FRESNO, Calif. (FOX26) \u2014 For the past few days, neighbors in northwest Fresno said a roadwork detour turned their quiet street into a dangerous shortcut, bringing speeding drivers, traffic jams and close calls near homes where children walk to school.<\/p>\n
Neighbors said they were caught off guard when a road-working project pushed cars off a main road and onto their neighborhood street. <\/p>\n
They said they received no notice their road would be used as a detour and that, for the first few days, no signs were put out to inform drivers to slow down.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese guys fly through here all the time,\u201d Chris Darling, a neighbor, said.<\/p>\n
Darling, who has lived in northwest Fresno for almost 15 years, said speeding became a constant concern.<\/p>\n
He said the situation felt especially risky for children and families in the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cKids trying to walk out, going to school, going to roading school and stuff like that. It was dangerous,” Darling said. “It really was dangerous.” <\/p>\n
Darling said neighbors were frustrated with the city over the lack of communication and safety measures.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a total lack of consideration for the people that live on this street,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He also described what he said was a delay in placing cones and speed limit signs.<\/p>\n
Even after cones were added, Darling said there were still no signs warning drivers about the dead end.<\/p>\n
\u201cPretty close to 17 or 18 cars almost got T-boned,\u201d Darling said.<\/p>\n
Darling brought his concerns to Fresno city leaders. <\/p>\n
Fresno City Councilmember Annalisa Perea, who represents district one, said she is grateful neighbors brought this issue to her attention. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are working with Public Works to make sure that we can do everything possible to mitigate this from happening again,\u201d Perea said.<\/p>\n
Darling said he felt a responsibility to act before someone gets hurt.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow would I feel if I didn’t do something?,” Perea said. “No. I couldn’t live with myself.”<\/p>\n
City officials said the detour is now over and thanked neighbors for their patience.<\/p>\n
In response to questions about why traffic was diverted through the neighborhood, a City of Fresno spokesperson said: “The overall project is the repaving of Shields Avenue between Weber and West Avenue. Today\u2019s scope of work involved the repaving of the Shields\/West intersection. To minimize the duration of the work, our Street Maintenance team implemented a one-day road closure which resulted in traffic on the local neighborhood street. This was an unfortunate short-term inconvenience for a long-term gain of the improved roadway for the community. The work on Shields that resulted in the closure has been completed and we thank residents for their patience today.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO, Calif. (FOX26) \u2014 For the past few days, neighbors in northwest Fresno said a roadwork detour turned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-302191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}