Flashing Pedestrian Crosswalk Needed at Grove and McDonough, Montclair

In the first half of 2017 alone, 21 pedestrians in Montclair were struck by cars and sent to the hospital. Grove Street had more pedestrian accidents than any other Montclair street, including one fatality. Of all the crosswalks along Grove, perhaps none is more dangerous and in need of a flashing alert than the one at McDonough Street.

There is no signal-aided crosswalk on Grove between the traffic light at Chestnut and the one at Watchung. But this is a more complicated intersection than most. Drivers turning out onto Grove from both McDonough and busy Dodd, concerned only with oncoming traffic, accelerate onto Grove without noticing the crosswalk at all. Grove, which people already take too fast, is doubly dangerous because even if someone stops to let pedestrians cross, cars behind them often wrongly assume they're stopping to turn, then pull out into the shoulder to go around them—exactly where pedestrians are crossing.

Everyone in the neighborhood has horror stories, precisely because this crosswalk is so central and necessary to this community. Neighborhood kids enrolled at Watchung Elementary have to cross here each morning at the busiest time of the day. Others of us must cross on our way to or from the train or bus, also at rush hour and, for several months of the year, in the dark. Others are running errands, walking dogs, or simply out for a walk in our neighborhood.

Yes, there are small pedestrian crossing signs and a painted crosswalk, but neither of them is working—drivers don't notice pedestrians here until it's too late. Where there are flashing crosswalks in Montclair—on Grove at Oxford, Bloomfield at Montclair Center, and three in a row on Claremont—they work. Drivers see the flashing lights when pedestrians want to cross, and they stop. This is what we need at Grove and McDonough.