Efforts to make a deadly intersection safer may have turned a corner, as Westville neighbors gathering at the spot agreed to a plan to ban left turns from West Elm Street onto Forest Road.
The plan would not only ban the left turns. It would use traffic striping to encourage drivers to move farther out into the right-hand portion of the curved intersection so they could get a better view of traffic coming north on Forest, a hilly, winding state highway, also designated state Route 122.
The corner has been the scene of numerous accidents, including one last year that claimed the life of beloved resident Jerry Gross. His widow, Ruth, has been a leader in the fight, begun by her late husband, to make the intersection safer.
After another crash at the intersection sent a cop to the hospital Nov. 17, the city’s transportation chief, Michael Piscitelli, agreed to meet with concerned neighbors. That meeting took place Monday evening.
More than a half-dozen people met on chilly, dimly lit West Elm Street to hear what city Transportation, Traffic and Parking chief Michael Piscitelli had come up with. Included in the group were Ward 25 Alderman-elect Greg Dildine and 92nd District State Rep. Pat Dillon, as well as Ruth Gross and Peter Rogol, president of the Bikur Cholim Sheveth Achim synagogue where the Gross family have been longtime members.
A Toyota wheel cover (pictured) was a silent witness. Nobody could say how the hubcap got to be on the sidewalk on the northeast corner. Dildine suggested it could be left over from one of the accidents that occur with grinding regularity at the corner.
“I have only lived here for a few months and I hear crashes all the time,” said Leeora Netter, who moved to West Elm Street in July. “And then you hear the ambulances. It’s outrageous,” she said.
The plan, using a strategy called channeling, would bring cars waiting to turn right onto Forest Road closer to the northeast corner of the intersection. City traffic engineers would use either striping or perhaps posts to make an island shaped like a right triangle that would take up much of the intersection. Piscitelli said he would leave it to the engineers to specify how it would look. In any case there would be a “no left turn” sign included.
His initial drawing was changed when group members called his triangular island too small. A larger island would not only direct right-turning traffic to a safer angle but would discourage left turns onto West Elm from Forest. It would not make West Elm an official one-way street. The one-way strategy was rejected during the summer by neighbors replying to a survey sent out by Piscitelli’s department.
The state Department of Transportation has worked with the city to come up with this plan; Forest is a state road. Piscitelli predicted the needed state permit would not be a problem. The city portion of the plan must be backed by the city Traffic Control Authority, which is the Police Commission.
Under questioning from Dildine, Piscitelli said the project could be vetted by the city and state in about two months. He warned that actually building it could be subject to the vagaries of winter weather.
The state took traffic surveys that concluded the intersection did not warrant traffic signals; a state spokesman said last summer that a stop sign or light could actually increase the danger because drivers north around a curvy, hilly section of the road could not see a queue waiting for a light in time to stop. The state DOT spokesman also expressed frustration about the lack of speed-law enforcement, as have neighbors.
“You have to make an impact on these crazies to do the speed limit,” said Cathie Hempstock of West Elm Street, at right in photo. “They don’t understand what they are up against” in navigating the undulating road leading north to West Elm, she said.
Some of the group, including Block Watch Captain Miriam Benson, had been against solutions similar to Piscitelli’s in the past. But they said this plan has the positive element of doing something soon.
“I think something has to be done. I was in favor of a traffic signal and I still am. Everyone says it is impossible. Barring that, this is Plan B. I think the neighbors have mentioned speeding and the need for enforcement of traffic laws, which are right on the mark,” she said.
The solution has to work despite drivers whose habits are “not the way we would like them to behave but the way they do behave,” Piscitelli said. “Most techniques don’t work here,” he said. He said that if this strategy doesn’t work “then we have to think seriously about walling this off,” he said pointing at the west end of West Elm.
Click on the play arrow to watch an earlier report about the intersection’s hazards.
Seems pretty simple and like it will prevent a lot of accidents. Hopefully work to improve how all streets are used, viewed, and designed will continue.