The Country Club Civic Association is calling on the NYC Department of Transportation to make several changes at neighborhood intersections they say are confusing at best and at worst, extremely dangerous.
CCCA president Michael McNerney said members of the association’s Public Improvements Committee brought up the issues, which he said had been discussed for several years, at the Community Board 10 Municipal Services Committee meeting on Tuesday, May 16.
McNerney said CB 10 chairman Martin Prince will ask DOT to correct the painted street markings at the intersections of Rawlins and Stadium avenues and Waterbury and Stadium avenues so they accurately reflect pedestrian and vehicle traffic patterns.
Association member Arlene Grauer said motorists heading east on Rawlins Avenue that make a left turn onto Stadium have to cross over the yellow lines, coming very close to colliding with oncoming traffic.
“It’s a confusion of stripes in the streets,” she said. “In some places where the sidewalk has an ADA curb cut, there isn’t a crosswalk. There are so many stripes that in many places you can’t tell where the crosswalk is, and in some places the crosswalk starts and ends in a mess of hash marks and doesn’t continue to the other side of the street.”
Grauer said she wants the intersections restriped correctly, especially since the Providence Rest Nursing Home entrance is located at the Waterbury and Stadium intersection.
“Anyone with a slight vision problem or slight cognitive impairment would be confused,” Grauer said.
Providence Rest administrator Susan Steinberg said improvements at the intersection, which has five stop signs that are often ignored, would be welcome.
“There’s a lot of traffic at a nursing home – there are visitors, and there are ambulances,” Steinberg said. “My mother’s a resident here, and sometimes I take her for lunch. That’s a challenge, getting across that intersection with a wheelchair.”
The crosswalk painting at Waterbury and Stadium was performed by a sewer project contractor under the direction of NYC Department of Design and Construction, while the lines at Rawlins and Stadium was done by the DOT, Grauer said.
CB 10 is calling on DOT to perform a survey at the problem intersections, and the civic association is asking to be involved.
The CB 10 Municipal Services Committee also unanimously passed a resolution to instruct DOT to remove the ‘right turn only’ street marking on Country Club Road at MacDonough Place and replace it with a ‘right and straight’ street marking.
McNerney hopes the change will cut down on safety issues when the westbound traffic is forced to quickly switch from the left lane to the right lane on the Jarvis Avenue overpass due to traffic waiting to turn left onto the southbound I-95 service road.
Calls to the DOT for comment about the requested changes were not returned by press time.
