outrage is growing after a fatal car crash this week on a deadly stretch of roadway in Jersey City that claimed the lives of three young people and left another in critical condition safe Street Advocates are decrying Hudson County leaders for long planned but stalled safety improvements to Patterson Plank Road that's despite millions of dollars dedicated for safety upgrades and eight other fatal car crashes in recent years Ted Goldberg has the story when I heard about the crash there was a feeling of dread um but I have to say not total surprise Monday's deadly car crash on Patterson Plank Road was a familiar story to anyone who's driven through this treacherous stretch of Jersey City if you look at this street it looks like a racetrack uh you've got winding Corners you've got nice line nice wide Lane widths uh and fresh Paving that makes people think that they can Drive much faster than they safely can between the years the 3-year period between 2016 and the end of 2018 there were 114 crashes on the stretch of road that doesn't even include that was just car crashes that doesn't even include pedestrian and bicycle crashes that happened those numbers come from a road safety audit done by Hudson County 3 years ago examining one mile of Patterson Plank Road near Congress Street the speed limit is 25 mph but many drivers ignore the signage and paint the on the street New Jersey law says that I can bike on this road and that people have to give me 4T of space or slow down and pass at less than 25 miles an hour uh truthfully that doesn't often happen if you try and bike on this road you're going to get close past uh you're going to get honked at it's going to be incredibly scary this has been dangerous for many many years after three people died in a crash here on Monday County Employees started putting up delineators on Patterson Plank Road this morning County commissioner William oday and Advocates have theories as to why this Cliffside Road causes so many problems you speed down and if you're coming up you speed up and an area where a lot of the incidents have occurred seemingly to be at almost the same point so they wonder if there's an acceleration on both ends that causes that and obviously they've been head on collisions which is which is U one of the reasons things like a barrier being looked at as an interim solution the lane width for the cars is pretty wide and that just encourages car drivers to drive fast we would recommend 10.5 ft for Lane width that actually forces drivers to slow down um you can put in signs you can put in rumble strips you can put in paint but it's pretty clear that those mechanisms don't actually slow drivers down Advocates are happy about the short-term fix but they're hoping for broader long-term Solutions three people should not have to die for these minor improvements um we should be proactive and we should uh be improving streets so that no one else has to be lost at the hands of traffic violence Hudson County has dedicated $12 million to adding improvements here and the County's New Vision zero task force will likely take a good hard look at what can be done there's a process that will take place there'll be a professional brought on board um which we're hoping to do sooner rather than later and then the community gets input one of the things that I'd like to see done with this roadway is a multimodal Pro a proactive multimodal design that encourages bikes pedestrians drivers all modes can use it safely and comfortably eight people have died on this road over the past 7 years giving leaders a lot to look over as they try to make Patterson Plank Road a safer place to drive walk and bike in Jersey City I'm Ted Goldberg NJ Spotlight news