A team of Transportation Alternatives volunteers did just that over the course of October on the block of Jay Street between Willoughby and Johnson Streets, a major approach to the Manhattan Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge in downtown Brooklyn. Over the course of eight weekday rush hours, the volunteers tracked three easy-to-catch violations: Bike lane blocking, bus stop blocking, and illegal U-turns.

On that one block, 49 drivers parked in the bike lane every hour, 18 parked in the bus stop, and another eighteen made an illegal U-ey. You can do your own count in the video above.

Brooklyn cyclists, transit riders, pedestrians and motorists hoping for a safe and easy commute shouldn’t look to the NYPD to clean up Jay Street, either. In an average hour, three of the drivers parked in the bike lane, five parked in a bus stop, and two of the U-turners were cops, according to T.A.

In other words, police officers made as many illegal U-turns on this block in a single hour as the number of summonses NYPD issued for illegal U-turns on the same stretch in the entire month of September, according to T.A.

“The police aren’t paying attention (and are breaking the law), so drivers think they can get away with anything,” said T.A. Executive Director Paul Steely White in a statement. “With so little enforcement against the many drivers who blatantly ignore the rules of the road, everyone on this street is in harm’s way. Police Commissioner Kelly needs to get his department in order and make traffic safety a priority.”

The bike lane on Adams Street used to be located on the right side of the street, but it looks like it might be switching to the left, where drivers may be less inclined to block it.

A reader sends this shot of the freshly paved surface of Adams Street, heading toward the Brooklyn Bridge just south of Johnson Street. The parking regulations have switched sides, so it looks like the old curbside bike lane on the right side of the street — a notorious double-parking zone — will be shifting over, either all the way to the left curb or between the parking lane and the moving lane. We have a request in with DOT to find out what the plan is.

A left-curb placement might make this bike lane somewhat less susceptible to chronic blockage by illegal parkers, nicely captured by Brownstoner today on a stretch of Adams closer to Tillary Street and the bridge entrance:

Photo: Brownstoner

DOT is in the process of fleshing out a substantial redesign of the Tillary and Adams approaches to the Brooklyn Bridge, currently scheduled for construction sometime next year. An early concept for the project included a center median, two-way protected bike lane on one block of Adams south of Tillary. Word is that Council Member Steve Levin’s traffic task force wants to see the protected path extend all the way south to Atlantic, but funding remains less than certain.

The Fulton Street Mall prioritizes buses and pedestrians, like the 34th Street plaza and transitway would have. It is the most successful retail strip in New York City outside Manhattan. Photo: Sean Marshall/Flickr

As the New York Post continues its increasingly tedious assault on pedestrians and crosstown transit riders, its writers always seem to suggest that giving priority to buses in an important retail area is both radical and self-evidently bad for business. If they bothered to look just one borough away, they’d see that nothing could be further from the truth. The eight bus- and pedestrian-only blocks of downtown Brooklyn’s Fulton Mall make up the most successful retail strip in the city outside of Manhattan.

It was a similar bus- and pedestrian-only plaza that the DOT scrapped for a single block of 34th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues — partially, it seems, at the behest of Macy’s and local real estate interests. So it’s revealing to compare the current clamor over the 34th Street plaza, the 34th Street transitway, and now, in the Post at least, any transit improvements whatsoever, to the creation of the Fulton Mall.

The Fulton Street Mall has its roots in the planning vogues and racial turmoil of 1960s New York. “The idea of a transit mall was what every downtown revivalist was talking about in the 1960s,” explained Meredith TenHoor, the co-author of Street Value: Shopping, Planning and Politics at Fulton Mall. Prompted by department store owners worried about retaining their white customer base, she said, the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership proposed a series of improvements to make the area “feel more like an indoor shopping mall instead of a dirty downtown street.”

Over time, however, the design morphed — in some ways unintentionally — from one intended to compete with Long Island shopping malls into one that embraced its Downtown Brooklyn location. According to a 1977 article in the New York Times, for example, plans for a Plexiglas arcade covering the street were scrapped by the time construction started.

More important was the inclusion of buses in the plan, a consequence of the budget realities of the fiscal crisis years. “The city had no money at the time,” said TenHoor, “so they were able to use federal transportation grants to make the pedestrian mall” by adding a transit corridor. It helped that as the city’s planners studied the area, “they found it had all these incredible links to transit and most of the shoppers were coming through transit.”

Of course, the suburban concept never disappeared entirely. According to TenHoor, the department stores also built a series of large parking garages behind Fulton Street in order to try and attract shoppers heading out to suburban malls.

Politically, the Fulton Mall was relatively uncontroversial. While a Lindsay Administration plan to pedestrianize Madison Avenue was defeated by the Board of Estimate (at the hands of future mayor and then-comptroller Abe Beame), Brooklyn Borough President Sebastian Leone and the taxi industry, both Beame and Leone supported the Fulton Street project.

The Fulton Mall’s smooth path through city government was in large part paved by the strong support of large downtown Brooklyn retailers. A senior VP at the department store Abraham and Straus, for example, told the New York Times that the plan would create a “pedestrian paradise.”

Though TenHoor said their support didn’t drive the project forward, many smaller merchants also supported the plan. In a 1973 article headlined “Small Merchants Hail Brooklyn Mall,” the Times quoted Jack Gindi of Joy Gifts as saying the plan would improve sales by “bringing more people in who will feel more relaxed to stroll and window-shop without the crowding and hazards of traffic.”

Integral to winning business support, said TenHoor, was ensuring that deliveries could be made. “That was the first thing that the planners of the street did to get businesses on board.” In many cases, they developed delivery routes on the side streets, she said, though delivery vehicles are currently allowed on Fulton Street between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m.

Today, the Fulton Mall is one of the most successful retail streets in New York City. Rent for retail is more expensive than anywhere else outside of Manhattan, according to industry data. “It is a point where all of this transportation converges and people come from all over Brooklyn to shop,” said TenHoor.

“Pedestrianization really helped things because it made things feel more welcoming,” continued TenHoor. The extra space makes the street more comfortable and creates room for activities not possible on narrow sidewalks. “There’s actually ample public space for culture to take root,” she said. “It’s quite important for the people who shop there.”

Any comparison between the Fulton Mall and the abandoned plans for 34th Street isn’t apples-to-apples, of course, but the concepts were fundamentally similar. Prioritizing bus riders and pedestrians along Fulton Street earned strong political support and has proven popular for shoppers and profitable for retailers. What’s so different on 34th Street?

You can't tell from this EDC rendering, but Willoughby Square Park will sit on top of a garage with 694 parking spaces. Image: NYC EDC.

If you’ve ever wished you could dodge more cars and inhale more exhaust on your way to the park, Downtown Brooklyn’s next green space is for you. It will be built on top of a garage with nearly 700 underground parking spots.

Last Thursday, the city’s Economic Development Corporation released a request for proposals to build Willoughby Square Park, a new public space set to open on Willoughby between Duffield and Gold. Instead of using city funds to build the park, EDC is building 694 parking spaces underground and getting the garage’s developer to pay for the park construction.

City officials have repeatedly referred to the new public space as Brooklyn’s Bryant Park. Like Bryant Park, it will be privately run and surrounded by towers. But here’s one major difference: Bryant Park sits on top of the stacks of the New York Public Library, not an enormous garage. Two decades ago, the city was thinking creatively about how to combine an ambitious park restoration with the storage of 3.2 million books and 500,000 reels of microfilm. These days, the city seems intent on combining its development and public space plans with the storage of congestion-causing, streetlife-suffocating private vehicles, even in incredibly transit-rich downtown Brooklyn.

The merger of park and parking garage is no surprise in an EDC-sponsored project. The agency has recently been in the headlines for building so much parking at Yankee Stadium that the developer may default on its bonds, and EDC president Seth Pinsky once told Streetsblog that providing too little parking at a project would be “the worst thing we could do.” You can also point the finger at the Department of City Planning, which put forward the idea for a park over a garage in its 2004 rezoning.

New York's third central business district doesn't need mandatory parking minimums. Photo: Brownstoner

Right now, parking minimums in Downtown Brooklyn force new developments to include huge garages, effectively subsidizing driving in one of New York City's most transit-rich neighborhoods. For example, the zoning for the Downtown Brooklyn special district [PDF] requires some residential buildings to provide off-street parking spaces for at least 50 percent of all units. In other cases, the ratio is 40 percent. In practice, this means that a big development like the Toren building, which has branded itself as one of Brooklyn's greenest buildings, had to dedicate its second and third floors to parking.

"There is a movement afoot to eliminate or decrease the parking minimums," said Hope Reichbach, the communications director for Council Member Stephen Levin, who represents the area. Noting that this push is in the earliest stages, though, she wouldn't say who was participating in discussions.

Whatever proposal emerges to reduce parking requirements in Downtown Brooklyn is likely to have Levin's support, said Reichbach. "There's a lot of public transportation to Downtown Brooklyn and the council member definitely wants to encourage alternative modes of transportation," she explained.

Reichbach argued that Downtown Brooklyn was almost as congested as Manhattan, where parking is restricted below 60th Street to comply with the federal Clean Air Act, and that Brooklyn deserves to be treated the same way. "It just seems like a no-brainer at this point, just walking around Fulton Street," she said.

This round of discussions about parking minimums hasn't reached Community Board 2 yet, said District Manager Robert Perris, but he knows it's been tried before. "I know the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, on behalf of certain developments, and the Brooklyner was one of them, went to DCP and said these figures are crazy here," recalled Perris. "They were not successful in those negotiations." The Partnership refused to comment for this story. 

One local business group, the MetroTech BID, said that it hadn't been part of any negotiations over parking minimums, but would support reducing them. "The BID has felt that those parking requirements are not only onerous but even unnecessary in areas like Downtown Brooklyn," said executive director Michael Weiss, noting the well-developed transit and bike infrastructures in the area. Building so much parking just encourages people to drive to work, argued Weiss. The parking areas fill up, he said, "but that's more because they exist than because there's such a demand." If there was less parking, Weiss believes, "they'd take all the other means that are available to them." 

Update: Reichbach writes in to say that, in fact, Levin is only open to considering reducing parking minimums at this point.

At a meeting last night of the "stakeholder advisory council" for the project, the DOT and its consultants met with representatives of local civic groups and elected officials to discuss preliminaries. To give you a sense of just how early on the process is, the purpose of the meeting was to refine criteria the DOT will use to evaluate its options, and it won't even be the last meeting about criteria.

What was interesting to see was how transportation engineers approach the problem of reconstructing a highway jammed through some of the most densely settled urban neighborhoods in the nation -- a reminder of automobile infrastructure's voracious appetite for space.

In engineer-speak, the BQE is "non-standard." As James Brown, a consultant with the firm HDR, put it, the engineers are "interested in standard features. Ten feet is not the standard width of a lane; interstates have 12-foot lanes." From the engineers' perspective, the ramps and acceleration lanes are too short, he said, and the shoulders too narrow. So, in addition to keeping the BQE from disintegrating, the project may widen and lengthen certain parts of the roadway. Much of the discussion last night centered around how to prioritize neighborhood quality of life and the public realm while addressing the genuinely hazardous roadway conditions in need of attention.

The project also presents some real opportunities. If, God forbid, we still have free East River bridges and one-way tolling on the Verrazano in 2019 -- both significant contributors to the traffic crunch in downtown Brooklyn -- this mammoth construction project and its spillover traffic could add some urgency to any push for pricing those crossings rationally. Kyle Wiswall of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, who attended last night's meeting, noted that the reconstructed highway segment could also incorporate a dedicated bus lane or HOV lane, extending some of the traffic management strategies in place on the Staten Island Expressway and the Gowanus.

At this stage of the process, DOT hasn't come out with any designs to comment on, and it's too early to say how the project will impinge on the neighborhoods around it. Wiswall said it would be difficult to imagine the state DOT opting to pursue a de facto expansion project -- as the agency almost did with the Major Deegan last fall -- in such a tight space. But he added that advocates should keep an eye out for mission creep. "We have to make sure the scope doesn't ramp up so the shoulders become a travel lane and then you get a bigger, noisier highway and you lose those safety gains," he said. "It’s our job to make sure they stay focused on that and it doesn’t turn into a capacity project."

Security barriers mar the Atlantic Terminal sidewalk. Image: Noah Kazis.

Brooklyn's new Long Island Rail Road terminal opened earlier this month to generally positive reviews for its airy interior. Outside the station? That's an entirely different matter.

The Brooklyn Paper called the "sarcophagus-sized slabs of stone" on the sidewalk -- which nearly come up to one's neck -- "a grotesque eyesore." City Council Member Letitia James agreed, telling Gothamist, "This is a facility that is supposed to celebrate openness, yet they put hideous barricades in front of it."

The barriers weren't in the original renderings for the site, which architect John di Domenico hoped would become a "civic presence." They were added after the fact for security, according to the Brooklyn Paper.

We're still trying to figure out just who decided to go for total overkill here. Requests are in with di Domenico + Partners, the NYPD, the MTA, and the Department of Design and Construction. While we haven't pinpointed exactly where the order came from, the fortress mentality on display exceeds even the NYPD counterterrorism division's own guidelines.

We did get to sift through the NYPD's 2009 report, Engineering Security: Protective Design For High Risk Buildings. As a major transit hub, the Atlantic Terminal falls under the NYPD counterterrorism division's "High Tier" category, for which they prescribe additional security measures. Those measures include "perimeter security," which the NYPD justifies like so: "The best way to minimize the impact of an attack is to keep the threat away from a building."

The NYPD also puts forward some basic guidelines about just how much protection they think is necessary. That's where the real surprise is. Here's what the city's counterterrorism experts recommend:

With respect to bollards, the NYPD recommends four feet of clear spacing, bollard sleeve to bollard sleeve. In general, New York City recommends that bollards measure between 30 and 36 inches in height.

And here's how the Atlantic Terminal sarcophagi measure up, based on an informal analysis conducted by Streetsblog today. The barriers loom a full foot higher than NYPD's own recommendations:

Image: Noah Kazis.

Image: Noah Kazis.

Some of the spaces between barriers are little more than three feet apart, barely enough for pedestrians to squeeze through and more draconian than the NYPD's suggested four feet. All you transit riders trying to get to your platform, consider yourself neutralized.

This community district includes the approaches to the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. If you ride those bridges, you'll want to turn out for what promises to be a substantive discussion of street safety. We hear that the panel will field written questions from audience members. Here's where to go to speak up:

6:00 pm
St. Francis College - Founders Hall
180 Remsen St. (bet. Court & Clinton Sts.)
(2/3/4/5/M/R to Borough Hall)

Elizabeth Press sends these shots of the northeast corner of Hoyt and Schermerhorn in downtown Brooklyn. In what may be a first for New York City, this nifty little DOT reclamation includes bike racks installed on the roadbed, not the sidewalk. (Update: DOT confirms that yes, this is something new for the city.) More on that later. First, take a minute to appreciate all the ways this project, which cost a mere $5,000, according to Ben Muessig at the Brooklyn Paper, has improved life for New Yorkers. 

Up until about six weeks ago, as you can see in this angle from Google Street View, everyone using the subway entrance here had to squeeze past a row of police vehicles commandeering the sidewalk. Now there's room to walk to the train with dignity. It's also safer to cross Schermerhorn Street, thanks to the shorter crossing distance, narrower roadway, and improved sight lines. Daylighting in action:

More pics after the jump.

If you need to rest your legs, now there are two benches to help you take a load off.

So, about that bike parking. The racks are attached to the pavement with bolts. And for the first time in New York City, street space has been reclaimed from car parking to make way for bike parking while avoiding the expense of building a sidewalk extension. The result is reminiscent of Portland's bike corrals, a low-cost way to expand bike parking options without infringing on heavily-used pedestrian space.

L-r: City Council candidates Ken Baer, Doug Biviano, Ken Diamondstone, Jo Anne Simon, Evan Thies.

It was an opportunity for the candidates to show how well they understand the most critical transportation problems facing New York City by rebutting Reina with a well-reasoned argument. Traffic generated by the free price on Brooklyn's three East River bridges overruns the 33rd District, which includes parts of Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill and Park Slope. Congestion pricing, supported by outgoing rep David Yassky, should be as much a no-brainer here as it is in Lower Manhattan.

Only one candidate, Doug Biviano, a former campaign staffer for Kucinich 2008, came close to giving Reina what he asked for. "I'm not against congestion pricing," he said, "but I think we have to be careful about unintended consequences. Do we want to hit people with that toll? In this climate, I don’t think we want to. That would kill contractors."

Biviano was followed by Evan Thies, who played an active role in last year's campaign to pass congestion pricing as a consultant for Environment Defense and the Pratt Center. "I do absolutely support congestion pricing," he said to some applause. "Neighborhoods like this are disproportionately affected by the traffic that’s created by the lack of congestion pricing. Contractors in the outer boroughs supported congestion pricing, because instead of spending time in traffic, they’d be spending more time working for clients." Thies later named congestion pricing his top transportation priority and noted that the next City Council will need to take it up again in 2010 to fund the MTA Capital Plan.

Jo Anne Simon, an attorney who serves as Democratic district leader in the 52nd Assembly District, gave another strong statement in support of pricing. "The gratuitous traffic that comes over the bridges is just that, gratuitous," she said. "We’re a doormat. It’s costing us in infrastructure; it’s costing us in health. The challenge for us as policy makers is to convince people in the outer boroughs that congestion pricing benefits them too. It’s not just for Manhattan."

Ken Diamondstone and Ken Baer, the other two candidates at the forum, also endorsed congestion pricing. Baer took the more enthusiastic stance, noting that pricing revenues can help plug the MTA Capital Plan's $10 billion hole. Diamondstone said he "believes strongly" in the policy but thinks exceptions must be made for people with disabilities and, in a novel carve-out suggestion, musicians.

By this point in the debate, candidate Isaac Abraham was long gone.

Abraham, whose base is in Williamsburg's Satmar Hasidic community, left soon after taking a swipe at the Kent Avenue bike lane, about 30 minutes into the event. (He told the crowd of about 50 that he had a wedding to attend.) At least Abraham made an appearance, which is more than we can say for no-show Steve Levin, a protege of Brooklyn Democratic boss Vito Lopez. The day before the debate, Levin backed out of his commitment to attend.

On the question of truck traffic, the need to fund the Cross-Harbor Freight Tunnel was widely invoked by the candidates, but council members can't do much to advance a project that needs billions in federal cash to get built. The more intriguing responses came from Simon and Thies. Simon raised the prospect of truck tolls on the East River bridges (you can do it with E-ZPass transponders, she said), which would put a halt to the free counterclockwise route that sends trucks through downtown Brooklyn streets, while Thies proposed giving Traffic Enforcement Agents the authority to "bust trucks for traveling on non-truck routes."

It wasn't the only question on which Simon and Thies distinguished themselves. While the two Kens showed a solid commitment to street safety measures like automated enforcement and traffic-calming infrastructure, Simon and Thies consistently displayed a broader and more current grasp of transportation issues.

Responding to a question about improving streets for walking, biking and transit, Thies was the only candidate to broach the politically difficult subject of off-street parking reform. "I'd like to prevent garages from being built in developments near subway stops," he said. "It’s bad urban planning, it brings traffic." Simon, meanwhile, made the evening's sole statement on bike-share, a project that she said "needs to be pursued."

Aside from Abraham's early turn at the mic, fireworks over bike lanes failed to transpire. One audience member did mention that she fears cyclists while driving at night, and asked the candidates if they would push legislation requiring cyclist registration and helmet use. To read what they had to say, check out "Audience Question #1" over at TA's candidate survey blog.

Cyclist struck, male, probably late twenties, lying on the ground, bleeding from the mouth and face. Small gray sedan with Jersey plates was parked by the curb, presumably the vehicular weapon, and another male, late twenties or early thirties, was standing with cops looking on, also bleeding a bit.

This happened on Jay Street, at Tillary... not in the intersection but maybe a hundred feet before the turn. NYPD and FDNY were on the scene, an ambulance was on the way, and a half dozen cyclists were looking on... with new riders approaching every minute on this central thoroughfare to the Manhattan Bridge. One cyclist told me he saw blood on the back of the car, so assumed the car stopped short and the cyclist ran into the rear.

It's a sad and painful reminder for everyone, especially the hundreds of riders that will pass the scene. Two fellow cyclists were shaken up and grabbing their own heads, saying, "I don't have a helmet." I advised each of them... "You can replace a helmet, not your head."

Streetsblog has a request in with NYPD for more information about the crash. We'll post updates as they become available.

A 17-year-old boy was struck by this car while walking near the corner of Fulton Street and Hudson Avenue today at around 10 a.m. The victim is in stable condition at Kings County Hospital, said the NYPD. The driver was seen traveling west on Fulton Street at a high rate of speed, according to the reader who sent us this photo. Witnesses at the scene said the driver may have been trying to make the light at the nearby intersection with Flatbush Avenue.

The NYPD says the investigation is ongoing. Here's another angle of the car involved in the crash:

Last week DOT unveiled this conceptual plan for a better gateway to the Brooklyn Bridge [PDF]. For the thousands of pedestrians and cyclists who access the bridge on the Brooklyn side every day, it's a winner.

Presented at a public meeting in downtown Brooklyn, the new design features a more generous, boulevard-style bike-ped access ramp to the bridge, plus wider medians and sidewalks, curb extensions, and separated bike lanes on each of the three approaches to the ramp. If implemented, the proposal would greatly improve safety at one of the most complex, heavily-trafficked intersections in the city.

The project is still in its early stages. This plan, based on input from an earlier public workshop in January, will be refined again, with DOT aiming to bring a more finished proposal before Community Board 2 this fall. The multi-million dollar reconstruction of Tillary Street and Adams Street, which cross paths at the foot of the ramp, is slated to begin in 2012.

A reader who went to last week's workshop tells us the reception was generally positive. About 40 people attended, and after DOT's presentation, everyone marked up large copies of the plan with notes about what they liked and didn't like.

Some highlights from the concept plan:

• The entry ramp, currently a concrete barrier-lined chute where pedestrians and cyclists vie for space on a 10-foot wide path, would expand to a 14-foot wide path with plantings on each side. To make room, existing medians would be consolidated and service lanes on Adams Street would be eliminated or reduced in width.
  
• Two-way protected bike paths would extend at least one block in each direction from the foot of the ramp. On Adams Street, cyclists would have a straight shot to and from the ramp thanks to a center median two-way bike path.
• More pedestrian space -- including wider sidewalks, medians and curb extensions -- all along Tillary from Clinton Street to Flatbush Avenue. Similar treatment on Adams directly south of the access ramp.

The city is, in some ways, making up for lost time on this one. An earlier DOT regime passed up the chance to improve safety at the Tillary/Adams intersection when the Adams Street median was redesigned in 1998.

More graphics from DOT's concept plan after the jump.

The intersection of Adams and Tillary in DOT's concept plan. The foot of the Brooklyn Bridge access ramp is at the top of the picture. Proposed additions and enhancements to ped/bike areas are shaded lighter than existing sidewalk. For a look at the existing conditions and the full plan, see this PDF.

Proposed geometry for the bridge access ramp. Image: NYCDOT.

This morning at approximately 0723 hours, in the confines of the 84 precinct, Police responded to 3rd Avenue & Atlantic Avenue on a call of a bicyclist struck. The bicyclist was taken to Lutheran hospital, condition unknown. Driver remained on the scene.

Lutheran could not give an update on the status of the cyclist without the victim's name, which NYPD did not provide. A reader who witnessed the aftermath of the crash reports that an officer said the victim sustained serious, potentially fatal injuries. When asked for more details about the circumstances of the crash, NYPD's public information office said it had no more information.

If you have information about this crash, please share in the comments or email tips@streetsblog.org.

After a wait that lasted years longer than expected, construction crews are breaking ground on a slate of pedestrian safety improvements for Downtown Brooklyn's traffic-plagued streets.

Reader Todd Seidel sent in this photo of a sidewalk extension in mid-construction on Third Avenue and 11th Street, and DOT confirms that Phase I of the long-sought Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project is now underway. When complete, the project will extend sidewalks at dozens of intersections, narrowing crossing distances for pedestrians and sending visual cues for drivers to slow down.

Following the deaths of two young children on Third Avenue in 2004, then-DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall originally promised to build $4 million in pedestrian safety improvements for Downtown Brooklyn by 2006. A year after that deadline had come and gone, four-year-old James Rice was run over and killed by an SUV, prompting another pledge from DOT to accelerate the project. While the city's budget process again slowed implementation, signs of progress are at last apparent.

We have a request for more details in to the Department of Design and Construction, the city agency that builds DOT's capital projects. You can see a list of intersections targeted for sidewalk extensions in this PDF from DOT's website. Follow the jump for another picture from Todd.

Dan Squadron at yesterday's press event.

Earlier this month Albany approved the expansion of New York City's red light camera program. Media coverage tends not to play up the benefits of automated enforcement, so it was refreshing to see State Senator Dan Squadron, who represents Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, put the emphasis squarely on safety at a press event in Chinatown yesterday.

Standing near the foot of the Manhattan Bridge, where more than 40 pedestrians have been injured and two killed since 1995, Squadron brought attention to the most dangerous intersections in his district. He called for DOT to install an enforcement camera at Bowery and Canal and at these "danger spots":

• The intersection of Essex and Delancey Streets (87 pedestrians injured and one killed from 1995 to 2005)
• Targeted intersections on West Street between Canal Street and the entrance to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel (114 pedestrians injured and one killed)
• Tillary Street from Adams Street to Flatbush Avenue extension in Brooklyn (81 pedestrians injured and one killed)

DOT will have to make its selections judiciously. The city is now authorized to use 150 cameras (50 more than the old limit), with more than 12,000 signalized intersections to choose from.

A sidewalk addition will keep traffic from turning onto Hanson Place from Flatbush and Fourth Avenue.

Streets near the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the LIRR's Atlantic Terminal are set to receive a basket of pedestrian improvements that may get underway as soon as November. Speaking last night to the CB2 transportation committee and about a dozen other residents, DOT's Chris Hrones laid out plans for new pedestrian spaces and traffic signals -- including a Barnes Dance (exclusive walk signal) at the intersection of Flatbush and Fourth Avenue.

The presentation [PDF] met with a generally positive reception -- applause, in fact -- although some in the audience voiced disappointment that the improvements do not address the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenue, and others expressed concern about traffic backing up onto local streets as a result of the changes. Hrones said DOT would be able to incorporate feedback into its plans, but that the work is scheduled to proceed in about three weeks. No vote was held.

The pedestrian spaces will be created by closing short segments of roadway to traffic. Cars will no longer be able to turn onto Hanson Place from the intersection of Flatbush and Fourth Avenue, where a new permanent sidewalk will be constructed. Pedestrians will also be able to cross Flatbush and Fourth Avenue more easily, with the implementation of a 31-second exclusive walk phase. Pedestrians currently have an eight-second interval to cross Flatbush before turning vehicles get a green light.

New signal timing will let pedestrians cross Flatbush and Fourth without worrying about turning traffic.

A short distance up the street, another road segment will be closed to traffic, keeping cars from turning onto Third Avenue from Flatbush (top right). Permanent pedestrian plazas are on the drawing board (bottom right), but the Department of Environmental Protection has scheduled a project at the same location that will delay construction until 2013 or later. In the meantime, barriers and striping will set aside space for pedestrians.

Committee members welcomed the new signal timing in particular. One asked for new crosswalk striping to reflect people's desire to walk straight across the street, and another requested a countdown timer so pedestrians can tell how long the exclusive phase will last. They worried, however, that traffic agents would ignore the signal timing and wave cars through since their mandate from NYPD is to keep traffic moving.

When the subject of the Atlantic and Flatbush intersection came up, Hrones said that location was outside the scope of the project.

"At this point there's not something that jumps out that will help address the issue," he said. "In the course of this exercise we didn't find any silver bullets."

Graphics: NYCDOT

Now the good news: DOT is considering changes for the area -- especially the pedestrian crossings -- and the agency's ideas will get a public airing tonight at a presentation to Community Board 2. Community groups are encouraging Brooklynites to show up and share their suggestions. Here are the details:

DOT presentation to CB2 Transportation Committee
Tuesday, October 21, at 6 p.m.
St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street in Brooklyn Heights

Photo: Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn

Graphic of crashes and fatalities near Atlantic Terminal, 1995-2005: CrashStat

Court personnel have again appropriated downtown Brooklyn parkland for their own private cars.

The saga of the Brooklyn judges who just can't stand to part with their parking spots inside Columbus Park turned into a case of whack-a-mole last week. First, the judges finally agreed to stop parking in a pedestrian walkway, backing down from threats to sue the city in order to preserve that privilege. Under the compromise, however, a much bigger swath of the park has been turned over to the judges' parked vehicles, a supposedly temporary giveback while a new permanent configuration is implemented.

Borough blog McBrooklyn posted photos of how the arrangement squeezes out pedestrians, and the Brooklyn Eagle picked up the story:

Many pedestrians appeared to assume that the blockaded park was just a one-day disruption, due, perhaps to a water main break or a bomb scare. When the actual purpose was explained to one man, however, he was incredulous: "No, you're joking, right?" he said.

"I'm really pissed off," said a woman who works at City Tech (New York City College of Technology) on Jay Street. "I don't think that they should take the park. I hope it's temporary -- and I hope they discontinue it."

The Parks Department approved the new arrangement despite the fact that court personnel already have access to a courthouse garage at 330 Jay Street and 150 placards for free use of on-street spots. "They have all these spots on the street, they can go to 330 Jay, and they're just taking advantage," says Irene Janner of the Brooklyn Heights Association. "We're not happy with their decision to just come in and take up half the park."

Administrative Judge Abraham Gerges says the blockade will last one or two months. But prior "temporary" measures have left pedestrians out in the cold for far longer. In fact, judges were first allowed to store cars in the Columbus Park pedestrian walkway while the city constructed the courthouse at 330 Jay Street -- including a garage for court employees -- in 1999. When the garage was completed, some court personnel refused to use it and insisted on keeping their newly acquired parking perk.

"We have very little confidence in their willingness to uphold this arrangement," says Wiley Norvell of Transportation Alternatives. "They've broken faith before with the community."

Norvell criticized the Parks Department for acceding to the judges' demands. "Their job isn't to find parking spaces," he said. "It's inconceivable that at every turn, the convenient parking of the judiciary takes precedence over public space."

Photo: McBrooklyn