Yvonne Pen isn’t exactly swift of foot.
At 85, she walks with a cane–at a pace she describes as “slow.” Until recently, it wasn’t a problem.
Then the city replaced the traffic signals at Clark and Schiller Streets, just a half-block from her Gold Coast home.
The new signals, installed Aug. 3, give pedestrians up to seven seconds less time to cross Clark Street, just enough of a difference to make the crossing perilous for Pen.
“They don’t give you a chance. I just take a couple of steps and it turns red,” Pen told the Problem Solver recently while walking across the intersection, demonstrating her predicament.
Before the traffic lights were switched, the green light on Schiller Street lasted 24 to 27 seconds, depending on the time of day. Now, at all times, the green light lasts only 20 seconds.
Under the new configuration, Pen makes it about halfway across the intersection and then is stranded, cars zipping by on either side.
“I am frightened now, and I am sure there are others like me,” Pen said. “The timing was so good before I could always make it across. … I realize I don’t stand a chance [at getting it changed back], but I figured I’d squeak.”
Her squeaking paid off.
After Pen wrote What’s Your Problem, a Problem Solver called the city. Officials agreed to send a traffic engineer to walk the intersection with her. That engineer told Pen he would tinker with the traffic lights to give her more time to cross.
Monique Bond, spokeswoman for Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management, said her office has helped other residents with similar issues.
“We don’t know [about traffic signal problems] until someone calls us,” Bond said.
Pen, a former dancer who in 1938 traveled with the original Three Stooges as part of a vaudeville routine, has lived on Schiller Street since 1951. She said she spoke with the traffic engineer Tuesday, and within hours, he was on the scene.
“That was quick,” Pen said of the city’s response. “He was so definite about it. He realized the problem.”
Pen, who crosses the intersection almost daily to catch the bus, said she hopes to be crossing–without fear–soon.
“Things don’t usually go this smoothly,” she said. “Sometimes, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.”
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THE PROBLEM
The city of Chicago changed the traffic lights at Clark and Schiller Streets, making it difficult for Yvonne Pen to get across the street in time.
THE OUTCOME
The city sent out a traffic engineer, who told Pen he would change the timing of the light.
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