This week, Director of Transportation Systems Joe Balskus participated in a presentation on VHB’s successful partnership with the Town of West Hartford at the Connecticut Society of Civil Engineers (CSCE) Dinner Meeting. Joe teamed up with West Hartford Town Engineer Greg Sommer to share how VHB is helping advance the Town’s Vision Zero initiative, which aims to eliminate all fatal and severe injury crashes by 2033.
Focusing on West Hartford Complete Street Projects, Joe highlighted three recent VHB initiatives that are improving mobility, advancing safety for all road users, and enhancing connectivity throughout West Hartford’s downtown area.
- North Main Street Road Diet: VHB conducted a feasibility study for implementing a road diet on North Main Street, one of the busiest four-lane corridors in West Hartford After a trial and monitoring program, VHB recommended implementing the road diet permanently, along with additional signal improvements, minor widening, and a follow-up monitoring program for crash pattern analysis. As a result of implementing the road diet, this segment of North Main Street saw fewer injury crashes than the previous two years.
- New Park Avenue Complete Streets Improvements: With the addition of two CTfastrak stations and the New Park Housing development, the auto-centric New Park Avenue corridor was prime for improvements ahead of the expected influx of pedestrians and bicyclists. Our traffic team assisted the Town in carrying out the design of the New Park Avenue Complete Street Improvement Project to enhance safety for all corridor users. Project elements included decorative streetlights, wayfinding signage, enhanced mid-block crosswalks, and traffic signal improvements. The project will be constructed in 2026.
- Automated Traffic Enforcement Safety Device (ATESD) Speed Camera Study: To reduce crashes through education, improved driver behavior, and adherence to sensible motorist speeds, VHB supported the Town of West Hartford in implementing a full ATESD speed camera plan. VHB developed a unique screening tool using GIS and analytics to incorporate and compile traffic data, analyze the data with ATESD criteria and conduct a comprehensive public outreach program. The resulting plan includes recommendations for 15 bi-directional speed camera locations to enhance road safety. Town officials expect the cameras to be installed by mid-2026. In addition, VHB is embarking on the next phase of the project involving Red Light Running Cameras with a similar process and data analytics to identify 16 of the 100 intersections for red light running cameras.
“The Complete Streets approach not only improves the health and safety of road users—it invigorates the vitality of the neighborhood and the local economy,” said Joe. “By using Complete Streets as the infrastructure framework, we can better implement the people-first design and safety strategies of the Vision Zero initiative.”
VHB is dedicated to providing exceptional service to Connecticut towns, creating safer neighborhoods prepared for a sustainable future. Learn more about our work with Connecticut municipalities.
