Letter: School Crossing Guard Needed at Devonshire and Topanga

Editor,

My niece attends school at . We walk her to school and pick her up by crossing Devonshire and Topanga. The traffic is horrible there. We used to have a crossing guard, but after he retired at the end of last year I guess the city decided they couldn't afford to replace the guard. We had some at the beginning of the school year, but not since then. They made a huge difference! 

The situation is this: Cars make right turns without looking to see if people are waiting to cross the busy intersection and cars overflow into the intersection when the light turns red -- blocking traffic as well as getting stuck in the middle of the crosswalk.

I've taken pictures whenever I encounter the problem (which usually occurs in the morning). I'll attach some here. In them you can easily see the cars blocking the crosswalk (usually on Topanga, three of these pictures were from this morning) and blocking the intersection and cars from going straight on Devonshire. 

I've emailed Mitchell Englander and got a generic reply this morning that a staffer would be contacting me about my "request."

I hope to get the word out so that our councilman will take this seriously and an accident doesn't have to occur.

Katherine Lacabe
Chatsworth