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Signals of change for Centerport traffic?
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May 14, 2009 | 11:52 AM
The 60-resident crowd assembled at the Vanderbilt Museum planetarium April 29 was not there to stargaze but instead to voice their concerns about the hazardous intersection of Centerport and Centershore Roads.
Pablo Martinez, of Centerport Road, has tried to resolve the matter for five of the past seven years he has lived there. His front yard has been driven into on numerous occasions, as has his retaining wall, which was demolished last month.
Centerport Road, or County Road 86, traverses up to Route 25A to the north but forks at a precipitous, nearly 90-degree curve west onto Centershore Road, a town road that also bisects 25A. The intersection itself is under Suffolk's purview.
Several people have died in crashes at what is known as "dead men's curve," just to the south of the intersection, Martinez said. "When people lose control on that curve, they're crashing into our homes and also rolling over."
The intersection, Martinez claims, has been the site of accidents that have not abated since 2003, when the Suffolk County Department of Public Works added flashing lights and a speed detector to northbound traffic, widened the road and added a retaining wall at the northwest corner of the intersection.
"They made the street wider and I think they made it worse instead of improving it," he said. With more blind spots along the roadway, residents now have a harder time exiting their driveways, he said.
Properties just north of the curve are crashed into on a regular basis; last July, an SUV lost control on the curve and hit the home just to the north of his, damaging the house and porch and destroying the car, he said. "Since that time, I've been writing letters and also reporting on the accidents that have been occurring. Basically, they occur at the rate of one accident every one to two weeks."
The county Department of Public Works did a comprehensive study of the roadway last year. Gil Anderson, its commissioner, said the delay partly stems from the fact that his department is working on more than 300 traffic studies, most of which are done in-house.
The DPW proposes a traffic signal at Blenheim Lane, just to the south of the intersection, he said.
"There would be sensors in the roadway that would activate the light at a certain time after the sensors were tripped. If the vehicle is traveling within the speed limit, by the time they roll up to the light, the light should have turned green. If they're speeding, the light will remain red until that time, as it would have if they were driving the speed limit."
His department is also looking into traffic-calming efforts to incentivize drivers to go the speed limit, such as sidewalk extensions that restrict car width and raised pavements. "You're kind of forcing the driver to assess the situation, slow down and, by doing that, keeping them within the speed limits that you want."
The project's final design and analysis is in progress; Anderson expects the signal to be installed by the beginning of next year. "We've never done this before. … There's some computerization that has to be involved in it as well, to develop the timing of when a car trips the signal and that starts the whole process of the light turning."
Still, Martinez does not think DPW's fix will be enough. "I believe that will address the issue on the curve but they're not addressing the issue at the intersection [of] Centerport Road and Centershore — because you have a series of blind spots there."
Martinez suggests eliminating southbound traffic on Centershore Road altogether and adding a traffic light at the intersection of Oldfield and Centerport Roads or Blenheim Lane and Centerport Road, to slow down traffic heading northbound. "That's basically going to save a lot of lives," he said.
Legislator Jon Cooper (D-Lloyd Neck) hosted last month's meeting at the museum because his office has received numerous complaints about the roadway. "It's been an ongoing source of problems but a very difficult problem to fix," Cooper said, "which is why it's been unresolved for so long."
As a first step, the DPW suggests putting a traffic-triggered flashing light in front of a Centerport Road home just south of the intersection, Cooper said. While that plan seemed to enthuse many people, it did not sound good to the woman outside whose house the traffic light would sit.
Anderson said, "We generally feel that this will improve the situation. Some of the residents mentioned another intersection further down that should be studied. We said, 'Let us do this; let's assess this; see what impacts we have by installing this equipment. If anything has to be remediated, we'll do it at that time.'"
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