Description

I am an employee of St Peter's Hospital. Several of my co-workers, patients, pedestrians and I use a cross walk that takes you across from the new Pavilion center to the other side of the street where some of our other offices are (same side as the Center for Disability Services is on). I have a photo attached of the street view from google maps to show where this is, this photo is not updated with the new traffic pedestrian lights that have been installed earlier this year.

So the issue of vehicles not yielding to pedestrians has been there prior to the new pedestrian lights being installed and the issue continues even after the installation. The blinking light portion itself is very slender/rectangular and narrow and also emits a white light. This is hardly noticeable during the sunny day when there is the highest volume of pedestrian traffic. Like I said previously, employees, patients and individuals living near the hospital all use this crosswalk daily.

Already in this week alone I have had several near incidents of a vehicle almost hitting myself and also other individuals. These new traffic lights are NOT helping. Also today, I proceeded to cross and several cars continued to speed by (clearly over the speed limit) and did not let myself or one of my female co-workers (who was on the other side of the street) cross until finally one car on her side finally stopped and I had to halt another car on my side to stop for both of us.

This is completely unnecessary and UNSAFE and for all places for this to be occurring daily, IN FRONT OF A HOSPITAL. There are already several sick/injured patients here daily, we do not need to fill more beds with unnecessary casualties because drivers cannot slow down or follow traffic signage.

I understand that there are financial limitations, but there needs to be something else instituted or something at least temporary to show the frequent drivers of this area that traffic violations are being watched in this area.

There needs to be a different color blinking light other than white on these new pedestrian crossing traffic lights we have (e.g. Red, Orange, etc). Also police presence periodically could be extremely helpful - maybe for 2-3 days out of each month during the high volume hours for a limited time, 7am-9am (morning shifts coming in), 12-2pm (lunch time) and 3-5pm (morning shift ends).

I would really appreciate a response to this post and also if there are other points of contact that need to be made because I have been unsuccessful finding a proper outlet for a complaint like this, until I found this site. So I am starting with this site first and then if I can get any other info to proceed further (if need be) I'd appreciate that or else I'll continue to make a long list of phone calls (which I hope not to).

Thank you and I appreciate any assistance with this for myself and patients AND community around St Peter's Hospital and help maintaining a sense of safety.