Neighbors gather on Fulton Street to watch a fashion show at a Summer Streets event last year. Photo: NYC DOT

The traffic and transportation committee of Brooklyn CB 10 endorsed the concept of a weekend street closure along Bay Ridge’s Third Avenue Wednesday night, but due to a large number of unknowns, they held off on voting for the actual proposal. The elected officials supporting the Bay Ridge Summer Streets plan — State Senator Marty Golden and City Council Member Vincent Gentile — are now working to find answers to the community board’s questions in time for the full board to vote on the plan.

The decision came after a lengthy discussion of the merits of bringing Weekend Walks, DOT’s program to turn city streets into car-free community gathering places on summer weekends, to Bay Ridge. “They generally supported the concept, but they felt that there were a number of issues that were not complete,” said district manager Josephine Beckmann. “It’s new to us, so we have a lot of questions.”

The board’s unanswered questions included where a Third Avenue bus would be rerouted, how to provide programming for the closed street, such as fitness events or local art exhibits, and what time the street would have to be closed for events to start taking place by 6:00 p.m.

Some of the confusion was due to the fact that no representatives from the city were on hand to answer the more technical questions. Golden has pushed hard for the Summer Streets plan on economic development grounds, but isn’t the person to explain the nitty-gritty of implementation.

“Hopefully all of these answers can be provided,” said Beckmann. If a more concrete plan is in place by CB 10′s full board meeting on June 20, she said, the board could reconsider then.

[The CB 10] Traffic & Transportation Committee will host a public hearing to discuss our elected officials’ suggestion to create a “Summer Streets Pedestrian Mall” along 3rd Avenue between 82nd and 92nd Streets on Friday evenings from 6:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. during the months of July and August. This would involve the street closure of 3rd Avenue to vehicular traffic with side street crossings remaining open to traffic from 82nd Street to 92nd Street.

This proposal has the support of Sen. Marty Golden but has received the customary preemptive drubbing in the media. With southern Brooklyn rivaling Park Slope as the epicenter of livable streets battles, opposition is expected. Here are the details, if you can make it: St. Anselm’s McMahon Auditorium, 365 83rd St. Handicapped access ramp is located at the side of the Church. 7 p.m.

City Council Member Vincent Gentile chose to replace only one Community Board 10 member this year: Bob Cassara, who clashed with Gentile over a proposed bike lane on Bay Ridge Parkway. Image: NYC Council

The Department of Transportation has made it a de facto policy not to implement major changes to the streets without a favorable vote from the local community board. The idea is to defer to a group perceived as representing the will of the entire neighborhood.

But these bodies are only as representative as the borough president and local City Council members want them to be, as shown by the dismissal of Bob Cassara, the Brooklyn Community Board 10 member who led the fight for a bike lane on Bay Ridge Parkway.

Council Member Vincent Gentile decided not to re-appoint Cassara for another two-year term on the community board in late May, according to his spokesperson Dena Libner. She confirmed that Cassara was the only board member not to be re-appointed this year, though half of the fifty members’ terms were up.

Gentile’s decision to boot Cassara from the board was first reported in the Brooklyn Eagle. The Eagle drew the connection between Cassara’s dismissal and his strong push for the bike lane at the community board and in the press. (Speaking to the press can be dangerous for community board members, as former Brooklyn CB 1 transportation committee chair Teresa Toro learned when she was temporarily ousted from her position in 2008.) Gentile had been a top opponent of the Bay Ridge Parkway lane, working with his colleague Domenic Recchia and Assembly Members Peter Abbate and Alec Brook-Krasny to scuttle DOT’s plans to stripe it.

In her first statement on why Cassara was removed, Libner told the Eagle: “As many people as possible should have the chance to help shape our neighborhood’s future and welcoming new members onto the community board is the best way to achieve that.”

Bringing fresh voices onto community boards is a noble goal, but not one that would justify removing Cassara.

He’d served on the board for eight years, Libner told Streetsblog. But Cassara said that many of his colleagues on the community board had been there at least as far back as 1995, when he first started working with the board on reducing truck traffic. We have a request in with Community Board 10 to see how long each board member has served but have not received a response.

Cassara also noted that while there are plenty of board members who miss meetings or leave early, “I’ve missed one meeting since I was appointed.” The idea that Gentile replaced Cassara, and only Cassara, in order to shake up an ossified community board simply doesn’t hold water.

That would lend credence to the Eagle’s theory that Cassara’s high-profile advocacy for the bike lane led to his dismissal. “I must have done something,” Cassara said to Streetsblog.

Libner, however, categorically denied that Gentile’s removal of Cassara was related to his bike lane support. “If anything, Bob’s advocacy and conviction deserves our admiration,” she said.

Libner went further, saying that Gentile had no interest in imposing his opinions on bike lanes on the community board. Said Libner, “Had CB10 and the community at large been supportive of it, Councilman Gentile would have supported its installation and done everything he could to facilitate it.” She also claimed that Gentile was not anti-bicycle, noting his sponsorship of a bill to turn traffic lights in parks to blinking yellows during car-free hours. “What [Gentile] is opposed to,” said Libner, “is city agencies’ regular refusal to defer to local expertise and preferences.”

But at the last CB 10 meeting on the project, where several board members raised concerns about the traffic and safety impacts of a project that will slow down vehicle speeds and won’t remove any travel lanes, many board members’ “expertise” on street safety came across as threadbare. By removing Cassara, Gentile has ousted one person who was committed to explaining subjects like traffic calming and bike lanes to his fellow board members.

And Libner’s answer still raises the question of just why Cassara was taken off the board. On that, she was silent.

According to a CB10 member who wished to remain anonymous, the bike lane was one of several contentious issues between Cassara and local politicians. Given Gentile’s reticence to cite any point of disagreement, it’s hard not to assume that the most visible recent conflict between him and Cassara, the Bay Ridge Parkway bike lane, played a part in Cassara’s ouster.

Gentile’s decision not to reappoint Cassara has removed a strong voice for street safety from Community Board 10 and may have a chilling effect on those who remain on the board. Community boards can be important forums for local-level debate, but not if elected officials remove those who publicly disagree with them.

A Bay Ridge Parkway bike lane would improve safety for motorists, pedestrians and cyclists without removing traffic lanes or parking. Image: NYC DOT

Earlier this week, Brooklyn Community Board 10 voted to stick with their stance against adding a painted bike lane to Bay Ridge Parkway. Since the project [PDF] would simply impose a little order on an extra-wide street without removing any traffic lanes or parking spots, it’s tempting to write off the whole board as hostile to any bike infrastructure. That would be a mistake. There were signs of progress on Tuesday, as a few CB members signaled their determination to dispel myths about bike projects and win over their colleagues.

First, hats off to Transportation Alternatives for helping to turn out what board chair Joanne Seminara called the longest list of speakers CB10 has ever seen for a single agenda item. More than a dozen people showed up to testify in favor of adding a bike route to Bay Ridge Parkway. They included David Aja-Sigmon, pastor of Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church, who called the provision of dedicated space for cycling “responsible policymaking”; Harry Denny, a 12-year resident of Bay Ridge Parkway; Juliet Moore, a lifelong resident of the neighborhood; and Jessica Panettiere, who recalled getting hit by a car while riding on Sixth Avenue in Sunset Park.

Ultimately their testimony didn’t sway a majority of the board, but they moved the needle. And they caught the attention of Council Member Vincent Gentile, who’s lobbied against the Bay Ridge Parkway project but felt compelled to tell the audience that he’s a co-sponsor of the bill to convert the traffic lights in Central Park to flashing yellows. (This was preceded by, “I don’t know if the bikers are still around…”)

After some procedural wrangling (get the recap at L Magazine) the dramatic moment of the night came on a vote to rescind the board’s 2010 decision to oppose a Bay Ridge Parkway bike lane. The motion failed by a large margin — 32-8 — but three board members who had sided against the bike lane last year voted to reverse that decision this time around.

Bob Cassara, the board member who led the push to undo the board’s bike lane opposition, told me the next day that all it would take is a little education to win over more doubters.

He believes a patient explanation of the overall safety benefits of bike lanes, plus some reassurances that narrower lanes won’t cause traffic back-ups (the project would actually add left-turn bays at a few intersections, leading traffic to flow more smoothly) would go a long way.

“The first go around, they got broadsided with this thing, and the knee-jerk reaction was ‘No’,” he said. “I expect the education of the Community Board to continue, and we will continue pushing until we get it. There are people on that board who are on the fence. They just need to be educated, that’s all.”

Remember it was only a few years ago that Brooklyn Community Board 6 could barely muster the votes for a regular old buffered bike lane on Ninth Street in Park Slope. Now they’re known in some circles as card-carrying bike lobbyists. With a few more nudges, CB 10 could probably come around to support a common-sense, traffic-calming bike lane as well.

Domenic Recchia says he's not against bike lanes, but here's a helpful tip: When you kill what would be your district's first east-west bike lane and refuse to suggest an alternative, you're against bike lanes. Photo: Tracy Collins via Brownstoner.

“I’m not against bike lanes,” City Council Member Domenic Recchia told the New York Times after forcing DOT to scrap plans for a four-mile painted bike lane along Bay Ridge Parkway two weeks ago. “I believe there’s a place for them.”

I’d like to believe Recchia. After all, there are currently no on-street bike lanes headed east-west between his district and that of Vincent Gentile, Recchia’s partner in crime. To repeat, in all of Sunset Park, Borough Park, Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst and Gravesend, there’s not one east-west lane that runs for more than a couple of blocks. I’m sure, therefore, that as soon as Recchia proposes his alternate location, DOT will jump at the opportunity.

Since Recchia scuttled the Bay Ridge Parkway plan, Streetsblog has reached out repeatedly to his office to ask the self-identified bike lane supporter where he’d propose a lane instead. He wouldn’t. All he would say, in full, is: “Bike lanes should be sited based on community input. If my community requests a bike lane, I will be happy to entertain a proposal.”

Perhaps Recchia wouldn’t offer an alternative because articulating what exactly was wrong with the Bay Ridge Parkway lane would be nearly impossible without having to drop the pro-bike pretense.

After all, a DOT presentation on the proposed bike lane [PDF] promised that striping it wouldn’t require taking away a single travel lane or a single parking space. Where space was tighter, the bike lane was to be sacrificed, with sharrows replacing it.

It couldn’t be that the bike lanes would overly constrict motor vehicles. Even with the addition of five-foot bike lanes, moving traffic would have 11-foot lanes in each direction. To put that in perspective, 12-foot lanes are the standard for interstate highways. On Bay Ridge Parkway, an urban street with only one lane in each direction, all that excess room for cars just causes dangerous speeding.

The Bay Ridge Parkway bike lane would have been the east-west spine of the area's underdeveloped bike network. Image: NYC DOT

And it isn’t that Recchia’s constituents would never ride a bike. A majority of households in his district don’t even own a car and of those that do, not all drive to work [PDF]. His many transit-riding neighbors might appreciate the opportunity to safely ride a bike to the subway instead of waiting for the bus, or to bike for short trips and neighborhood errands. Those who already ride desperately need better bike facilities: cyclist Joseph Granati was killed in a collision with a driver in Gravesend just this Sunday.

Without a substantive leg to stand on, it’s easy to see why Recchia argued against the lane on procedural grounds. It’s the thing to do when you oppose safer cycling conditions but don’t want to say so. Public Advocate Bill de Blasio did the same thing. He praised DOT’s decision to drop the bike lane, calling it in a statement, “an important step forward that shows a willingness to respect the input of residents and community leaders.”

It is true that both Community Board 10 and Community Board 11 opposed the bike lanes, according to the Times. But Recchia is a popular leader in his community who knows the district as well as anyone and who was elected to represent it. If he really believes there’s a place for bike lanes, he should say where and make his case. The community boards would at least hear him out.

Until he does that, Recchia can’t have it both ways. He can’t claim he’s not against bike lanes as long as his only public statement on the issue is to crow about killing a plan for the only east-west bike lane in the area. He can’t say there’s a place for bike lanes without even hinting at where that might be.

We’d love to be proven wrong, but for now, Recchia counts as a full-fledged captain of the bikelash. Indeed, he holds one of its biggest scalps.

For many Bay Ridge parents and children, walking to school means crossing some of the most dangerous intersections in the neighborhood. Map of pedestrian and cyclist crashes: CrashStat.

Her group decided to do something about it. Bay Ridge Residents Fed Up With Reckless Driving was born.

Wednesday night, Landers and the other parents who have rallied around street safety presented their concerns to the traffic and transportation committee of Brooklyn Community Board 10. Parents "like living here, but they live in fear of the cars," she told the committee.

The CB was ready to listen. Just this past Sunday, 37-year-old Natalie Assee was killed crossing Fort Hamilton Parkway. In January, all of New York heard the story of 104-year-old Joe Rollino, the World's Strongest Man, killed as he crossed Bay Ridge Parkway. One committee member's grandmother was recently killed by a car in the neighborhood. Everyone in the room was perfectly aware that the neighborhood has a safety problem.

Maureen Landers and her kids, Max and Leila.

The discussion focused first on enforcement. While a police officer in attendance said the 68th precinct didn't have the capacity to increase traffic enforcement, residents and CB members didn't take "No" for an answer. One resident, Jean Solomon, proposed targeted crackdowns at the worst intersections. "Bay Ridge is the Wild West," she said, "we need to change its reputation." One CB member proposed a "Crosswalk Day" targeted at failure-to-yield violations, modeled on NYPD's periodic crackdowns on distracted drivers.

When the committee moved on to potential engineering solutions, everything was on the table. They weighed the merits of more stop signs and traffic signals, leading pedestrian intervals, neckdowns, and other traffic calming treatments. At one point someone passed around a link to DOT's Street Design Manual with instructions to look at the traffic calming section. The committee also decided to approach local business improvement districts about sponsoring pedestrian improvements. 

The discussion wrapped up with a unanimous vote to form a pedestrian safety subcommittee and start observing street conditions immediately. CB members want to see specific implementation strategies follow from their data, which they plan to present to both DOT and Transportation Alternatives.

This is a first for the community board. "Traffic, as it applies to people and not just cars, has never been addressed before," said Cruz. She doesn't expect to encounter resistance when she brings the committee's initial ideas to the full board.

Safer streets in Bay Ridge are "clearly needed," said a spokesperson for Vincent Gentile, the local City Council representative. Gentile, who has historically made motorist convenience a top priority -- often at the expense of pedestrians -- would be open to any safety improvements, the spokesperson said. 

Of course, it's easy to support pedestrian safety before the specific solutions come into focus. There's always the chance that the current consensus will fracture if parking spaces are threatened. Calls for extensive enforcement and innovative safety treatments from the Street Design Manual might get watered down to a request for a new stop sign.

But thanks to committed advocates like Maureen Landers, the community board is ready to act, and electeds are now more aware of the magnitude of the problem. For perhaps the first time, there is a gathering grassroots campaign for safer streets in southwest Brooklyn. 

StreetFilms joined up with Transportation Alternatives' Executive Director, Paul Steely White to talk about congestion pricing with express bus commuters in Bay Ridge. Bus riders told White that they'd like to have more buses and a faster commute. One commuter pointed out that virtually every automobile on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway carries just one person.

Another bus rider pretty well summed it up with this:

Congestion pricing would be $8 for cars. I pay $10 every day to get into and out of the city -- on a bus. Sometimes that bus isn't on time, sometimes it takes me three times as long as it should. I don't see what the problem is with other people paying.

If congestion pricing is approved, New York City will receive a $354.5 million federal grant that will be used to put 367 new buses on 36 routes in 22 neighborhoods as well as additional funds for the ferry and ferry improvements.