By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2024-12-07 14:22:39 | Updated at 2024-12-23 10:35:38
2 weeks ago
The city installed an upside-down traffic light outside a Tribeca bar — and it’s been blinking away for months, The Post has learned.
The topsy-turvy light outside Nancy Whiskey Pub at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Lispenard Street has been confusing drivers and pedestrians alike since at least May.
The red signal is at the bottom of the light, rather than the top, as it should be.
“That’s really dumb,” said Tribeca resident Marc Mayer, 68, who only noticed the goof when it was pointed out to him. “How did I never notice that before? I walk down Sixth Avenue every day.”
“Is it sideways?” wondered German tourist Johan Adler, 33, staring at the flipped light like it was abstract art. “That’s not good. That’s not something I would have expected to see in New York.”
Somehow, the upturned light hasn’t generated a single 311 complaint.
“You know, it’s New York City,” said Les Kaplan, 79, with a chuckle and shrug. “Nothing surprises me anymore.”
The light could mean lights out for some drivers, experts warned.
National Institutes of Health’s Bevil Conway, a neuroscientist, and expert in color, said the upside-down light could confuse drivers with achromatopsia, or “red-green color blindness,” which affects 1 in every 12 men and 1 in every 200 women.
“There will be some color blind people who will not be able to as readily discriminate the colors of the lights, so that could be confusing,” said Conway. Such people rely on the positioning of the lights, not the colors.
This is the second case of an upside-down traffic light in the state.
A “green-on-top” traffic light was intentionally installed in Syracuse back during the 1920s because residents of the Irish Tipperary Hill neighborhood kept vandalizing it, finding the placement of the red — a color associated at the time with the British — over the green offensive. Once inverted, it was never vandalized again.
Some folks in Syracuse want it turned right-side up.
A NYC DOT spokesperson did not provide specifics on when the light was installed and by whom. The city finally fixed the light on Friday, after The Post inquired about the bungling.
