Thank you to our Cornell Avenue neighbor who was seen trimming their hedge to improve sightlines at the dangerous, accident-heavy corner of Cornell and Yale.
All tagged Traffic
Stop signs and sightlines
I attended a lively and informative meeting of Swarthmore Borough’s Safety Committee. The principal agenda item was about potential four-way stop signage at the intersection of Cornell and Yale avenues, to reduce collisions. At the same time, the presence of stop signs on Yale at Kenyon Avenue was noted. It’s apparent that those serve only as a traffic-calming measure, principally for eastbound traffic on Yale Avenue.
We can do better
As residents at the intersection of Yale and Cornell avenues, we read with interest about discussions of accidents and safety measures at the recent Public Safety Committee meeting. Recitations of accidents “proportional to traffic volume,” hedges trimmed within allowable limits, and signage about cars ahead not stopping seemed, if we may, out of proportion to our experiences and observations of what happens at this intersection.
Hedge obstructs sightline
While it may be true the line of hedges at the corner of Yale and Cornell meets the code in terms of height, it still represents a tremendous blind spot in crossing at that intersection.
Stop signs govern cyclists, too
At dusk on Sunday, two bicyclists went through the stop sign (failed to stop; didn’t even slow down) at the intersection of Wellesley Road and Swarthmore Avenue. They were going at a fairly high speed, traveling downhill towards town. They didn’t seem to realize that there was a stop sign, or that traffic makes turns from Wellesley onto Swarthmore Avenue. This is a three-way intersection, all-way stop.
I have a new pet peeve, and it’s not trivial — in fact it could be life or death. It concerns the relatively new pedestrian crosswalk lights installed at key, busy Swarthmore intersections. They are not working as intended, and the answer is simple.