East 83rd Street has become a speedway prone to flooding, and one resident doesn’t want to take it anymore.
Rosa Julien said she is sick and tired of the city’s laissez faire attitude toward the strip between Ralph and Foster Avenues.
“For 15 years I’ve been complaining,” Rosa Julien told Charles Glover, of the mayor’s Community Affairs division, at a recent meeting of the Friends United Block Association.
The strip goes straight through the large Terminal Market, making it a nexus of truck traffic as well.
“The traffic coming through in the morning is a nightmare,” Julien contended. “No one stops to let you get onto Ralph.”
Precipitation brings another problem, she went on, as water cascading off of the Long Island Railroad trestle creates huge puddles on the street.
While the city will oblige with a “temporary fix,” filling holes on occasion, Julien added, it has yet to take a look at a permanent solution — that is, getting “the street reconstructed.”
Gardy Brazela, FUBA’s president, said the traffic issues stem from “people taking a short cut” along East 83rd Street to get into Canarsie.
Dorothy Turano, the district manager of Community Board 18, concurred.
“It always was an issue,” she told this paper, “since it’s a direct shortcut into Canarsie and into the Terminal Market.”
The city’s Department of Transportation is looking into the matter, a spokesperson said.
With respect to the traffic issues, the agency is studying whether the strip would benefit from the implementation of traffic calming measures.
With respect to the ponding, the agency’s Roadway Repair & Maintenance Division is currently determining whether surface improvements would alleviate the problem, the spokesperson said.
