The Eastside neighborhood association, officially called Eastside +, has expressed concern to the City of Covington about traffic safety in the neighborhood, especially in the face of recent road changes.
“Since the two-way conversion of Scott and Greenup Streets, we’ve seen some improvement, but there are still some serious problems at intersections,” Eastside + Chair Melissa Kelley told the Covington Board of Commissioners at their meeting on Tuesday, “some of them made worse by the conversion.”
The two-way conversions of Greenup Streets and Scott Streets were completed on Oct. 9, 2025 and Oct. 17, 2025, respectively. The conversions are now in place between 12th Street and 20th Street on both roads. Funded by state budgetary appropriations, the conversions were carried out to calm traffic, improve walking and safety infrastructure, and bolster economic development, according to city officials.
Kelley indicated there were some improvements — she complimented a recent four-way stop sign installation at the intersection of Pleasant Street and Greenup Street, for instance — but worried that some areas remained unaddressed.
“Where (Pleasant Street) intersects with Scott, it is a different story,” said Kelley. “While a right turn there is much less dangerous than before, a left turn is more dangerous. We’re constantly hearing from residents about collisions, especially at the Scott-Pleasant intersection.”
One resident who lives in that area, Amanda Arelle, attested to this.
“They (accidents) tend to occur when people are coming up the side streets and are trying to merge on Scott,” Arelle told LINK nky in a phone call, also expressing skepticism that the conversion had addressed the issues it set out to curtail.
“They said that the conversion would help with the speeding, but people are still speeding down,” Arelle said. “That has not improved at all.”
Another resident in the same area, attested to issues of visibility at Pleasant Street and Scott Street.
“I see all the people screeching and and struggling to get out and pull out with the traffic going both ways,” Strauss told LINK nky. Strauss advocated for putting in a four-way stop on Pleasant and Scott Streets.
LINK nky pulled data from the Kentucky State Police for the area of the conversion — Scott Street, Greenup Street and the affected intersections and side streets between 12th Street and 20th Street — to track trends over time. Our analysis revealed that the number of accidents since the beginning of 2020 to Sept. 18, 2026, the last documented accident as of this story’s publication, tended to hover around 100 a year.
In truth, it’s difficult to tell based on the data if the conversion has had an effect on safety. This is due both to the fact that the conversion occurred less than a year ago and the fact that trends on the corridor were unpredictable from month to month in the past.
Still, said Kelley, “there are minor collisions that don’t get reported to police, and I know everyone traveling through there has experienced frequent near misses. I know I have.”
Kelley also attested to residents speaking about near misses around Prospect Avenue and 12th Street when drivers were coming off the Girl Scout Bridge, which has also recently undergone a conversion. Last year, around the same time as the Scott-Greenup conversion, KYTC began reconfiguring the bridge to have fewer traffic lanes but two new bike lanes. Traffic delineators were later installed, as well.
Drivers are meant to detour off the bridge onto Prospect Avenue and then onto 11th Street before moving onto a different road, but Kelley said people had been trying to use the cut-thru section near the Eastside mosaic sign to avoid going onto 11th Street and Garrard Street. The section is used largely for residential parking.
She asked for “increased police presence” and for the DO NOT ENTER sign for the cut-thru to be more stringently enforced.
“If we could set up more oases of calm in our neighborhood — intersections that declare that people here are important — I think (it) would be ever well spent, just in terms of community well-being and mental health,” Kelley said.
