibility...
A Little Something (September 2023)
Here’s your curated Hartford event calendar for September 2023. What makes this list? Events that I would either attend or recommend to a good friend. Review events with the host/venue to confirm details have not changed since publication. ADD TO CALENDAR. TURNING RED: Come to Bushnell Park to watch...
The Problem With Single-Use Thinking
While researching the variety of e-bike policies at Connecticut’s colleges/universities, I came across a tiny detail that hints as to why some organizations, and individuals, have such a knee-jerk reaction to them. But first, let’s look at the Trout Brook Trail in West Hartford. According to Google Maps, the...
AITA
For two months during the summer of 2018, the bathrooms on CTrail Hartford Line trains were closed. It is a classic example of someone following the letter instead of the spirit of the law. Listen and learn. Disability Rights Connecticut rightfully filed an ADA complaint with the Federal Railroad Administration...
Re-Create
While sign clutter is real, I love a colorful and informative interpretative sign. This one, in Pope Park, explains the habitat around the pond. From what I’ve been told, unfortunately a bit of the plantings were rapidly destroyed by careless and/or uninformed DPW employees years back. I’ll assume that was before the sign was added. It doesn’t help that instead of expanding this habitat, the city recently went in the other direction, allowing more sports fields to be added nearby. Another result of that has been people deciding not only to drive next to the baseball diamond. Now, you can find people driving full across the park lawn next to other sports fields. This, in spite of the large paved parking lot within Pope Park, the ample free parking on nearby side streets, the convenience to multiple bus routes.
Leak
Years back at the dog-and-pony show known as the annual City of Hartford budget hearing, a friend pointed out how one of the sinks in a City Hall men’s bathroom was leaking. It was not a new problem. It was one that government neglected to address. He opined about the money wasted by not fixing this and other similar issues around town. Maybe it wouldn’t have made that much of a financial dent, but every bit adds up, and when decision makers are talking about chopping the library budget, it does make them look foolish for not being more thrifty in the first place.
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