The pair of double-yellow lines down a stretch of Avenue U that was confusing motorists is finally complete — with short, diagonal markings painted down the middle — but that hasn’t made it any clearer to locals why the city put the strange markings on a narrow, single-lane street.
“There’s no reason to push traffic over on Avenue U. Putting it on a single-lane road is, first of all, ridiculous,” said Marine Parker Richard Farnum, who was first perplexed by the double-yellows early last month. “Now you get the pedestrians coming out, people open car doors. Before, they were farther away. It narrows the road, now it’s even tighter.”
The Department of Transportation painted the befuddling doubled double-yellow lines along the span between McDonald and Ocean avenues at the end of July, and then on Aug. 9 added the diagonal markings to denote it as a so-called “flush median,” intended to increase motorist visibility, reduce speeding, and calm traffic, according to a spokeswoman for the city agency.
The city contends that no space has actually been lost — it’s merely a way to trick the mind to make the street seem narrower, so drivers don’t hit the gas as hard on the avenue, which is within a Vision Zero priority area, said the spokeswoman.
“The new markings on Avenue U with the flush median and the parking lane stripe visually tighten the roadway space without reducing roadway capacity, encouraging motorists to travel at safer speeds along the corridor,” she said.
But others are still left wondering if it will actually lead to a safer street, since motorists have been known not to follow the rules, said one local who lives nearby and works along the Avenue U corridor.
“I guess maybe it’s a psychological thing, where you think that because there’s something in the middle, you’re not going to drive over it,” said Gene Gerovich. “People make U-turns on it all the time. It’s not going to change anything.”
The Department of Transportation also painted the same markings along Prospect Park Southwest, Gerritsen Avenue, and 18th Avenue between 74th and 61st streets, the spokeswoman said.
