No raised median for Austin Boulevard

Paint, new lights and fewer lanes for notorious road

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After hundreds of accidents, dozens of deaths and years of waiting, Island Park residents finally got a small measure of vindication May 8 when the results of a county-backed traffic study confirmed what everyone in the community already knew: Austin Boulevard is a dangerous road and needs to be fixed.

The study was added to the county’s list of projects by Legislator Denise Ford and then-Legislator Jeff Toback in 2009. Begun in 2010, at the behest of the Island Park Civic Association, which has been calling for changes to Austin Boulevard since it was founded in 2008, the study was undertaken by the RBA Group, an engineering firm. The results were presented to the community at the Lincoln Orens Middle School last week.

“I think it’s a positive step in the right direction,” said Island Park Mayor James Ruzicka, whose opinion seemed to be shared by the 100 or so residents who attended the meeting.

After a year of studying accident reports from 2008 to 2010, traffic patterns and pedestrian use and determining when people were driving on the road and how many cars it could handle, the RBA Group concluded that Austin Boulevard was plagued with aggressive driving, exacerbated by the road’s design. “Over the three-year period [of traffic reports], we had 309 accidents,” said Eileen Kelly, the firm’s transportation planner, eliciting a murmur from the crowd. “That turns out to be double the statewide average for a similar-type roadway.”

Kelly said that the majority of the accidents were rear-ends, left-turn collisions and parked cars being sideswiped, indicative of aggressive driving. She also explained some of the 1-mile road’s other problems. The parking lanes on the side of the road are only seven feet wide (the average is 10). The travel lanes are only 10 feet wide, when they should be 11. There are no crosswalks, making it difficult to impossible for pedestrians to cross the busy street.

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