DOT works to make 96th St. safer for students

When her two children cross West End Avenue in front of their elementary school every day, Carmen Santiago worries.

“The cars don’t always listen to the crossing guards,” Santiago said of the area between 95th and 96th streets in front of PS 75 Emily Dickinson.

But parents may soon feel some relief after community organizations, including the Parent Teacher Association at Emily Dickinson, forced the city to pay attention to their concerns about the kids’ safety.

The Department of Transportation began making changes earlier this month, when they lengthened the leading green and yellow light’s duration from four to seven seconds. Last week, the DOT also installed “Wait to Walk” signs at all four corners and removed two parking spaces at the northwest corner of the intersection—a process known as daylighting—so that southbound drivers turning right toward West Side Highway could see pedestrians in the crosswalk.

The changes were necessary because of the school’s location on a corner with unusually fast-moving traffic.

“We’re right by the entrance/exit to the highway, and cars are anxious to get through the lights and turn,” PS 75 safety committee member Ronit Silverman said. “Drivers can’t really see a second-grader over the hood of their cars.”

Heavy foot traffic doesn’t help things, PS 75 third grader Lariza Mejia said.

“There are a lot of people crossing at once, it’s hard to make your way through,” she said.

A senior living facility at 95th Street and West End also means that there is a high presence of senior citizens using the crosswalks, Silverman said—another population at risk from dangerous drivers.
“The onus shouldn’t be on the families who have to walk the streets,” Silverman said.

The city’s changes are a result of the school’s PTA, which worked with Community Board 7, the DOT, the NYPD and transportation advocacy group Upper West Side Streets Renaissance to create a street safety committee to evaluate the intersection.

UWSSR community organizer Tila Duhaime said she hopes the longer light will deter drivers, frustrated at the quick change from green and yellow to red, from making illegal left turns on a red light.

Drivers “are focused on getting onto the highway and behaving as though they’re already there,” Duhaime said, so they will often run the red light to turn toward the highway, endangering the pedestrians crossing 96th Street.

DOT deputy press secretary Monty Dean said the DOT plans to continue working to resolve the safety issues.

“We have inspected this location and are making several improvements,” Dean said in an email. “We will continue to monitor conditions here and work with the NYPD and the local community to address concerns.”

Andrew Albert, co-chair of the CB7 transportation committee, said that their committee and the DOT will also study the effectiveness of countdown timers and red-light cameras, which snap photos of cars who run lights.

The cameras were installed along West End a few years ago, Albert said, but are broken now.

These structural changes will augment the work of the school crossing guards, Duhaime said.

“Whenever cars are in competition with pedestrians, the ‘peds’ lose every time,” she said.

finn.vigeland@columbiaspectator.com