Some Jamaica residents say their crosswalks need to be re-paved before someone gets hurt. NY1's Clodagh McGowan filed the following report.
When Velvetta Shackelford-Johnson crosses 89th Avenue in Jamaica, she says she's not just looking both ways at the traffic, she's also watching her step.
"You have to look down. Because you got a whole lot of cracks. And if you're not capable, I put my cane in the wrong crack, I don't have a balance, I could fall," said Shackelford-Johnson.
That's a fear that Donna Johnson also shares. The Elmhurst resident travels to Parsons Boulevard by bus every day. She uses a walker and says it often gets caught on this cracked pedestrian ramp.
"Every time I try to get the wheels over the curbs, it doesn't work. I have to lift the walker up, which is very hard for me to do," said Johnson.
Local activist Amy Anderson says the pedestrian ramps have not been fixed in more than five years.
"Let's get something done here for the senior citizens and the handicapped," said Anderson.
Residents say the vibrations from the volume of traffic on Parsons Boulevard is only making the problem worse.
"When you know you have a lot of traffic, those are things you have to make sure you maintain, for the cars, for the people, for the pedestrians that are walking," said Shackelford-Johnson.
After NY1 reached out to the Department of Transportation about the concerns, a spokesperson replied, saying, "upon completion of a capital project at the end of this month, we intend to pave the locations and implement pedestrians ramp upgrades sometime during the next fiscal year, which starts on July 1, 2016."
It's something Shackelford-Johnson says can't come soon enough.
"This is something tax payers pay their money for. These are the things that are supposed to be done. Not something, 'Oh, well, we'll get to it when we can." That's not how it's supposed to work," said Shackelford-Johnson.
But until then, she'll continue taking the long way home to avoid the intersection.