PARK SLOPE — A walk/don't walk sign on the southeast corner of Fourth Avenue and Sixth Street that had been missing since late last year was finally replaced Wednesday — but locals are questioning why it took so long.
DOT crews replaced the missing light Wednesday afternoon, after a dozen 311 complaints about the wayward walk sign dating back to Dec. 2, 2014. The pedestrian signal is flanked by two high-rise residential buildings and is two blocks from P.S. 118.
Local resident James Poniewozik, whose son waits at the light every morning on his way to school, said he couldn't understand why it took so long to fix, especially because the city has targeted accident-filled Fourth Avenue for safety improvements.
“I was shocked there was no effort to replace it because it’s a total danger," he said. "It's such an irony because they’ve been doing so much to try to improve safety there.”
Locals complained that the missing signal made crossing notoriously dangerous Fourth Avenue into a guessing game, with westbound pedestrians peering across four lanes of traffic to the signal on the other side of the avenue to see if it was safe to cross.
"You have to walk out into the intersection to see if the light is red,” Poniewozik said. "It's a total danger."
The Department of Transportation did not explain why the light took so long to fix.