KENSINGTON — Officials and residents celebrated the arrival of a new traffic light Wednesday intended to calm dangerous driving near where a 14-year-old boy was killed in a hit-and-run.
"Sometimes a small change makes a life-saving difference," said City Councilman Brad Lander, who joined other officials to cut the ribbon on the new signal, at East 8th Street and Caton Avenue.
The new light is the latest in a series of safety upgrades the city's Department of Transportation has made over the past year and a half in Kensington and Windsor Terrace. DOT launched the improvements shortly after the death of Mohammad Naiem Uddin, who was hit while crossing with the light in the crosswalk at East 7th Street and Caton Avenue in November 2014.
Even before Uddin's death, locals had long begged for safety improvements on neighborhood streets, where students walking to and from P.S. 130, P.S. 230 and other schools must cross congested truck routes such as Caton Avenue.
"On a really basic level, [the new signal] means children and parents are less at risk when they're getting to school," said P.S. 130 PTA vice president Meema Spadola. "This used to be two roaring lanes of traffic. There were no safe spaces to cross."
The new signal is directly in front of M.S. 839, a new middle school that shares a building with P.S. 130's upper grades, a pre-K center, and District 75 students.
As Spadola, Lander and others spoke in front of the new signal, their words were almost entirely drowned out by tractor-trailers thundering through the intersection and the sound of students playing in the M.S. 839 schoolyard.
Community Board 12 member Mamnunul Haq called Uddin a "talented kid" who represented the promising future of the neighborhood's Bangladeshi community. "We can't bring him back, but I hope we'll be able to save more lives in the future," Haq said.
Lander called Uddin's death a heartbreaking loss, but credited DOT for addressing some of the factors that likely led to his death.
DOT added curb extensions to the intersection where Uddin was killed to make the crossing distance shorter, and has made several other safety improvements in the past 18 months, including adding a crossing guard outside the large pre-K center in the Bishop Ford building and installing a stop sign outside P.S. 130.
Some changes are still in the works, including a proposal to add speed humps in Windsor Terrace. DOT is also studying whether to make Seeley Street one-way. A full list of the DOT's proposed changes and their status can be found on Lander's website.
Wednesday's ceremony ended with a blessing of the traffic signal by Rabbi Ellen Lippmann of Park Slope’s Kolot Chayeinu. She drew a parallel between the Hebrew word neshama, which means soul, and the idea that light is a symbol of the soul.
"They have built a light that's here to save lives," Lippmann said. "May God, who created the world with light, bless this light."
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