'I don't know what the answer is.' Newburgh residents may have to live with dangerous intersection indefinitely

"

Some Newburgh residents say someone is going to become seriously hurt – or worse – if nothing is done about a confusing intersection where car crashes keep happening. Carpenter Avenue and North Street has always been a tricky intersection. "I think the city is responsible for helping us with this problem," said Paul Miranda, whose family lives on the northeast corner. Miranda showed News 12 damage from late June when a car ran the stop sign on Carpenter Avenue and collided with another car, sending both cars crashing into the family's home. His uncle, Jose Cardona, showed News 12 video from the most recent accident from last week. He said at least one driver was taken away by ambulance. To Cardona, drivers seem to become confused, leading them to blow through the Carpenter Avenue stop sign, causing crashes. Over the course of one hour, News 12 observed a handful of driver go through the stop sign without stopping and others who stopped part way through the intersection seemingly confused. "I'm stressing that a lot of people are getting hurt here," Cardona said. "I mean, it's not a joke anymore." Cardona and other neighbors went to Monday's city council meeting to ask the council to consider a four-way-stop. "I come to you, so maybe you can help me get some more information so I can get the four stop signs [sic]," he said in his testimony. Some councilmembers said they often hear from constituents about the dangerous intersection, but they currently cannot do much to fix it. Councilwoman Patty Sofokles has looked into ways to calm traffic here. She said she ran into problems, though, because the traffic-calming measures may back up traffic on to State Route 9W, a state-controlled road. "I approached the DOT about this," Sofokles said. "You can't put a traffic light at that corner because it's too close to 9W. I don't know what the answer is, but I tried to deal with it myself over the years." When asked to be referred to regulations on municipal roads near state roads, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation simply said "the intersection is under the jurisdiction of the City of Newburgh. Questions about the intersection should be directed to the City of Newburgh." City Manager Todd Venning said in an email the city's transportation advisory committee is looking into concerns about the intersection. Mayor Torrance Harvey used the moment to encourage city residents to apply to join city boards that deal with issues that affect their lives. He said being on the transportation advisory committee would give residents near Carpenter and North more power to solve the city's traffic and design slaws that go back decades. "