Published: November 06, 2009 11:20 am      

Modad: Crosswalk creates safety concerns on Mercer

PRINCETON — Rather than safeguarding pedestrians and controlling traffic, one of Mercer Street’s crosswalks creates a hazard and a business hardship, according to Freddy Modad.

Modad, whose family owns and operates Sam’s Restaurant, addressed Princeton City Council’s Public Safety Committee Wednesday, urging members to use a can of paint and the power of political persuasion to restore the “integrity of the intersection” at 1327-1329 Mercer St.

In recent years, Modad said, the businesses along the stretch that Sam’s Restaurant occupies have lost five parking spaces along the crowded street, and three of those occurred during the recent reconfiguration of crosswalks and traffic signals on Mercer Street.

The lack of adequate, close parking allegedly costs him in property value and creates a hardship for the business, but Modad asked Council members to consider the safety of the crosswalk.

“There are very, very many safety flaws to the current design,” he said.

The crosswalk, installed by the same contractors who spent the summer putting in new traffic lights downtown, is positioned differently than most other city crosswalks. Most others are arranged at a 90-degree angle with the sidewalk, which then leads pedestrians straight across the road, to another 90-degree angle and a sidewalk. This particular crosswalk was installed at approximately a 110-degree angle, which Modad argues sends pedestrians crossing the street and following the taped crosswalk right in the path of traffic turning from Honaker Avenue onto Mercer Street.

In addition, Modad said the design would confuse a blind person crossing the street and that the ticking sound that should signal when it’s safe to walk isn’t loud enough to be heard over the noise of passing traffic. He also told Council members that the position of a nearby pole and the location of the crosswalk create a blind spot large enough for a child to disappear into. With Mercer School just across the street, that should be cause for concern, he said.

“It seems like an ill-conceived plan that defeats the purpose,” Modad said. “... A can of paint would fix my problem, but when I study these safety issues, I have to stand up for what I believe is right.”

City Manager Wayne Shumate addressed some of Modad’s concerns, but in the end, he said the city isn’t authorized to change the design.

Because Mercer Street is part of West Virginia Route 20, a state road, traffic engineers with the Department of Highways were in charge of designing the crosswalk patterns that accompanied the project this summer. Shumate pledged that the city would forward the concerns to the appropriate engineers for their review.

Councilman Tim Ealy asked if the city could do anything to ease the parking problem in the area of Sam’s Restaurant, but Shumate advised that the parking spaces could not be reinstalled without movement of the crosswalk.

In other Public Safety Committee Action, Code Enforcement Director Bill Buzzo reported that his department is working more closely with the Princeton Fire Department’s fire code inspectors to investigate public health hazards in condemned or abandoned commercial structures throughout the city, paying particular attention to Mercer Street.

Pointing to a poster lined in closed and/or condemned properties, Buzzo said, “They don’t represent a positive. What is it? It’s a liability. What can we do? We can inspect.”

— Contact Tammie Toler at ttoler@ptonline.net.