Orange Street Slow Street Design- 4/4/2024

Thank you for your thoughtful input these last couple years about improving Orange Street. We learned a lot due to the determined advocacy demonstrated on this project. After consideration of your input, we have landed on a design that we believe will be a significant improvement for the Orange Street corridor and takes into account much of the feedback we received from residents and businesses owners who care about the safety of Orange Street for all users.

In particular, we heard so much from many of you about what makes Orange Street a special street, and we want to create a design that emphasizes the qualities that make Orange Street unique.  Moving forward, the City proposes to build a “slow street” or “neighborhood greenway” incorporating concepts used in other municipalities, particularly in Europe, but new to New Haven. The proposal includes a 20 mph speed limit throughout the corridor, a textured and colored road surface, a slow driving lane shared with bicycles and cars as well as bump outs, raised traffic calming elements and planted islands in the street to enhance safety for all users in the corridor, particularly vulnerable users, while also creating a sense of place. We also believe this will spur more on-street activity including more outdoor seating options.  The existing uses of Orange St will be able to continue on in this safer streetscape, benefitting from these improvements while leaning into what makes Orange St special today.

We are very encouraged by the new design and hope you will be as well.  You can find the plan at the link below.  This enhanced plan will take some time to implement but we will be posting regular updates as the project progresses. We want to again thank the community for your input and patience. 

• Click here for the Design Proposal

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