D.C. traffic officials stalled on a promise to post temporary stop signs at an intersection where a little girl was killed in a hit-and-run accident, a D.C. Council member said Tuesday.

After a green sport utility vehicle struck and killed Crysta Marie Spencer near the intersection of Sixth Street and Orleans Place Northeast, Department of Transportation officials promised to post stop signs to slow traffic down, Tommy Wells said in an e-mail his spokesman sent.

Wells, D-Ward 6, said traffic officials hadn’t put the signs up Tuesday morning and it was only after Mayor Adrian Fenty intervened that the signs finally appeared.

“The commuters don't stop at these crosswalks and turn neighborhood streets into raceways,” Wells said in the e-mail statement.

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Fenty has promised to bring a customer-first, rapid-response style to city government. But key agencies, including the transportation department, have been sluggish. The department of transportation endured criticism earlier this year when it failed to clean the District’s streets after a snowfall.

A bus later killed a pedestrian as she tried to step over a frozen snow bank.

Transportation Director Emeka C. Moneme told The Examiner that his agency was working as fast as it could to make the city’s intersections safe. He refused to comment on Wells’ criticisms.

Spencer was headed to a church social Monday evening when she broke away from her mother and dashed into traffic. The SUV never stopped, police said.

The driver is still at large, police spokeswoman Traci L. Hughes said.

bmyers@dcexaminer.com