HUNTERS POINT — Parents and local leaders will rally Friday at the corner of 46th Avenue at 5th Street, where they plan to erect a homemade stop sign — because the city has so far ignored their calls to put a real one there, they say.
The group says the intersection is dangerous to the many children who cross there each day heading to P.S./I.S. 78's middle school building, located on one corner, or to New York Kids Club, a pre-school and child enrichment center across the street.
"You now have numerous children who go back and forth to those two buildings all day long," said Jen Theien, a mother of two who lives nearby and is president of Gantry Parent Association.
Without a stop sign, cars speed along both 46th Avenue and 5th Street, she said, including large trucks heading to and from the neighborhood's many industrial warehouses.
"It's scary," she said.
City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer asked the Department of Transportation to install a stop sign at the corner, but his request was turned down last year, his office said.
A DOT spokeswoman said the department has studied the intersection several times in recent years and found it didn't meet the criteria for a sign.
In a statement, Van Bramer said he and parents will install the homemade stop sign — what he called "The People's Stop Sign" to send a message to the DOT.
"We need to protect our children now, before it’s too late," he said.
The lawmaker and local parents pulled a similar protest in 2012 in a call for a stop sign two blocks away at 47th Avenue and 5th Street — outside P.S./I.S. 78's other building — which the DOT then installed a few months later.
