#fixflorenceintersection
After a decade and a half of band-aid fixes and half-met promises to correct serious structural and design flaws on Parkside Avenue near Florence, another promised completion date will come and go.
Residents are hopeful– but not entirely confident– that a soon-to-be unveiled plan will address concerns that neighbors have been advocating to see fixed for almost 40 years.
Promised work was slated to be ending now, but residents are only seeing preliminary plans for the first time this week.
It means another year where the safety of motorists, pedestrians, and residents is left in question by a slow moving bureaucracy which apparently needs reminders like this to act before tragedy strikes again.
This video, written and narrated by Parkside resident Steve Cichon, shows 40 of 
the hundreds of auto accident photos he’s taken within a block of his home near the corner of Parkside and Florence. The images come from 12 of many dozen different incidents over the last 15 years.
“I’ve pulled people out of smoking cars, I’ve played firefighter trying to stop flames from a car on my lawn from hitting my house,” Cichon says.
“My biggest fear, though, is that after being stunned into action by the horrific sound of an accident– that I might run outside to find someone who is beyond my help,” says Cichon. “People thought I was being melodramatic until the tragedy just up from Parkside on Ring Road. We all want this fixed before this, too, becomes a sorrowful ‘I told you so.'”
While Steve is lives at the center of the problem, he’s not alone in wanting it fixed. He’s also not alone in being ready to maintain awareness to make sure that happens.
