[RP TownTalk] Children in streets - Ravenswood Road area

Wed May 11 11:10:29 UTC 2016

Interesting suggestions and I would like to see some of them implemented; but as I said in my post last week, there's children around and walking/biking down the middle of the road, with NO regard to oncoming traffic.  And these children are more than old enough to be educated by their parents, the schools, or whoever, to be careful when they're out and about.   As for more traffic in the area, well, if people want all of the development, unfortunately there's a price to be paid, and we WILL see a lot more traffic cutting through town.   

    On Tuesday, May 10, 2016 9:14 PM, adrian limmen <adrianlimmen at gmail.com> wrote:

 As much as the kids andparents should be aware of traffic we should also focus more of our attentionon the growing number of cars abusing our neighborhood as a cut through. We areseeing more and more traffic especially on Ravenswood Rd.  Cars that cut through don’t stop at the stopsign on Ravenswood and 48th where all the kids seem to beplaying.  I think many are people areusing our area to circumvent traffic on 410 and cutting through Ravenswood toget to their destination outside of our neighborhood.  With Whole Foods coming the potential cutthrough traffic will increase dramatically. Could we do something to make it much less attractive to vehicles tryingto save a few minutes?  The kids shouldbe able to ride their bikes and play on our neighborhood streets withoutworry.  Hyattsville and University Parkhave some interesting ways of managing their neighborhood traffic.  They have more one way streets, speed bumps,concrete blockades and trafficpatterns that make it annoying to try weaving through their neighborhoodsto get around busier roads.

Here are a few things I think Riverdale coulddo to make it safer for the children on our streets. 1.      Letters to the neighbors. Not everyone is on this list serv. We should handdeliver a letter to all the houses in the area with requests to inform theirchildren to be more careful as well as neighborhood drivers to keep their eyesopen. I would volunteer to do this for all houses starting on Lafayette andheading east to the park.  (map below) 

2.      More speed bumps. People race through the neighborhood at high speeds especially atnight. More speed bumps would slow them down.  Some kind of enforcement would also slow them down.

3.      Children playing signs. Something that could help keep people alert.

4.      Stopping people from using our area as a cutthrough. How can we make it lessdesirable to use our area to avoid 410 traffic or as a quick way to get to thenew Whole Foods? Maybe something like the “do not enter” signs on Queensburyroad in Hyattsville that do not apply to residents but people just passingthrough at certain times of the day.  Afew more one way streets and police to enforce it.  Imagine if Ravenswood road was a one waystreet that you could only travel east. Cars would be much less likely to want to go through the area since itmakes it that much harder to get to their destination, and possibly detertraffic from cutting through the neighborhood overall. Since I am not a trafficspecialist I am only making suggestions based on what I see in the area thatseems to work.  I would love to see thecity make a stronger effort to consider what Wholefoods could be doing to ourarea in terms of traffic and our children. How can we make it less attractive to use our area as a cut through?  How can we inform the parents and children ofthe neighborhood to be more careful as we work on making the town safer forthem to play in? It would be great ifsomeone could add something like this to the agenda to the Public SafetyCommittee Meeting on Thursday, May 12, 2016, at 6:30 p.m. in the ConferenceRoom of Town Hall (5008 Queensbury Road). Can anyone come?  Did they ever send out an agenda? Thanks!AdrianRavenswood Rd
On Fri, May 6, 2016 at 8:27 AM, S Collins <ugglywump at yahoo.com> wrote:

 There'd been 2 posts last months about kids playing in the street on Ravenswood Road; just a note to say I've noticed a bunch of kids playing in the streets as well, don't know if it's the same group or not (about 8-10 elementary school-age kids).  I don't drive and when I get a cab to come home from the store, several times the cab has had to slow down to a stop in the 4700/4800 block of Ravenswood, as this group of children is out in the street on bikes or playing.  They make no move to get out of the way of the cab.  Yesterday, I left my apt. and saw this same bunch of kids walking from Ravenswood up Lafayette, in the street w/ their bikes and scooters, just goofing around.  They were almost under the EW Highway overpass and a pickup truck came around the corner at speed and had to swerve way to the left to avoid hitting the children.  I yelled at them to get out of the street or they could get hurt, but either their English isn't that good or they were just ignoring me, as they made no effort to get out of the way.  I know kids need a place to play, I know children tend to be careless, but if this keeps up, sooner or later one or more of these children is going to get hit by a car, or cause an accident if a vehicle has to swerve around them and ends up hitting another vehicle.  Can't say what should or could be done, I know the police cannot 'babysit' a particular area all the time. Perhaps the school could send out a flyer, telling parents to watch over their children, or maybe handouts at the Farmers' Market or the "Night Out Against Crime" event?  Esp. with summer vacation coming up, children will be out and about more than ever.  At any rate, drivers in the area, please, please be careful.  
_______________________________________________
TownTalk mailing list
To post to the list, send mail to TownTalk at riverdale-park.org
TownTalk-request at riverdale-park.org is for automated subscription processing only
http://riverdale-park.org/mailman/listinfo/towntalk

For more information about Riverdale Park, visit http://www.riverdaleparkmd.info/

-- 
Adrian

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://riverdale-park.org/pipermail/towntalk/attachments/20160511/e53957b5/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 1393995 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://riverdale-park.org/pipermail/towntalk/attachments/20160511/e53957b5/attachment-0001.png>