Residents Want Changes on Street

Residents living on one central Columbia street want changes because they say their street is not safe. The residents are on Garth Avenue, south of Broadway. Over the past few months, there have been several close calls including one hit-and-run accident ABC 17 News told you about back in November where an 86-year-old woman hit another woman as she was loading children into her car.Residents tell us cars seem to fly down this road at all times of the day. The problem with that is there are cars like these parked on the side of the road. With the library and elementary school just down the street, many that live here are worried that someone could get hurt again.Residents say the streets gets very narrow. The biggest problem is there are a couple of times each day this street gets very busy.”Anything that would help slow the traffic down and allow more room for cars would be good. I wouldn’t be in favor of widening the street,” Garth Avenue resident Jeanne Murphy explains.Murphy tells us a lot of them that live on the street are in favor of doing something on the streets because they don’t want to lose more of their yards. They say adding things speed bumps or even eliminating on-street parking might solve the problem.The city is looking into the changes residents want. Fourth ward councilman, Daryl Dudley, says he asked the city’s public works department to look into changes after that hit-and-run accident. He says the city is looking to see if speed bumps and eliminating the parking on the streets are the answers. But he didn’t know what the status of that study was.Residents’ hope something is done because it’s is a daily problem.”There’s a lot of traffic going to and from school, there’s school buses, on the street parking as well, and so it gets very tight,” Murphy says.We tried to get the status of the study from the public works department, but our phone calls were never returned.