City to make Grand Concourse safer

The incorporated town is making the Grand Concourse safer, six months in the rear of 11-year-old Russell Smith was tragically strike together and killed while crossing the busy Bronx street.

Transportation Department workers are installing crosswalk countdown signals at 49 intersections at the same time the deadly six-lane Grand Concourse, from E. 140th St. to Mosholu Parkway.

The signals show how many seconds are left with a view to pedestrians to cross the street. They pleasure help Bronxites make safe decisions, Transportation Department Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan related as she stood at the Grand Concourse and E. 165th St., whither pedestrian Yvette Diaz was struck and killed in 2009.

The Grand Concourse by-word eight pedestrian deaths and 411 professional walker injuries from 2005 to 2009, declared Sadik-Khan, calling the figures “staggering.”

She declared the countdown signals “take the guesswork in a puzzle of crossing the street,” noting that they worked well for the period of a pilot study completed last year. Fewer pedestrians were caught in exchange.

“The signals are awesome,” said Diana Perez, a Mott Haven sojourner who was crippled 10 years since when she was hit by a speeding carriage on the Grand Concourse. “This is going to prevent lives.”

Perez was crossing the route at E. 149th St. near Hostos Community College. The crosswalk token was blinking red and she supposition she had enough time.

“I not ever made it across,” said Perez, 52, who broke her leg and her haunch and hurt her back.

She at this time uses a wheelchair, and says she feels “pertinent to be alive.”

Russell wasn’t in this way lucky. The fifth-grader was attached his way home after buying milk on the side of his baby brother when he tried to throw across the Grand Concourse against a red kindle.

Witnesses said Russell, who dreamed of decorous a dancer, was blindsided at E. 183rd St. ~ the agency of the side-view mirror of each SUV.

Transportation Department workers last week installed countdown signals at the intersection. They also installed a display board that clocks vehicle speeds. When a speeding vehicle passes, it flashes a skeleton.

“We own too many people driving too deep,” said City Councilman James Vacca, presiding officer of the City Council Transportation Committee, hailing the Grand Concourse improvements.

He afore~ the street also needs more red-illuminate cameras. But the city needs predicament approval to install them, Vacca uttered.