New Haven's Traffic Lights Will Get Smarter About Bikes

When a bicycle or car rolls up to this intersection late at night, there’s no system to trigger a green light—yet.

The city plans to install overhead cameras at this downtown intersection and eight others as part of a $3 million state project to improve local roads before the Gateway Community College relocates downtown.

The cameras will detect any bike or car that’s stuck at a red light and trigger a green signal so it can safely cross. The change will be part of a major rethinking of intersections—the first of its kind in the state—that uses “bike boxes” to give cyclists first priority at red lights, according to city traffic engineer Bijan Notghi (pictured above).

The project, which still needs final approval from the state Department of Transportation, is slated to be complete in the spring of 2011, in time for the new Gateway campus to open to students in the fall of 2012.

Meanwhile, the city is making more modest improvements at other intersections around town—including one at Middletown and Clinton avenues, and near the Southern Connecticut State University campus—so that traffic signals can “see” bicycles in addition to cars. When another 14 intersections the State and Ferry Street corridors are revamped with federal funds, eight will have video detection, too.

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