In today's Jefferson County Neighbors newspaper there is a front page story about a local resident living on Madison Avenue (on the hill portion on the west side of town) who approached Brookville Borough Council about making this portion of the street one way. The resident, Herb Landes, brought with him a box of car parts left strewn about after the latest accident (the one that ended with an unlicensed driver pushing a large pickup truck onto a front porch of a house on Madison Ave.

I have lived on Madison Avenue myself with my wife and two small children for the past nine years and my wife lived on the street in a different house for about a dozen years before that. Our family and I'd guess any and all other residents on this street would be in favor of making it a one way street, traveling in the west direction (up the hill). This hill portion of the street is not wide enough for two cars to meet when there are cars parked on the street. Many residents on both side of the street do not have off-street parking due to the terrain, so it is really not feasible to just remove the parking along the street.

After numerous hit-and-run accidents involving our vehicles parked on the street, we lodged a complaint about the traffic situation with several police officers in the borough as well as with Chief Dworek. We practically pleaded with the chief to post a speed trap on the hill. His response was that there was really nowhere for the police cruiser to park for a speed trap.

I could fill a book with stories about wrecks, hit and run accidents and near misses on this portion of Madison, but I will give examples.

Madison is unable to be patrolled properly due to no place to park a police car, and so it serves as a get-out-of-town quick shortcut (which rarely saves time, but that's beside the point). This is particularly a problem on the weekends when the local bar traffic increases. At the end of the night, many drivers who are knowingly driving drunk use Madison as a way to avoid driving on Main Street when heading to the south or east of town after leaving bars on Allegheny Boulevard. My neighbor's car was severely damaged by one such driver, who then sideswiped my car and proceeded out of control the rest of the way to the intersection with route 36....where he slammed into a car full of teenagers who were stopped at the stop sign. The driver (who has had several DUI's) hit the car so hard at the intersection that it was pushed halfway across 36. The car was totaled, one of the kids was hurt pretty bad.

Another problem with Madison is that many drivers do not realize that on such a street with only one lane, cars going up the hill have the right of way. This lack of knowledge, or the blatant disregard for it is especially evident when Beverage Air day shift gets off work. Hundreds of cars flow down the hill to avoid a stoplight on Main Street, many of them speeding and few yield the right-of-way to cars traveling up the hill. When a car starts up the hill at the bottom and a long line of cars refuses to yield, the traffic backs up at the stop sign and often backs up into the intersection behind the car going up the hill that is sitting still waiting for the road to clear or for someone to yield and pull over to the right.

Despite being one of the steeper streets in town and having only one lane, the borough is often slow to plow Madison Avenue and often skimps on the anti-skid. This only exacerbates the problem with two-way traffic on the street. A few weeks ago there was a storm that blew in quickly and dropped about 4 inches of snow in about 15 minutes. The entire hill on Madison Avenue was literally a sheet of ice before the borough truck made is around with the anti-skid. On this occasion, most drivers just wisely avoided the street. I did notice a lot of spinning of tires outside and went to investigate. A neighbor was in front of our house struggling to make it up the hill, spinning the whole way up the street to their driveway. Shortly after the neighbor made it home, I saw headlights starting down the hill from the upper portion where Madison meets West Main. Knowing that there was a 100% chance that I would see an accident, I stood by my car to watch....

...The driver realizing his/her stupidity slammed on the brakes and managed to actually come to a stop - but only after sliding through the stop sign at the intersection of South Main, and the whole way across South Main. The car stopped probably 100 feet down the hill on the lower side of South Main. What followed was about ten minutes of tire spinning furiously in reverse, the headlights rocking back and forth as the car fishtailed in place. The car finally did make it back up to the intersection of South Main and then wisely headed for Main Street where the state trucks had plowed, deiced and spread anti-skid.

One day the drivers using the hill were particularly getting on my nerves with their disregard for the speed limit and traffic laws in general. So I walked down to Choice with my phone. I took a 7 minute video of the cars coming down the hill to the intersection (this was as Beverage Air was letting out). The only cars that stopped at the stop sign were the ones that would have been crushed by semi's going south on 36 if they hadn't stopped.

It would be interesting to know just how many accidents have occurred on the hill in the past 10 years. Our cars have been hit dozens of times with damage ranging from broken mirrors to sizable dents and scrapes and broken lights. While all accidents resulted in pretty minor damage, many times the severity of damage was reduced due to our next door neighbor's (who lives one house up) car taking the brunt of the hit.

There is no good reason to drive down the west side of Madison, and drivers going down the hill are the ones wrecking. It's a narrow, poorly lit street that has at least seven of the families living here (between 36 and West Main) having small children or small grandchildren. In the event that Main Street would be closed, the police and firefighters could always direct traffic through the upper part of Madison during the closure. The fact that there is no good reason not to make the street one way, yet it hasn't been done is very frustrating to the residents of this street who have repeatedly suffered damaged cars and property that often results in expensive repairs.

So our family would ask council to make Madison one-way as well.