West Hartford resident Jason Wang suggests that taking a holistic approach, including parking requirements and other land use patterns, is needed in order to really make a difference in Bishops Corner.

By Jason Wang

The Connecticut Department of Transportation recently held an informational meeting regarding its plans to redesign Bishops Corner. They showed promising plans to remove the “slip lanes” which put pedestrians in harm’s way, and also showed that the sidewalks will be transitioned to wider, smooth, multi-use paths suitable for both pedestrian and bicycle travel.

I am very excited for these changes, and appreciate CTDOT’s efforts to invest in walkability, bikeability, and safety on its roadways.  Overall the changes are small, but will help West Hartford in its goal to become safer, more livable, and more sustainable.

The federal government and the state will spend $7.8 million on this project, which will not start construction until mid-2027. There are some excellent ideas in their proposal and I appreciate their efforts. However, the proposed changes will not fix this challenging intersection. The only way to make Bishops Corner feel pleasant and hospitable to pedestrians and cyclists is to fix the land use patterns surrounding this area.

Bishops Corner was built a long time ago under the assumption that everyone will travel everywhere, all the time, by private car. Now in 2024, economic, sustainability, health, and safety issues have shown us that the car-based utopia envisioned in the 1950s is not going to happen, and we need to stop trying to make it happen.

Retrofitting better sidewalks and crosswalks will not change the fundamental design priorities of this part of town. Due to restrictive parking minimum rules, Bishops Corner consists of a few large buildings surrounded by an ocean of uninviting asphalt, which is never occupied to anywhere near full capacity. The Town of West Hartford Regulations stipulate that “Retail and personal service stores and banks” shall have “1 space per 150 square feet of gross floor area.” Our regulations further state that a parking space must be at minimum 9 feet by 20 feet, for a total of 180 square feet per space, not including aisle space. So, our town regulations essentially dictate that in any retail development, parking lots must be larger than the actual retail space itself.

Last year, Bike West Hartford (of which I am a board member of) called for the elimination of parking requirements in West Hartford, and this should remain high on our list of town priorities.

Parking lots are expensive to build, typically costing thousands of dollars per surface space. Much of the parking capacity is wasted. Since suburban parking is “free,” the cost of building this wasteful excess space is rolled into the cost of goods for everyone, including those who do not drive, who tend to be those who can least afford to be subsidizing the rest of us. Parking regulations, which dictate the design of Bishops Corner, push buildings far away from each other, making it difficult and unpleasant to travel by foot.

Finally, building too much parking actually induces more traffic, further worsening conditions for pedestrians and cyclists. In summary, parking minimums and broader sprawl land use patterns dictate the form of our land use. The result is a place like Bishops Corner: inhospitable to everyone except those in private cars.

I brought this topic up with CTDOT engineers and they acknowledged that Bishops Corner will not feel walkable or bikeable if the land use remains unchanged, but land use is dictated by the town. I pushed them and asked: If they are going to be spending so much taxpayer money and their own effort, what results can they really expect if they don’t coordinate with the town to address the underlying land use?

They didn’t have a response to that question. So I’m posing this question publicly: Can CTDOT work with our town leaders to examine and address the root causes of why the pedestrian and cyclist experience at Bishops Corner stinks?

If we are going to spend $7.8 million of hard-earned taxpayer money, citizens should expect no less. Our leaders talk about being in a climate crisis, a housing crisis, a loneliness crisis, an obesity crisis, a road safety crisis. All of these crises are in some way related to our transportation system. Can we perhaps work together on a more effective and holistic response than what has been presented so far by CTDOT?

Can we imagine if our land use policies were amended to allow some of that excess parking space at Bishops Corner transform into something inviting and useful for human beings? Could it be a park? Housing? A transit facility? Many towns are leading the way. Mashpee Commons in Massachusetts did it decades ago.

More recently, in 2018, The Van Aken District in Shaker Heights, Ohio transformed an underused suburban strip mall into a vibrant new town center, complete with walkable gathering spaces, housing, fantastic shops and restaurants, and yes, they still have plenty of parking. And guess what? People in surrounding neighborhoods walk and bike there!  (As an aside, it would be fascinating to know what percentage of people who live in the homes immediately surrounding Bishops Corner currently drive there.) The creation of the Van Aken District catalyzed an economic renaissance in Shaker Heights. It elevated local property values, created a large amount of new housing, helped spur the creation and growth of a large number of local businesses, and became a new gathering place for the community. Nicer sidewalks and crosswalks didn’t make it happen. Repurposing the land for more meaningful use did.

We could do the same, and not just in Bishop’s Corner, but perhaps in many of the underutilized strip malls in our town. In fact, our very own Town Planning and Zoning Commission has considered this type of redevelopment in their Plan of Conservation and Development document in reference to the large parking lot at Home Depot/BJ’s. We also already have an experiment in land use reform taking place elsewhere in town. The Elmwood Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) zoning district has improved land use regulations surrounding the Elmwood CTfastrak station, and in time will likely catalyze this area’s transformation from a foreboding place for pedestrians into a vibrant, desirable neighborhood that will likely improve quality of life for current residents, while creating opportunities for new people to live sustainably in West Hartford.

Towards the end of the CTDOT informational session, two citizens had fascinating comments. One man repeatedly asked how pedestrians could expect to safely cross the proposed bike lane, and whether some kind of bicycle traffic control mechanism would be needed – as if this project is going to suddenly induce so much cyclist and pedestrian traffic that Bishops Corner is going to turn into Amsterdam. But right after that, a woman raised her hand and asked, skeptically, something to the effect of, “How many people are really going to be biking here anyways?” Unfortunately, as an enthusiastic walker, jogger, cyclist, and generally rational person with eyeballs, I found it hard not to see her point.

Let’s ask that the CTDOT work closely with our town officials to address the root causes of Bishops Corner’s walkability, bikeability, and safety issues. We need to recognize that no amount of well-intentioned money spent on sidewalks and crosswalks can fix Bishops Corner. The only way to really fix Bishops Corner is to address the underlying suburban sprawl land use patterns which make the area inhospitable to humans.

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