To The Editor:
I go to Brighton Beach Avenue regularly and I must disagree with the borough traffic commissioner, who said that further traffic control along confusing Brighton Beach Avenue is unnecessary.
The pity of it all is that the commissioner tries to deny the need for better safer traffic control on that long, widening Brighton main street.
Last year, I recommended more traffic controls after a woman was hit at the Corbin Street crossing on Brighton Beach Avenue; the weird, winding junction at Corbin Place, often heavily trafficked by many elderly, living in the tall Scheuer House and it’s community center. No act was ensued.
Until Community Board 13 reported them, several corner street signs were absent and in one error there was a Brighton 14th Street sign on the front of an apartment house, instead of the street corner, 30 feet away.
Traffic Commissioner Palmieri should remember our long crusade to get his department, led then by Iris Weinshall, Senator Schumer’s wife, to change the six-burned-out bulbs on the westbound Belt Parkway approach from Brighton Beach toward the Verrazano Bridge. It took three years to comply.
More recently in 2006, he promised Assemblyman Bill Colton, to finally correct the right turn signage on west-bound Bay Parkway. Most stupidly, the driver seeking the widely used Kings Highway exit, instead gets a 78th Street sign, because that turn is for both streets. The difference is that 78th Street only runs one block. Kings Highway runs six-plus miles. A letter to Assemblyman Colton then assured him of compliance by October 2007, (now long-past due).
Recently, in Brighton so many elderly residents and hordes of visitors jam the perennial hazardous crossing of wide Coney Island Avenue, intersected by hazardous Brighton Beach Avenue.
Until recently that danger zone was wisely abetted by the old Barnes dance devised once by the late traffic commissioner Henry Barnes.
All signals turned red, all autos halted, pedestrians were able to cross these hazardous intersections without fear of heavy traffic, wide turns and hasty deliveries.
Since the recent reversals at that intersection, now mid avenue islands have added to the accidents because they pop up in mid-crossing. Why not bring the famed Barnes dance back and save the many ambulance calls to Brighton Beach?
The Parks Department must be made to trim the pretty foliage – all over Corbin Place, they are beautiful, but grow hazardous to the visibility of pedestrians.
Lou Powsner
Member
Community Board 13
