At edge of area block, Sixth Avenue becomes dangerous: two accidents in recent days

Pacific Street and Sixth Avenue

The corner of Sixth Avenue and Dean Street, at the southeast corner of the arena block, has been disturbingly busy lately--not only were streetlights and traffic signals out, now back, apparently, there was a significant accident recently, caused, perhaps, by the lack of a traffic signal.

One block north, at Sixth Avenue and Pacific Street, an errant construction vehicle did major damage to a pole with a traffic signal, causing pedestrians to walk in the street, not the safest path

Anyone observing the chaos has to wonder: what would be the ripple effects if such impacts occurred when the arena next door were up and operating, generating far more traffic?

The ripple effects surely would be much greater. On the other hand, arena and police personnel probably would respond much faster. But these accidents point to the small margin of error when a traffic-generating arena is a tightly sited as this one.

At Pacific Street

As described on Atlantic Yards Watch, the damage to a light pole on August 8 caused by a truck working on arena construction caused pedestrians to walk in the street. (Note that there's been no official report yet on these incidents, so it's difficult to assess fault.)

 

Then the entire pole was removed, which, while removing one hazard, introduced a new one: no street light.

An accident at Dean and Sixth

Then, according to Atlantic Yards Watch, a driver traveling north on Sixth on August 8 was hit by a car driven by construction worker traveling south on Sixth and turning left onto Dean Street.

Looking northbound on Sixth Avenue at Dean Street

Looking westbound on Dean Street at Sixth Avenue

Looking southbound at Sixth Avenue and Dean Street