Dangerous corners worry residents
By Patrick Butler
The intersections at Ada and Washington Streets and Taylor and Wood Streets have one thing in common. People have been waiting years to get something done about the traffic at those corners.
Drivers “just speed
right through,” said Steve Ray Kemper, who for the past ten years has
been trying to get a stop sign at Ada and Washington, where he says
motorists get so heedless he actually has seen cars beached on
sidewalks after a mishap.The City "put a stop sign at Elizabeth Street, which I don’t think was nearly as busy as Ada,” said and installed a $350,000 stoplight at 13th Street and Michigan Avenue. “And just the other day I told the deputy streets commissioner I needed the crosswalks painted around all the schools" in the 2nd Ward, Fioretti said.
"The safety of our citizens and especially our children is a top priority,” he added.
Putting in stop signs, however, is a lot easier than coming up with the funds to install stop lights, he said, admitting he still has not made up his mind about putting one at Taylor and Wood.
"I’ve been by there a
number of times, and I don’t see people blowing the stop sign and I
don’t see them coming to rolling stops,” said Fioretti, who nonetheless
will ask for a CDOT study.In the end, even CDOT will not have the final word, added Fioretti, who said he once had to override that agency’s recommendation against putting a stop light at a location where 600 people petitioned Haithcock to install one. “She hadn’t
wanted to put it there and CDOT didn’t want it in, but I said we’re putting it there. And that was that,” Fioretti concluded.
