MAMARONECK ‒ Big changes are coming to the Mamaroneck Avenue intersection where a minibus crash in June took the lives of Molly Donovan and her 6-year-old son, Mikey.
On the morning of June 20, the crosswalk at Mamaroneck Avenue and New Street — a busy crossing for parents who park in a CVS parking lot and walk the few blocks to Mamaroneck Avenue School — didn’t merit a crossing guard. No one was posted there to get parents and kids safely across the busy four-lane street, a major cut-through for traffic from I-95 at all hours.
That morning, Donovan and her son were struck and killed by a Royal Coach Lines minibus turning left onto Mamaroneck Avenue from New Street. No charges are pending against the 68-year-old driver as the village police department awaits the final report of Westchester County’s accident reconstruction team, expected within a week.
Red tape: Mamaroneck parents want traffic changes now after June minibus crash killed mom, son
A new look at Mamaroneck’s New Street
When school resumes next month, things will be markedly different at New Street from that deadly day in June.
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Mamaroneck Avenue’s shoulder — at New Street and also at the school — has already been painted with a wide stripe, a visual narrowing of the road that traffic experts suggest could slow traffic.
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The faded crosswalks at New Street and from Mamaroneck Avenue to the elementary school are scheduled to be repainted before school starts.
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There will be a crossing guard stationed at New Street and Mamaroneck Avenue for the new school year, one of four new guards the village police will add. The others are at Waverly, Grand, and Elliot, where they meet Mamaroneck Avenue. Police Chief Sandra DiRuzza said the plan is to add the new guards to the village’s 19 crossing guards and then evaluate whether they are needed.
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But the biggest change at New Street, and only at New Street, will be a new traffic-light pattern. It will be the only intersection to get “a pedestrian-exclusive phase,” when traffic in all directions stops as pedestrians cross.
Danielle Robles, a mother of two students at Mamaroneck Avenue School and a member of the group Safe Streets Mamaroneck, didn’t hide her disappointment at an Aug. 12 village board meeting when the changes were announced.
“We asked for pedestrian-exclusive phases — an intersection where, when the walk sign goes only pedestrians cross —at eight intersections and we’re getting it at one,” Robles said during the public comment period. “We’re getting it at the one intersection where two lives were lost.”
Safety measures after double-fatal accident
At the meeting, Interim Village Manager Chuck Strome told trustees and Mayor Sharon Torres that, working with the county and police, progress had been made to increase pedestrian safety: trees have been trimmed clear of signs; road markings have been repainted and a schedule for repainting crosswalks is in place; and new speed-limit signs will be erected by month’s end.
Some of the changes will require action by the county, and further study, and won’t be in place when school resumes in September, Strome said. That statement appeared to disappoint members of the audience, who want action before sending their kids back to Mamaroneck Avenue School, which is part of the Mamaroneck school district.
Strome said the county will need to conduct a traffic study before considering reducing the speed limit to 25 mph from 30 mph. Trustee Lou Young echoed the opinions of parents, who were adamant that the speed limit on the busy street should be reduced.
Young declared “There’s no reason we shouldn’t have a 25 mile-per-hour speed limit from Boston Post Road to the Thruway. The car is not king here.”
‘Swept under the rug’: Family in fatal Mamaroneck crosswalk crash calls for justice for mom, son who died
Later in the meeting, the trustees allocated more than $86,000 for traffic cameras on Mamaroneck Avenue for police enforcement measures.
The proposal had been written up last December and sent to the previous village manager in January, and then to the trustees in April to be added to the police budge for this year.
Lt. Mark Gatta of the village police department said the cameras will be placed in various locations along Mamaroneck Avenue near the Mamaroneck Avenue School. He said the cameras are “mainly for investigative purposes and to check issues as they are occurring or just occurred (i.e., flooding, traffic concerns, etc.).”
Only one of these new after-the-fact measures would potentially have prevented the crash that killed Donovan and her son: the pedestrian-exclusive phase for traffic lights would have kept the minibus driver in place on New Street, protecting the mother and her son from being put in the path of the vehicle.
How was the posting of the new crossing guards chosen?
DiRuzza said the village’s traffic consultant, White Plains-based AKRF recommended the placement of the four new crossing guards, whose hiring will cost about $46,000 per year, Gatta said.
Asked why the consultant chose those intersections, Gatta said: “Crossing guards are an optional supplement to marked crosswalks;” and “while not providing specific guidance on where crossing guards should be placed, the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices states that they may be used to provide gaps in traffic at school crossings; and can also add conspicuity at the crossing where children, who are typically smaller in stature, might not be as visible.”
Mamaroneck looks to outsource crossing guard staffing
There was another bit of news: The village police department is looking to get out of the crossing-guard business and hire an outside vendor to administer that program.
Among the documents for trustees and the public to view at the Aug. 12 meeting was a request for proposals due on Aug. 16 for “qualified school crossing guard providers” to submit written proposals.
Until now, the village police department has screened, hired, trained and scheduled its 19 crossing guards. That meant that if there were last-minute gaps in staffing, officers would be called on to fill them. In the days after the fatal crash at New Street, a police officer was on duty there, crossing parents and kids where there had been no crossing guard.
Now, the village is looking to outsource that work.
“The contractor shall consider, but is not required, to hire the existing school crossing guards,” the document reads. “All crossing guards must be competent, reliable and interact well with children and parents. The contractor will be responsible for managing all guards, making work schedules and ensuring that all posted locations are covered.”
Young, the trustee, likes the change. He said Friday that only one firm submitted a proposal to take over oversight, and he expected the issue would be put before the trustees in September. He had not seen the proposal as of Friday.
“I’ve got to see the numbers on it, but I think that it makes sense and I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t do that,” Young said. “We can’t have police officers doing that kind of work.”
Young said it’s hard to find crossing guards, who work a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the afternoon. Hiring a company to take on that task also means having someone responsible for filling gaps that otherwise would be filled by uniformed officers.
“We’ve had some situations where we’ve had to take cops off the street and have them be crossing guards. That’s a bad idea,” he said.
Young said spending money for something that has been handled by the police might seem extravagant, but it actually saves money and keeps officers doing what they’re needed to do.
Gatta, the police spokesman, said Friday that if the trustees approve the move to outsource the crossing guards, the funds would come from the existing budget and possibly reserve funds.
Neither Gatta nor Strome responded to a request for information about the bidder or the cost of the bid.
Gatta said DiRuzza would seek board approval to hire the bidder in September or October. The RFP said services would begin 45 days after the contract was awarded. Gatta stressed that village police would continue to “oversee the program, but the company will administer the daily staffing and supervision of the guards.”
Who were the mother and son killed by school bus in Mamaroneck?
Erin Donovan had one sister and one nephew: Molly and Mikey. In an interview last month, she bristled at the police characterization of the crash as a “tragic accident.”
“When we consider that pedestrians have the right of way, when we consider this was a busy intersection and this was the time that our babies were making their way to school, it is unthinkable to me that their deaths were reported as a ‘tragic accident,'” she said.
She remembered her nephew as having a spark, her sister as a community builder. Molly Murphey Donovan died days before her 44th birthday. Mikey was 6.
“The two of them … they were meant for each other,” Donovan said. “They had a bond beyond mother and son; they were souls who found each other. And now they are gone.”
Mamaroneck bus crash report expected
An investigation into the crash is ongoing, and village police are awaiting a report from Westchester County’s accident reconstruction team. Lt. Mark Gatta, the village police spokesman, said that report — which will synthesize his department’s interviews and canvassing of witnesses, along with precise measurements taken by the county police team — is expected the week of Aug. 19.
“As far as the report, we were told two weeks from our last update which puts it at Aug. 21,” Gatta wrote in response to a question from the USA Today Network New York. “Nothing else to report at this time.”
Gatta has said the driver of the minibus is cooperating with the investigation and will not be named until the review is complete. The 68-year-old man lives in Mount Vernon.
Staff writer Asher Stockler contributed to this report.
Peter D. Kramer is a 36-year staffer who writes long-form narratives on a variety of topics. He has written recently about an Orange County cold-case murder, about affordability and development, and breaking news. His story looking back on the Oak Street fire in Yonkers won a national Headliner Award for outstanding news specials/feature column. Reach him at pkramer@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Mamaroneck bringing safety changes to site of fatal school bus crash
