Park View, D.C.

View southwest over the corner of Princeton Pl. and Warder St.

As anyone who drives up Warder Street can tell you, it has a lot of stop signs and a few street lights. Many of the stop signs were originally installed to address speeding although I suspect the stop light at Otis Place had the dual role of children’s safety. Which brings me to the corner of Princeton & Warder.

Children’s safety has largely not be a big concern at this intersection in the recent past. However, over the last year the Park View Kids Zone has been running a very successful program out of the Rec Center’s field house which has its entrance on Princeton. On Saturdays it’s not unusually to see 40 kids or so enjoying a day of fun around the property. Many of those children cross Warder to get to and from the program.

Location of stop signs on Warder leading up to the Princeton Place intersection

Leading up to Princeton Place, drivers encounter a series of traffic calming measures — notably a Stop light at Kenyon, stop signs at Lamont, Park Road, and Newton, and then another stop light at Otis. Like it or not, many area drivers use Warder as a north bound alternative to Georgia Avenue or North Capital Street. After encountering the series of stops prior to Otis, I’ve witnessed drivers try to make up time by racing to the next stop sign at Rock Creek Church Road (which many treat as a suggested stop rather than a requirement). If the light at Otis is green, that is an extra block drivers use to pick up speed on their journeys north.

Due to the increased presence of children at this intersection and the habits of drivers on Warder Street, I believe the time has come to study the necessity of an additional stop sign at this intersection.

This entry was posted on April 7, 2011 at 7:01 am and is filed under Children, traffic. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: children, Park View, Public Safety, streets