Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz and Connecticut Department of Transportation Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto were joined by other officials to officially announce a Community Connectivity Grant awarded to West Hartford.

By Ronni Newton

Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, Connecticut Department of Transportation Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto, and other officials held a press conference in West Hartford on Wednesday morning to celebrate the town being awarded a $384,552 Community Connecticut Grant through the most recent round of funding.

“This is part of $12 million that’s been allocated to 17 towns and cities across our state for smaller transportation infrastructure projects that are dedicated to making our community safer for people that are walking, biking, and taking a bus,” Bysiewicz said. The awarding of the latest round of grant funds was first announced in November 2025.

In West Hartford, the grant will be used to created a dedicated, 10-foot-wide, two-way bike lane on the north side of Farmington Avenue, spanning about a third of a mile between Trout Brook Drive and North Main Street. The grant will also be used to create raised bus platforms and traffic signal upgrades along the stretch, as well as restriping of the roadway.

The dedicated bike lane will link the Trout Brook Trail to the Center, and make the corridor safer and more accessible, Bysiewicz said.

“Over the past five years, between 2021 and 2025, this short segment of Farmington Avenue has experienced 106 crashes, resultingin 21 minor injuries and one really serious injury,” Bysiewicz said, data that reminds officials of the importance of addressing bike and pedestrian safety infrastructure.

The issue has personal importance to Bysiewicz whose brother, John Bysiewicz, sustained life-threatening injuries when he was struck by a hit-and-run driver while bicycling in Guilford in November 2022. He endured more than 18 surgeries, including having part of a leg amputated. “And he remains an inspiration to me, and he’s also a powerful reminder that we need to take our time. We need to look for ways to make our communities safer for cyclists and pedestrians.

The bike lane should be completed by July 2026. It will involve some lane shifts and modifications of intersections, Town Engineer Greg Sommer said Wednesday, but won’t require a true road diet with paring back of the number of lanes on Farmington Avenue.

Mayor Shari Cantor said “protecting our community and making sure that people travel safely” is the most important role of a community leader. “And that’s why Vision Zero, after numerous tragic accidents, very different accidents, we understood that we needed a holistic strategy and plans … to change the way our community functions, how they drive, how they walk, how they bike.”

The three key elements of the Vision Plan are “enforcement, engineering, and education,” Cantor said, and receiving the grant to improve infrastructure to enhance safety dovetails with that mission.

Officials supported plans to pilot a bike lane, advocated for by Bike West Hartford leaders, and it was set up with cones and monitored by police officers during the Center Streets event in August 2024. Sommer had a camera set up to observe the use of the pop-up bike path that ran along the north side of Farmington Avenue, connecting Trout Brook Trail to North Main Street, and it was used by roughly 400 cyclists. The pop-up lane returned for the 2025 Center Streets event, and was again a success.

“We know that’s going to be a steady and well-used connector, and make people safer,” Cantor said. The narrowing of Farmington Avenue in that stretch may impact the traffic flow, “but the fact that people are safer and it might take a couple more minutes to get to where your destination is, it’s well worth it.”

Eucalitto said that since the Community Connectivity Grant program began, more than $74 million has been awarded. “And this project for just over $384,000 shows that you can have high impact with low dollar values. You don’t need a multimillion dollar project to deliver safety improvements in a community.”

The bike lane, incorporated with transit improvement, Eucalitto said, “shows that we can prioritize users to protect them from vehicles on the roadway while not negatively impact traffic volumes.”

State Sen. Derek Slap said his 13-year-old son loves to bike, but is afraid of two things. “Bears, because he goes to the reservoir … and distracted drivers, and we see that all over town, all over the state of Connecticut.” The bike lane will have a positive impact on pedestrian and bike safety, and is a tribute to the citizen activists who advocated for it.

Being awarded the grant, Slap said, is a “win-win not only for pedestrian and bike safety, but also for all the residents of West Hartford,” which is a donor town, in a donor state in terms of tax contributions. Receiving this type of grant is an important investment in the town, he said.

“As we like to say at Bike West Hartford, the Trout Brook Trail and our town center are like peanut butter and chocolate. They’re both great on their own but really magic when they’re put together,” Jay Stange of Bike West Hartford.

“The Trout Trail is amazing, it’s wonderful … it’s been such a fantastic recreation and transportation pathway,” added Aaron Frankel of Bike West Hartford. And it is for people of all ages.

The bike lane fills the gap, making a critical and safe connection. “And this grant change everything by making it possible for us to be able to do this,” Frankel said. Center Streets has been wonderful on its own, and testing the pop-up lane as a way to get people there was a success that they are thrilled to be able to make permanent.

“This grant is the missing link that turns a great trail into a truly connected transportation network in our town,” said Stange, and the demand is there. “We are proving that if you build safe infrastructure, people of all ages will use it.”

The lane will support more than just recreation, they added, and with all of the new housing being built in the area will give residents an option other than driving.

Sommer said the sidewalk will remain along the stretch of the north side of Farmington Avenue, and there will be some type of feature, such as bollards, to separate the bike lane from vehicle traffic. Crossings and driveways will be marked with green paint.

“And then we’re actually introducing kind of a unique element,” Sommer said. There are several well-utilized bus stops along that stretch of Farmington Avenue, and a bus platform will be constructed – which will serve as a ramp that cyclists will ride up and down. “But that allows pedestrians and transit riders to get out to the edge of the travel lane to board and disembark buses.”

This is not the first Community Connectivity Grant the town has received. In the previous round of Community Connectivity Grant Program funding, in 2024, West Hartford received nearly $700,000 to improve sidewalk accessibility.

The town has also received $600,000 in grant funding from the state for two mobility hubs, which are being constructed as part of the West Hartford Center Infrastructure Master Plan and intended to increase multimodal transportation access. One will be located in the Arapahoe Road parking lot, while the Farmington Avenue/Main Street hub will be constructed in the alley just west of the Veterans Memorial – easily accessible to the new bike path. Plans for the mobility hub include provide bike storage as well as bus stop access, seating, branded wayfinding, and capacity for future bikeshare and e-bikeshare features.

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