Photo by Victoria Hernandez.
New stop signs were recently installed at the intersection of Swiss Avenue and Dumas Street, creating a four-way stop to help combat speeding in the neighborhood.
At a press conference held today to celebrate the installation, community members and city officials gathered to discuss the collaborative effort made to add the new traffic devices and increase the safety of the neighborhood and the Swiss Avenue Linear Park, which runs through the intersection.
Bob Hopkins, a Swiss Avenue Historic District resident, shared his own experience of a crash that happened at the intersection over a decade ago.
“It’s not a place to move your car faster than 10 or 15 mph. It’s not a racetrack, but I had an accident right there because of the fact that I was looking. I was waiting. I looked, I thought, but here comes this fast car and he hit me,” Hopkins said.
Until the installation of the stop signs, drivers turning from Munger Boulevard onto Swiss Avenue would travel for 1,000 feet before they’d have another stop sign, said David Dean, chair of the Swiss Avenue Historic District’s Alliance Against Crime Committee.
“One of the most important functions of local government is ensuring public safety, safety of its residents and visitors. This was an opportunity to slow traffic on Munger and at the intersection with Swiss Avenue. And here today, at Swiss Avenue and Dumas, by the insertion of a new stop sign,” District 14 Council member Paul Ridley said at the press conference. “This was important because of the speed of traffic and because of the volume of traffic at this intersection, and some very recent incidents.”
Within the last six weeks, there have been at least two major hit-and-run accidents, in addition to previous collisions that have happened in the area due to high speeds, Dean said.
“People are speeding, they’re trying to get from one place to another. They come through this area and you know what happens,” he said. “So when we got these devices, it’s not going to be over. We’re going to keep working to make this a safe neighborhood. We want this to be one of the safest neighborhoods in Dallas.”
