New Haven’s Chapel Street shift from one-way to two-way traffic brings confusion, concerns

NEW HAVEN — Lucy Ballester, the owner of Soap-Edi on Chapel Street in New Haven, said she initially wanted the stretch of the road between in front of her shop to open to two-way traffic. 

She thought the change would bring more customers to her business, which sells bath bombs, soaps and lotions. 

“Now it’s kind of harder for them to get here,” Ballester said, who has been in the space for four years. 

Chapel Street, between College Street and York Street, was converted from one-way traffic to two-way traffic starting April 20. The change is part of a broader effort to improve the safety of Chapel Street, one of New Haven’s longest, busiest and most crash-prone arteries.

Chapel Street goes through at least seven neighborhoods stretching from Fair Haven in the east through Mill River, Wooster Square, Downtown, Dwight and Edgewood, West River and Westville.

On April 23, though, New Haven crossing guards manned crosswalks, guiding pedestrians across the street and stopping traffic. Police officers sat in cars on the corners of Chapel Street where traffic change happened to make sure people weren’t driving in the wrong lane. 

One police officer said he saw 10 people drive in the wrong lane on April 22. By around 11:50 a.m. on April 23, he said he saw four people who drove in the wrong lane. He added a fifth one just moments later when a blue pickup truck turned from College Street into the wrong lane on Chapel Street. 

The police officer laid on the horn at the driver. 

Ballester said there’s more traffic and it is more difficult to get to and leave her shop. She also said her customers said they have to park further away to get to her. She lives in Hamden and usually Ubers to her store or she’ll sometimes drive with her husband.

“I literally don’t even want to deal with it,” Ballester said. 

Ballester said she lost parking spots in front of her store to a loading space, where a truck was unloading food on April 23. 

“(The traffic) just makes the drivers angry,” Ballester said. “Just makes everybody upset.”

Balester said before there was “flow” and the cars were moving more, but now the street is congested. 

Bryn McGuire, who lives in Clinton and drives to New Haven to attend classes at Gateway Community College, said the street seems “more calm” than he remembered it being. He said he’s been visiting New Haven for more than 20 years now. 

“That’s what I’d certainly like to see if it makes it more convenient to get around here, that’s great,” McGuire said. “But I think it’s very much a wait and see.”

He said he wanted to see more pedestrian infrastructure, such as bike lanes. 

Plans call for Chapel Street, which already is a two-way street from Fair Haven to College Street, eventually to be open to two-way traffic all the way to Ellsworth Avenue, where it currently becomes two-way as it crosses Ella T. Grasso Boulevard into Westville.

The announcement came just over a year and a half after New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, joined by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, announced an $11 million federal grant for the “Chapel Street Safe Streets Project.”

At the time of the announcement, nearly 900 accidents had taken place over four years along Chapel Street between State Street and Ella T. Grasso Boulevard, including three fatalities and 18 serious injuries, according to the University of Connecticut’s Connecticut Crash Data Repository, officials said at the time.

This story includes reporting by staff writer Mark Zaretsky.