Going car-free is, as far as individual actions go, the second most impactful thing you can do. Many people say they want to do it, but then don’t. This series will provide guidance and answer questions so that those who want to do meaningful work in healing the planet can begin living their values through choosing to be car-free or car-lite.
It’s been established that mobility is possible in the rain without wearing a car like a rain jacket, and, that it is totally possible to feed oneself without spending $12,000 per year on a personal vehicle.
But what if like Cyndi Lauper, you know that girls just wanna have fun? Can you do that without a car? Her video is instructive: sidewalks and a subway station. (If you’re looking for more musical guidance, look to R.E.M. for how to abandon a vehicle on the freeway.)
We already know how to get to various natural areas by bus from Hartford, but it’s even easier when you’re staying in city limits.
Remember when people were claiming that the parks in Hartford were closed? No such thing ever happened! That was windshield bias talking! If you arrived on foot or by bus or bicycle — during regular hours — the parks were never closed to you. Not even in March/April 2020. (A playground being closed does not mean the park is closed. That’s like saying because Hot Topic is closed, the entire mall is closed. C’mon now. Don’t go starting rumors.)
It’s healthy to get out of our own neighborhoods and explore other parks once in awhile. You can reach all of Hartford’s parks by bus, and to make it easy to figure out, I’ve mapped this out.
Note: just because a bus is available at/near the park does not mean it runs late or on the weekend. Check the CTtransit schedules before getting your hopes up, or to plan a multimodal outing with help from your bicycle or an e-scooter.
An oddity about our city’s parks is that all of major ones — with the exception of Bushnell Park in downtown — lack consistent pedestrian infrastructure when it comes to connecting the recreation area to the neighborhood. There is no sidewalk or crosswalk assisting visitors trying to get to Pope Park West, for example, and no sidewalk along most of Park Terrace south of Park Street. Even Bushnell Park, with its sidewalks and crosswalks, suffered a setback when a construction project in recent years removed the median; with this, the wait for the pedestrian light cycle was actually lengthened. There is also the ongoing situation in which neither police nor Hartford Parking Authority are enforcing the restriction on vehicles in parks, as in, on lawns and other spaces where people should not expect to find them. All of this is to say that if you have been waiting for a reason to use 311 to report local subpar parks, you will have at least something each day of the week.
However, even with the drivers who think rules don’t apply to them, parks offer pedestrians and cyclists a safer alternative while commuting. Riding through part of Goodwin Park instead of Campfield Avenue, for instance, can eliminate a half dozen intersections from a commute. This is not a decision about speed, but about safety. . . so long as you are alert and don’t ride straight into a fence across the park path. Take a look at Keney Park on a map. Going from Woodland Street to Windsor Avenue through the park has you only crossing at Vine Street and Love Lane, and then again across Tower Avenue. If you tried traveling in the same direction but used only streets, you might have to go through close to three dozen intersections. Safety features aside, there’s something pretty amazing about spending part of a commute inside of a park. Off in the distance, cars honking while stuck in the traffic jam they helped to create. But walking through Bushnell Park, the sound of the carousel. Riding through Pope Park, a glimpse at the baby geese and red-winged blackbirds. The odds of seeing deer grazing in Keney or Goodwin aren’t bad.
There are bike racks in all the major parks; these are not always located where you might expect them to be. Some are near playgrounds. Others by pools. There’s an almost hidden rack situation to the right of the Pope Park Rec Center entrance. You have to look around for them.
We should be talking more about benches though. Even if all the major parks have them, are there enough? Are they located where people would want to hang out? Are there various options? I can’t be the only person who wants there to be scattered loner benches. This isn’t just a Covid thing. Do I need to be right up next to someone else’s conversation? Do I want to maybe read a book with a little bit of physical and sound space? Are there places to sit around the pond? For that last question, the answer is not “yes” across the board. There is no seating near the Pope Park pond. What about the cemeteries, which are also on the map — do these have benches? There is work being done currently to install some at Zion Hill Cemetery. What an oversight, to not have seating in a place where people may want to sit and meditate for awhile.
There will be a day when you’ll want to exit Hartford, maybe go to some breweries. Don’t worry. That information is coming in November.