UPPER EAST SIDE — The city is planning to fix a swath of accident-prone intersections in the neighborhood in an effort to make crossings safer for students of the half-dozen private schools in the area.
The Department of Transportation has targeted East 83rd to East 85th streets, from Madison to Lexington avenues, and East 87th Street and First Avenue for safety changes, including extending curbs at intersections to make the distance students have to walk across shorter, according to officials.
The $3.4 million upgrade is part of the city's Safe Routes to School program, which identifies school locations with the highest accident rates and makes improvements accordingly.
Of the 1,471 schools the DOT examined, 135 schools were made priority, with 23 of them located in Manhattan, according to DOT officials.
In 2003, the agency identified six Upper East Side schools that they deemed were adjacent to dangerous intersections based on accident data between 1998 and 2000, according to a spokeswoman for the Department of Design and Construction, which is working with the DOT to bring the improvements to the area.
Those schools include the Ramaz Lower School, the Park Avenue Christian Day School (now on the Upper West Side), St. Ignatius Loyola School, Regis High School, Marymount School and St. Joseph's school.
According to the city's Vision Zero crash data, there have been a total of one death and 64 pedestrian injuries at the targeted intersections since 2009.
Beginning in mid-June, the city will begin extending curbs at a dozen crossings — meant to make it easier for students to cross and increasing visibility for both drivers and pedestrians, according to Diane Guskin, the DDC's construction liaison who presented plans at a Community Board 8 transportation committee meeting on Wednesday.
The DDC has said that no existing travel lanes or parking spots will be taken away to make room for the extensions, but would not go into specifics about how they will be implemented.
A number of catch basins to drain water from the streets will also be added to these intersections, officials said.
Bus stops between 82nd and 83rd streets on the east side of Madison Avenue and the west side of Lexington Avenue will get reinforced concrete to prevent the road from sinking there, she added.
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Parking may be blocked temporarily by construction and water could be turned off at certain locations during work. Deliveries and drop-offs will also be affected, Guskin said.
In those cases, signs will be posted and the DDC will notify residents ahead of time so that no one is caught unaware, she said.
Work will take place no earlier than 9 a.m. and no later than 2 p.m. during the weekdays and from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturdays. It will take roughly six months to complete and should wrap up this winter, according to the DDC.
The safety changes were first presented to CB8 three years ago, and at that time, the board approved the intersections included in the plan.
But this time around, members of the committee felt they weren't given enough details regarding exactly which corners would be affected and when construction would start at each. Therefore they decided not to take a stance on the plan.
The changes do not need the board's approval for the project to move forward.
"The communication process has to be better because this happened three years ago and I think a lot of families may not have been in these schools three years ago or not have thought about this since three years ago," said CB8 transportation committee member Sarah Chu.
"Something that was a priority three years ago may not be anymore. Schools and traffic have changed."
