After a fatal truck crash in Woodside, lawmakers press DOT for a walk signal

Three elected officials want the city’s Department of Transportation to stop putting off a safety review at the Woodside corner where Nishath Jannath, 19, died in March after a private garbage truck hit her.

In a Sept. 28 letter to Queens Borough Transportation Commissioner Liz Garcia, U.S. Rep. Grace Meng, Council Member Julie Won and Assembly Member Steven Raga asked DOT to act at Roosevelt Avenue and 62nd Street, a crossing that has no pedestrian signal today.

What happened at 62nd Street and Roosevelt Avenue

In the late hours of March 29, Jannath was crossing 62nd Street, half a mile from home, when a Royal Waste truck made a turn off Roosevelt Avenue and struck her. Ever since, the lawmakers wrote, her family has kept pressing for changes at the corner, and they called the issue a “high-priority matter.”

According to the letter, Raga’s office has been talking with DOT since March about a planned inspection there. The agency has held it off because of nearby construction, telling him that a review taken now would miss how traffic normally moves through the area. In May, Raga stood with residents at the corner to call for fixes and remember Jannath. “Imagine this in the dark,” he said at that rally.

Officials want a pedestrian signal without more delay

Nobody knows when the construction will end, the lawmakers argue, and the work may itself be putting people on foot at greater risk, which in their view is a reason to look now rather than later. “Given that this intersection has already been the site of a fatality, necessary safety improvements cannot wait indefinitely,” they wrote. They asked for the inspection to happen right away and for a signal to go in as quickly as possible, whether or not the construction is finished.

The agency wants to make the corner safer “as soon as possible given the current major construction at this location,” Vincent Barone, a DOT spokesperson, said in a statement. He added that DOT is speaking with the permit holder doing work in the area about whether changes are feasible while construction is underway or once it wraps up.

Members of Queens Community Board 2 said in May that the board had been asking for safety improvements along the corridor for more than a year.