Earlier this month, inside Mosholu Montefiore Community Center in Norwood, local residents and traffic engineers stood over maps of Gun Hill Road, one of the city’s most congested corridors, and brainstormed ideas. Anything that might ease the flow of traffic or increase pedestrian safety was on the table.
The brainstorming session followed a presentation of traffic data collected by the city’s Department of Transportation (DOT), which is using federal funds to get to the root of the congestion problems on Gun Hill Road and hopefully come up with some solutions.
The presentation basically reenforced what local residents have long observed: traffic on Gun Hill Road is bad. At its worst, the corridor from White Plains Road to Jerome Avenue looks like a still photo of a parking lot.
After the presentation, Karl Sticker, a retired traffic engineer who lives in Woodlawn, said simply, “This is going to be hard to solve.”
Stricker batted ideas back and forth with project manager Kol Gjelaj, who is also heading an identical project on a congested stretch of Broadway in Brooklyn.
“Another lane during peak hours would be huge,” Gjelaj said at one point. Stricker wondered if a plan to eliminate parking during peak hours would fly. “Depends on how much people scream at us,” Gjelaj replied.
Revamping the parking regulations, installation of left- or right-hand-only turn signals, making some side streets into one-ways, synchronizing the lights better, moving bus stops or re-routing bus routes. Everything is in play, Gjelaj said.
Jay Shuffield, a member of Community Board 7 who attended the meeting said he’s happy something is being doing, but he’s not sure how effective it’s going to be. His biggest concern is that the DOT is going to look at each intersection individually, rather than as the Gun Hill Road corridor as a whole. “Just because you fix one intersection doesn’t mean you won’t cause more problems elsewhere,” he said.
Gjelaj said the DOT would take all of the input from the brainstorming session, analyze more data and hopefully unveil its recommendations for solutions “before summer.”
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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.
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I have lived in this neighborhood for 37 years, and watched the 3rd Avenue El dismantled from my Decatur Avenue apartment which faced Webster Avenue. Traffic was never so bad then, as the structure of the El itself dictated where and how cars and buses could fit on Webster Ave. as well as Gun Hill Rd. The demise of the El added the 55 bus to the 41 route, helping to created problems. No way to change that; just an observation. In my experience as a driver what has seriously increased the traffic problem is rooted mostly in the increased selfish, self-centered, me first attitude of the drivers. Both east and west bound cars will sit in the right turn only lanes for entering the Bronx River Parkway when they are NOT turning on the Parkway, thus backing up cars that DO want to get onto the Parkkway. Drivers tired of waiting for the light at the Gun Hill Rd./Webster Ave. intersection simply go through red lights, thus blocking the right of way of drivers who have a green light. They then go through a red light in frustration, and it gets worse and worse. The only non-driver factor contributing to this mess, in my experience, is the size of the accordion buses running on Webster as well as on Gun Hill Road. They take up twice as much space and take twice as long to turn onto and off of Gun Hill Road, further obstructing traffic.Turning onto Gun Hill Road east bound they get stuck in the lane behind all the cars NOT using the right turn signal to get onto the Parkway, as mentioned above. At rush hour I have seen traffic heafing north on Webster Avenue backed up to 205th Street, because that right turn onto eastbound Gun Hill Road cannot be done.