Video: Drivers Endanger Lives on Morningside Avenue as CB 10 Dithers

While Manhattan Community Board 10 fails to take action, proposed measures to make Morningside Avenue safer for pedestrians continue to languish.

Among other changes, DOT has proposed restriping Morningside between 116th Street and 126th Street from two lanes in each direction to one lane in each direction with a center striped median, concrete pedestrian islands and left turn lanes [PDF]. Community Board 9 voted in favor of the road diet last November, but the plan is stuck in the CB 10 transportation committee, which has held numerous meetings on the project without taking a vote.

At their latest meeting, held earlier this month, people who attended told Streetsblog that CB 10 members passed a resolution calling for more information from DOT, which they said is necessary before deciding whether to endorse traffic-calming on Morningside.

For this video, Harlem resident Maurice Sessoms interviewed people about conditions on the wide avenue, where he clocked motorists traveling as fast as 47 miles per hour. As indicated in the video, a pedestrian struck by a vehicle moving at 40 mph has only a 15 percent chance of surviving.

“I don’t think that it’s safe at all,” said a crossing guard. “I’ve been working on this corner for three years now. The cars speed, they go across the crosswalk. They don’t slow down when it’s raining, when it’s snowing. In bad weather they’re speeding.”