Stop Sign Eyed for Dangerous Pleasantville Intersection
News Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
By Abby Luby
A stop sign is finally in the works for the intersection of Ashland Avenue and Nannahagan Road — a long-problematic crossing that residents and officials alike have called unsafe for both drivers and pedestrians.
At the June 23 Pleasantville Village Board meeting, a public hearing was held to propose amending the village code to permit the installation of a stop sign at the end of Ashland Avenue, where it meets Nannahagan Road.
Traffic congestion in the area, particularly around the Pleasantville Country Club entrance on Nannahagan and the nearby Bedford Road School, has raised serious safety concerns — especially during morning drop-offs and afternoon pickups.
“This is a difficult sort of corner and curve where Ashland meets Nannahagan and coincides with the driveway to the Country Club,” explained Pleasantville Mayor Peter Scherer. “What everyone in Pleasantville has experienced forever is that it’s a tough spot, and cars tend to drift on the curve into the lane of the other cars, and the opportunity for pedestrians to find safe passage is limited in a very difficult geography.”
Several members of the Pleasantville Pedestrian Committee attended the hearing and voiced support for the stop sign.
Pleasantville Pedestrian Committee co-chair Terry Conway recalled the committee’s visit to the intersection. “We became very quickly aware of the concerns residents had for safety, for the motorists, for the pedestrians, for the students. There’s a lot of cars, a lot of traffic during the morning drop off. The area, as I’m sure everyone here knows, is very narrow.”
Resident Neal Cimochowski also supported the stop sign but suggested revisiting the idea of adding sidewalks along Nannahagan — an idea he said had last been explored about two decades ago.
“I think it’s something that really needs to be revisited in a pretty serious manner, because there’s about 200 households that are in the school district that could benefit from walking through there,” Cimochowski said. “A lot of people are currently not comfortable walking on there.”
Joan Horton, a Nannahagan Road resident since 1999, echoed the sidewalk sentiment and emphasized the dangers she’s encountered over the years.
“For many years I’ve walked our children to school, and it was always very problematic,” Horton recalled. “The pedestrian safety issue on Nannahagan was addressed in 2007 and 2008 at great length. A consultant was hired to study the area and come up with suggestions, and their solution was to make Nannahagan one way with a dedicated pedestrian lane with a safety rail to protect the pedestrians. That would have been lovely.”
But Horton said that strong opposition from area residents ultimately derailed the plan. “Speed bumps would have been lovely, but there was also fierce opposition to that, even though many of us neighbors strongly supported them and even expressed a willingness to help fund them.”
She added that there has been a lack of agreement about adding speed bumps: “I don’t think we ever have consensus, and as a community we sometimes need to choose what’s best for the whole community.”
Scherer noted that adding sidewalks would be logistically difficult. “As you likely know, because of the topography on both sides, it would involve moving telephone poles, cutting down trees, building retaining walls,” the mayor said. “The last time it was seriously considered, there was very, very deep concern — separate from whether it’s possible to fund such a thing — about the effect on the neighborhood to produce that result.”
Other suggestions raised at the hearing included relocating the 15 mph speed limit sign farther south on Ashland Avenue — a measure the board said it would consider after consulting the village engineer. Resident Peter Rogovin recommended adding “No Parking” signs on Nannahagan.
“It always seems odd to me that when you have a double yellow line street and you have one lane of traffic in each direction that anyone would think it’s okay to park there,” Rogovin remarked. “When people park on Nannahagan, it forces you directly into oncoming traffic, and because of the hill, it’s a real problem. I’ve had to go around Amazon trucks that were parked just below the peak of the hill, and it’s frightening because if you pull out into the left lane you can’t see what’s coming at you.”
After the 45-minute hearing, Scherer noted that the stop sign proposal had near-unanimous support.
“Thus far among the comments tonight there have been no naysayers and only one negative comment received by email. It’s our hope and belief that it’s a step that would improve both motor safety as well as pedestrian safety,” Scherer said.
The public hearing will remain open until the next board meeting on July 14. If the board votes to approve the resolution, the updated code will be filed with the New York Secretary of State before the stop sign can be officially installed.
Abby is a seasoned journalist who has been covering news and feature stories in the region for decades. Since The Examiner’s launch in 2007, she has reported extensively on a broad range of community issues. Read more from Abby’s editor-author bio here. Read Abbys’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/ab-lub2019/