Plan slows to a stop
Panel not ready to approve lane changes
A PLAN to make traffic safety improvements to an 11-block stretch in Morningside Heights has hit a red light.
The Department of Transportation wants to slow down speedy motorists who zip through Morningside Ave. between W. 116th and W. 126th Sts. by reducing four traffic lanes to three.
But one of the two community boards that need to approve the proposal opted against giving it the green light at a meeting Wednesday night, noting more time was needed to vet the plan.
“We don’t want to vote on a resolution of this scale without a sense that it’s been fully vetted,” said Brian Benjamin, 2nd vice chair of Community Board 10. “It could be great and that would be nice, but we have to make sure we dot our I’s and cross our T’s.”
The Police Department issued 263 speeding citations between January and October last year along the corridor, where more than 100 people have been injured from 2007 to 2011. The city was unable to provide injury data for the last two years.
Benjamin said the board wants to hear from opponents of the plan to ensure that there isn’t a repeat of what happened at Mount Morris Park West, when the city was forced to make tweaks to a recently implemented traffic safety zone.
Residents in that neighborhood complained about the changes made back then, which included decreased traffic lanes and a sidewalk buffer that they argued made it hard for emergency vehicles to drive through and pedestrians to cross.
Poppycock, say the residents along Morningside Ave. who note it’s past time to get moving on the city’s traffic safety plan.
“I think the time to act on this is now,” said Jonathon Kahn, a member of the North Star Neighborhood Association, which applied to the city’s pilot Slow Zone program in 2012, but was denied. “I get why people are cautious about change, but it’s just our feeling that the safety conditions are so catastrophic that our group and the community board need to err on the side of safety of children’s lives.”
The city’s plan would also include pedestrian islands on Morningside Ave. at W. 123rd St., W. 120th St., W. 118th St., and W. 117th St., concrete extensions, a stop sign at W. 118th St., an additional pedestrian signal and a new crosswalk at Hancock Place.
Local residents like J.P. Part- land, who has a 6-year-old son and a 3-year-old daughter, hope the safety plan will soon be a reality. “I have to hustle them across the street. You see these cars coming and they’re speeding," said Partland, 45. “This is something that should have been done a while ago.”