Tour sidewalk-less Sunnyside street

A two-way, sidewalk-less Sunnyside street could see improvements by June, officials from the city’s Department of Tansportation (DOT) told concerned local residents as they toured the block with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn recently.
The issue will be brought before Community Board 2 at their next meeting on Thursday, April 3, said Board Chair Joseph Conley. Members will then have the chance to vote on whether they would like the DOT to improve the situation on Barnett Avenue between 50th and 48th Streets - a formal procedure to get the city to work on a street.
If approved, the DOT would study the two-way street, which has no sidewalks on both sides and possibly implement more immediate changes like making the road one way westbound and installing more signage.
The street could be made a one way by June, DOT officials said - if the plan receives all approvals. In that case, the DOT would paint a temporary sidewalk on the north side of the street and add signage.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” joked 10-year local resident Ciaran Staunton, of the possibility of action after the street had remained in the same condition for decades.
A capital plan to reconstruct the street and add sidewalks is expected to be completed by 2012 in conjunction with the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which is overhauling the water main underneath. DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said she and the agency would see if there is any way to speed up the timeline but the DOT could not “move [the plan] completely from 2012 to next month.”
On the south side of the street, trees and brush have overgrown from a park, and the one-block section has become a dumping ground for small pieces of litter and appliances alike, residents said.
Lea Zaks, a 40-year Sunnyside resident who walks the stretch at least twice per week, said she has spotted refrigerators, shelves, and typewriters in the brush and during the walk through on Thursday, March 6, DOT officials and Quinn caught a glimpse of a torn-up leather swivel chair amid the branches.
“It’s terrible, it’s dirty, but it’s a shortcut,” Zaks said of Barnett Avenue, later adding, “I’d like a sidewalk. I’d like it to be a one-way street.”
If the street was made one way, officials would ask local residents to spread the word, so that the extra space would not be used as a fast lane.
According to local residents, that particular stretch of Barnett Avenue has been problematic for years, and Councilmember Eric Gioia, who grew up nearby, said that the street had been “unsafe” for his entire life. Co-Presidents of the Phipps Garden Apartments Tenants Association Gerald Perrin and Dorothy Cavallo said that the street desperately needed action.
“This is a direct line from Woodside,” Cavallo said, later adding that the Buckeye Pipeline runs underneath the roadway. “We have that to be concerned about.”
Locals also brought Quinn and Sadik-Khan to a nearby block - 46th Street between 39th and Skillman Avenues - to ask for speed bumps to be installed. Four years ago, an 11-year-old girl was struck and killed on the street, and currently there are 35 children living on the one block, said resident and mom of two Tonia Moore.
Moore recently circulated a petition for speed bumps - 65 neighbors said yes, five no and four were unreachable.
“There are so many young children on this block. … Even if we prevent an accident, not even God forbid a fatality, it would be worth doing,” said resident James Van Bramer, who moved in four years ago.
Primeggia said that after a Community Board recommendation, the agency would conduct a speed survey and look at the block in terms of where a bump could be placed.
“Can we find a location to put it?” Primeggia said of driveways and “street furniture” like fire hydrants and utilities.
However, not all residents are in favor of the bumps. Maxine Schacker, who moved into the neighborhood in 1961 called the signs preceding the bumps “ugly” and said that when cars hit the devices, “it sounds like a crash every time.”
“You could say you need speed bumps everywhere in this city,” she said, “because everyone drives like a fool.”