Stockton neighbors fed up with street racing on their residential street: “Chaos 24/7”
By Charlie Lapastora
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STOCKTON, California (KOVR) — With speeds up to 80 mph on a 30 mph speed limit residential street, Stockton residents are asking for help.
After seeing street racers speed by in front of his home on Saturday, Stockton resident Dan Richardson had enough. He’s used a speed gun to clock drivers going over the speed limit on a regular basis.
“Chaos 24/7,” Richardson said. “It’s a truck route through a residential neighborhood. That should never happen when you have an 80,000-pound truck rambling by on a bumpy street at 2 o’clock in the morning, shaking your house to where it wakes you up. It’s ridiculous.”
For more than four years, neighbors have rallied together to try to curb the speeding that takes place daily through their neighborhood on Pershing Avenue.
“The traffic averages, on a daily basis, 30,000 cars a day,” Richardson said. “That’s almost as much as some slower sections of I-5.”
“We jokingly call it the ‘Pershing Expressway’ because nobody treats it like a 30 mph zone,” Richardson added.
Richardson lives on Pershing Avenue and says the average speed is at least 45 mph. He said was given a speed gun by the mayor and has clocked traffic at 60 mph — and at one point, 80 mph.
“I’ve been hit,” Richardson said. “My wife’s been hit. And that right there (as car drives by), that’s an example of what goes on, on a regular basis.”
Julie Devincenzi has lived in Stockton since the 1980s and says this street’s gotten “worse and worse.” Her husband was also hit.
“He was just crossing at the light on Acacia Street, and a car went through the red and hit him,” she said.
Neighbors also have experienced some too-close-to-call moments with seims and cars whizzing by on Pershing, including just the other day.
“There was a pickup truck and luckily I heard it and it was the tree that saved me,” Zoran Jovanovic, Richardson’s neighbor on Pershing Avenue, said.
Devincenzi says she wants to see some sort of control to take care of the speeding.
“Narrowing of the street, whatever they have to do to stop this racing through here,” Devincenzi said.
Devincenzi doesn’t feel safe walking her granddaughter across the street to the park. Nor does Katya Evanhoe, who also lives near Pershing Avenue.
“I feel like this is collateral damage, Katya Evanhoe said. “It’s outrageous that young kids cannot safely cross over. Baby strollers, elders my age, we don’t cross over. Victory Park, Victory School is over here, the museum is over here, the swimming pool is over here.”
Evanhoe also noted that on Google Maps, the only route given for drivers if they want to access March Lane is through Pershing Avenue instead of the March Lane exit off of I-5, which adds to even more drivers zipping past their residential street.
The Stockton Police Department stated the importance of patrol in this area.
“Pershing Ave, near Victory Park, is a high focus area for speeders,” Stockton Police Officer David Scott said. “SPD officers and Motor Officers from our traffic section regularly spend time patrolling and conducting traffic enforcement, with radar devices for speeding in that area, and for all other kinds of moving traffic violations.”
Officer Scott also noted that there were 14 traffic fatalities this year to date compared to 26 at this same time last year.
Neighbors say a hawk light will be installed sometime later this month. Evanhoe says it’s due to a Safe Streets for All grant. Richardson noted their district councilmember, Mario Enríquez, has been listening to their concerns. A ceremony is in the works to commemorate the new hawk light installation later this month.
However, for Pershing Avenue neighbors, they are rallying together — asking for even more help — to curb the everyday speeding, the street racing, and the danger that hits too close to home for them.
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