By Gabriela Resto-Montero
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
UPPER EAST SIDE — Crossing Park Avenue will be a race against the clock when the Department of Transportation installs new crosswalk timers to improve pedestrian safety along the street.
The countdown clocks set for installation along Park Avenue between East 32nd and East 132nd streets will show how long pedestrians have before the traffic lights turn green for oncoming vehicles.
Some of the 1,500 timers to be installed around the city were set to be in place by mid-September, according to the DOT's web site.
Alison Jones, 43, a resident of SoHo, said she frequently crosses the avenue to get to Central Park. As a cyclist, she said the timers set up at intersections downtown allow her and other pedestrians to gauge whether to cross.
"I know how much time I have and I can pace myself," Jones said.
"This particular avenue is a nightmare," she added.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other officials announced the installation of the timers two weeks ago as part of a sweeping pedestrian safety program introduced in response to a Department of Transportation safety study.
"We've made historic gains in reducing traffic fatalities," Bloomberg said in a statement. "But we still see too many families devastated by traffic accidents."
The report found that pedestrians made up 52 percent of the traffic fatalities from 2005 to 2009 and that Manhattan had four times as many pedestrians killed or injured as the other four boroughs.
Multi-lane avenues like Park Avenue had deadlier pedestrian crashes than smaller neighborhood streets, according to the report.
Officials from the department were set to detail how the new safety measures would be implemented on the Upper East Side at the Community Board 8 transportation committee meeting Wednesday.
