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City to Add Traffic Circles to Calm Crash-Prone Greeley Avenue

By Nicholas Rizzi | March 22, 2017 3:53pm
 The city plans to start construction on four traffic circles along crash-prone Greeley Avenue in the spring, which they hope will curb speeding and crashes on the block.
The city plans to start construction on four traffic circles along crash-prone Greeley Avenue in the spring, which they hope will curb speeding and crashes on the block.
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Department of Transportation

MIDLAND BEACH — The city plans to start work on a series of traffic circles at intersections along a crash-prone stretch of Greeley Avenue as part of the latest phase of Vision Zero.

The plan — which the city pitched to residents last year — will add four circles to intersections along Greeley Avenue to help calm traffic and decrease the number of conflicts at intersections.

"We all like the plan, and we're on board with it," said Diana McNamara, secretary of the Midland Beach Civic Association and a Community Board 2 member. "The [circles] that they showed us are attractive because they have nice plantings. If it doesn't work it's not a negative."

Although the board and association like the plan, McNamara acknowledged that most residents they spoke with didn't think the circles would fix problems on the block and wanted measures such as stop signs and speed bumps added instead.

The Department of Transportation hopes the circles, the first to be built in the borough, will improve the flow of traffic at the four intersections and reduce drivers' speeds, according to a presentation of the plan made at a public meeting.

There were 23 people injured in motor vehicle crashes along the street from 2010 through 2014, with three of them being killed or seriously injured, according to the DOT.

Residents have called on the city to address the problem for decades, and the DOT in 2014 proposed turning the area into a slow zone, lowering the speed limit to 20 mph and adding speed bumps.

The plan was scrapped in 2015 after opposition from Borough President James Oddo, Councilman Steven Matteo and residents who wanted stop signs on the street instead.

The DOT rejected the stop-sign proposal last year, saying it wouldn't control speeding and could potentially increase rear-end crashes, according to the presentation.

Aside from the start of the traffic circle construction, the city also announced plans to start construction on bikes lanes in Stapleton in the spring and improvements for cyclists at the St. George Ferry Terminal in the summer.

The Stapleton plan will bring bike lanes and narrow streets around Van Duzer Street to curb speeding and was almost unanimously approved by Community Board 1 last month.