I have been watching the efforts of the people in Northwood to take on the speed problem on Castor Avenue between Foulkrod and Pratt for a couple of years now. They had some success in that the Streets department studied the Speedway and concluded that yes traffic was running too fast. They made promises to do some fixing and they did some fixing but not as much as the promised, at least to date. What they did was lay some strips across the lanes that are about as thick as cardboard which are intended to remind people to slow up. Cardboard might have worked better. The accidents are still happening and speed still speedy.
Northwood was promised by Councilwoman Sanchez that she would arrange a sit down with the Streets Department to resolve the issue. So far, no meeting. There are solutions to this problem but they are not being implemented.
Saturday morning, April 29th, Mari Carrasquillo, who lives about a block away from Castor and Foulkrod, posted on Facebook the first news about the accident. The car was traveling South on Castor and as it approached the intersection of Foulkrod, came into contact with the utility pole on the West side of the street. The car and pole were heavily damaged. The power lines shorted out creating some fireworks that took some time to be extinguished. No further information about the accident investigation by the police was available as of today.
From a local resident: The crash knocked out power as far as 2½ city blocks (my house) from the intersection. In the video, the loud crackling of the fires due to the fallen wires is eerie. The position of the car at the utility pole indicates that it was traveling northbound.
More importantly, in the last few months, there have been four serious crashes on the Foulkrod-to-Fillmore block of Castor. Due to those crashes, a girl 14 years of age was killed (at Fillmore, as reported by a resident of the 1000 block of Fillmore), a utility pole and a traffic signal pole have had to be replaced, and two trees have been damaged.