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

Construction of the Sands Street bike path was promised to begin in 2006...

The slow pace of safety improvements for downtown Brooklyn streets became tragically apparent earlier this month when eight-year-old Alexander Toulouse was killed by a postal truck on Livingston Street. A $5 million traffic calming project for the area, unveiled in 2007, is not the only livable streets initiative to suffer delays. The Sands Street bike path, a physically protected approach to the Manhattan Bridge, has languished behind schedule for years, held up in the city's construction bureaucracy. The project serves as a prime illustration that livable streets hinge not just on DOT, but on other, more obscure city agencies as well.

...here's how Sands Street looks today.

In April 2005, Noah Budnick of Transportation Alternatives was riding on Sands Street, after exiting the Manhattan Bridge, and crashed on a dangerous stretch where cyclists often have to contend with deeply pock-marked pavement and cars accelerating onto the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. He sustained severe head trauma, requiring hospitalization and a prolonged recovery.

Two years earlier, Budnick had joined other Brooklyn bike advocates in calling on the Department of Transportation to improve the safety of the very same bridge approach. Borough President Marty Markowitz and City Council member David Yassky pledged support (right). DOT, under the leadership of commissioner Iris Weinshall at the time, did announce plans for a protected bike path on Sands Street -- two months after Budnick's crash. Construction would start in 2006, the agency said.

This June marked the third anniversary of that announcement, and construction on the Sands Street bike path has still not begun. (A contractor is slated to begin work in October.) Last year, a new team took the reins at DOT and dramatically accelerated the pace of bike improvements. But getting this critical safety measure through the different stages of government approval has been slow as molasses. Why?

Capital projects like Sands Street are carried out by the city's Department of Design and Construction, which works with contractors to see DOT's designs through to completion.

The initial DOT design for Sands Street called for a two-way bike path, running along a raised median, protected from car traffic by a fence on both sides. Transportation Alternatives and Community Board 2 lobbied DOT to replace the fence with bollards. A continuous fence, they said, would have kept residents of nearby Farragut Houses from walking across the street midblock, in addition to posing a danger to cyclists by making it harder for them to exit the bike path in case of an emergency. A bike path design using bollards was adopted.

DOT and DDC attempted to fold the bike path project into an existing contract where work was already underway, the reconstruction of Flushing Avenue. DDC put out the $40 million Flushing Avenue bid in 2003. DOT and DDC initially stated that the contractor, Bronx-based firm Demicco Bros., would not agree to incorporate the bike path work into the project.

On Sands Street, cyclists contend with broken pavement and cars getting onto the BQE.

Frank Demicco of Demicco Bros. says his firm was never officially told to do the work. "It was something that was just talked about," he said. The city did not go so far as to issue a change order instructing Demicco to build the bike path. "There's no items in the contract for me to construct that, so it's really illegal for them to give me work without issuing a change order, and the change order might have been too expensive, or whatever they thought. That's probably why they went that route." The city is reluctant to push through such projects by issuing a change order, he added, when it can do the work cheaper through competitive bidding.

In the case of Sands Street, this meant forgoing the originally promised construction timetable and letting the project out to bid again. DDC sent Streetsblog a revised statement after Demicco's version of events was brought to their attention: "At the time this project was requested, the option of adding the path to the active reconstruction project was explored, but due to a number of issues including approvals, funding, and scheduling, it was decided a new procurement would need to take place. It was DDC's decision to proceed as noted above, not the contractor's."

That decision was reached through an internal process known as a change order estimate, wherein DDC projected a price tag for the bike path. When the agency arrived at a figure, work was not allowed to proceed because another city agency, the Office of Management and Budget, rejects change order estimates that exceed 10 percent of the total project cost.

The Sands Street path is now under a separate, $4.6 million contract with a firm called Trocom Construction. When it is finally completed, the path will serve as a critical link in the city's bike network. Just as bridge approaches become choke points for car traffic during peak hours, they also serve large numbers of cyclists, especially bike commuters. The increasing popularity of biking in New York is reflected in the number of cyclists crossing bridges. In 2005, an average of 829 cyclists crossed the Manhattan Bridge every day. In 2006, the last year for which data is available, daily crossings shot up to 1578, a 90 percent increase.

Bridge approaches handle some of the densest bike traffic in the city, and the volume is only going up.

The more people bike across the bridge, the greater the number of potential conflicts between drivers and cyclists. The hazards are amplified on Sands Street, where drivers access two on-ramps to the BQE.

"You're navigating through very high vehicle traffic," says Caroline Samponaro of T.A. "It's essential to have protected space set aside, and proper signage and lighting."

Thousands of cyclists have been put at risk because this project was delayed for two years.

Rendering: NYCDOT

Photos: Aaron Naparstek

The intersection where Alexander died is exceedingly hazardous. CrashStat shows that 28 pedestrians and 11 cyclists were struck there between 1995 and 2005. Last August, at the unveiling of a mural in memory of three children killed by cars (right), the city promised to make good on $5 million in traffic calming improvements for the area, though not at the specific intersection where Saturday's crash occurred. One year later, not a single shovel has gone in the ground.

DOT spokesman Seth Solomonow says that the contract for the improvements was awarded in May by the Department of Design and Construction and work should begin this calendar year. DDC is the city agency charged with building DOT's capital projects. Solomonow attributes the lag to "slow-going through the budgetary process." (Also note that last year's promise followed a 2004 pledge by then-commissioner Iris Weinshall for $4 million in improvements, which were supposed to get built by 2006.)

The glacial pace of progress raises the question: What good are pledges of "not one more death" from DOT if the city agencies that actually build and finance capital improvements -- DDC and the Office of Management and Budget, respectively -- don't sign on as well?

Another question: How deep is NYPD's commitment to traffic safety? Their public information office apparently follows a policy of divulging as little about traffic deaths as possible. When Streetsblog called to see if NYPD possessed any information to buttress witness accounts in the Daily News of the crash, a spokesperson provided nothing, saying that accident reports are not even given to victims' families.

Alexander Toulouse's family released a statement soon after the crash:

Zander was a very popular little boy at his school and the neighborhood where he was known for being polite and very smart. He loved subways and ‘Dancing with the Stars’. He was a joy to his parents who are utterly devastated by their loss.

Photo: Aaron Naparstek

If you have some time to spare early this afternoon and are in the vicinity of Columbus Park in Downtown Brooklyn, Transportation Alternatives will be holding a demonstration at 1:00. It seems some judges who have been using this public space as a parking lot may take legal action to retain access for their personal vehicles.

T.A. has the scoop:

In Brooklyn's Columbus Park, judges park both in a parking lot and on a pedestrian plaza in the park. This has been going on for years, despite the city (with taxpayer money) building the judges their own parking lot in 1999. To restore the pedestrian plaza back to park users, the city is removing a curb cut that the judges use and constructing another to link them directly to their parking lot. In response, the judges are actually threatening to sue the city. Given their long record of abuse, we think it's time to get the judges out of Columbus Park altogether and return it to use as a public space.

Every person counts, so please come join us!

Participants will meet at the corner of Joralemon Street and Boerum Place.

Photo: The Brooklyn Paper

With weeping family members and the ghostly, smiling images of three boys watching over them, city officials and elected representatives joined 100 community members on a Brooklyn street corner Tuesday evening to pledge "Not one more death."

State Senator Velmanette Montgomery, Assembly member Joan Millman and representatives from the Department of Transportation, NYPD and the Brooklyn District Attorney's joined members of Transportation Alternatives and the Groundswell Community Mural Project for the emotional unveiling of the three-story tall painting at the northwest corner of Butler Street and Third Avenue in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

Created by a group of local teens in a summer-long collaboration with professional artists Christopher Cardinale and Nicole Schulman, the mural depicts fifth-graders Victor Flores and Juan Estrada and 4-year-old James Rice holding traffic signs designed to remind drivers motoring along dangerous Third Avenue that pedestrians, cyclists and drivers share New York City streets. The silhouette of a fourth figure, a girl, holds a stop sign that reads, "Not one more death."

Flores and Estrada were killed at Third Ave. and 9th St. in 2004. Four-year-old James Rice was run over by the driver of a Hummer just a block away from the site of the mural earlier this year. 

A homemade neck-down forces drivers to slow down as they turn on to Butler St. from 3rd Ave.

Accompanying the mural, Transportation Alternatives members engineered their own makeshift traffic-calming measures at two of the intersections along Third Avenue. Homemade neckdowns gave pedestrians a shorter crossing distance and forced motorists to slow down and drive more carefully as they turned off of Third Avenue on to Butler Street. Members of Visual Resistance, the group that produces New York City's ghost bike memorials, reproduced the mural images as street signs and will be posting them throughout Brooklyn.

Livable Streets activists conceived of the guerilla traffic-calming project after learning that DOT had failed to even begin implementing pedestrian safety measures on Third Avenue despite a 2004 pledge by former Commissioner Iris Weinshall that $4 million in capital improvements would be completed by the summer of 2006.

DOT Deputy Policy Advisor Jon Orcutt

DOT sent a high-level emissary to let the community know that their message had been received. Senior Policy Advisor Jon Orcutt said DOT "commends and endorses" the message of the mural project. He used the opportunity to announce that the first phase of construction projects emerging from the ten-year-old Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project had begun and "is a top priority for DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan."

DOT is working with the City's Department of Design and Construction to install neckdowns, sidewalk extensions and bus bulbs at 95 street corners throughout Downtown Brooklyn at a cost of about $5 million. The long-sought pedestrian safety measures "represent a concentrated, area-wide effort that is unprecedented in scope and approach for city government traffic calming efforts," Orcutt said.

A bike ride through Downtown Brooklyn the very next day showed that, indeed, guerilla traffic-calmers aren't the only ones tagging up the street with future sidewalk extensions and neckdowns...

Ian Dutton, organizer of the Houston Street bike safety initiative, made this brief StreetFilm while riding in the physically-separated bike lane on Tillary Street approaching the Brooklyn Bridge. On his YouTube page, Dutton writes, "I was on my way from SoHo to Park Slope when I saw a most remarkable assemblage of press vehicles in the PROTECTED bike lane on Tillary Street." 

Send in your tips and add your photos, videos and links to the Streetsblog Contributions page.

Red Hook Lane: A Parking Lot to History
A StreetFilm by Sean Clifford
Running time: 1 minute 22 seconds

StreetFilms' Sean Clifford discovers that one of New York City government employees' favorite illegal parking spots in Downtown Brooklyn happens to be the last vestige of a historic road that played a significant role in the Revolutionary War. Alas, did George Washington's brave regiment of Marylanders sacrifice their lives at Gowanus so that government employees could park all over the sidewalk on Red Hook Lane?

As always, you can find a higher-resolution version of the video here on Streetfilms. 

October 2006:
Donald Gianchetta looks out from his Atlantic Avenue antique shop - which cost him more than $70,000 to restore after a cab went flying through the front window last year - and watches an endless stream of cars speeding past. "This strip is just a highway," he says. "Three of my workers have been hit just trying to cross the street here," he said. "It's out of control, this area. Something absolutely must be done. Just the other week a dear friend of mine died because of this madness"... City Transportation Department officials noted Atlantic Ave. is a busy city thoroughfare and said several improvements, such as longer pedestrian crossing times to increase safety, already have been implemented.

Some excellent news just came across the transom in a press release from the Downtown Brooklyn Waterfront Local Development Corporation. The are announcing "the launch of a transportation study that will examine potential future means of providing access to Brooklyn Bridge Park, with an aim to reduce reliance on personal vehicles."

The study is being made possible through a $1 million grant from the US Department of Transportation secured by Congresswoman Nydia M. Velazquez. (Velazquez is becoming a real hero for Downtown Brooklyn. She also recently secured funding for the development of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway Initiative). The press release goes on to say:

The study will kick off with an open public meeting to be held at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 4 at the auditorium at St. Francis College. The meeting will be the first in a series of open public meetings to discuss access issues concerning the new park.

Sam Schwartz PLLC will be leading a multi-disciplinary team of traffic engineers, transportation planners and architects studying various transportation and access alternatives. The study will focus solely on an examination of how to improve transportation and access to-and-from the park. The study will explore a variety of topics including potential vertical connections from Brooklyn Heights, subway access, bike lanes, greenway connections, jitney buses, waterborne transportation and improved pedestrian accommodations on Old Fulton Street and Atlantic Avenue.

Whatever you think of the idea of a highrise cluster in Downtown Brooklyn, you have to worry that the sponsors of the Atlantic Yards project suggest that creating jobs and housing justifies the kind of planning that discourages street life. Among the lowlights of the marathon August 23 "public hearing" on the draft Environmental Impact Statement covering the Atlantic Yards, consider these signs:

Project supporters invoked jobs, healthcare facilities and affordable housing. One said she'd accept skyscraper shadows to get social services and affordable apartments where they're lacking. But what kind of urban environment will the Forest City Ratner plan create?

You heard nothing from supporters about sidewalks, cool retail sites or places for kids to play ball. You heard project opponents warning that the site would close Pacific Street and keep open space between towers, functionally making it into a backyard for condo owners. And you heard no agreement between the camps that you could create jobs and affordable housing while, simultaneously, creating a great public realm. Indeed, the discussion of quality of life hinged on the question of how tall the buildings could get. Even if the buildings in Ratner's proposal all get a ten-story haircut, project opponents warned, this area could become more attractive to gaze at from a terrace than to walk around after a game. Consider:

The plan, in tallying open space near the site, includes Grand Army Plaza, which one testifier called one of the "least accessible and least used" open spaces in the country. (Of course, some people are trying to change that.) It also includes an indoor "urban room" that the developer envisions as a glassed-in atrium with a ticket window.

The plan would close a piece of Pacific Street, making the already lonely walk from Fort Greene to Park Slope even more of a moonscape.

The plan ignores rush-hour traffic, projecting a peak car volume in the first hour of NBA games rather than in the hour before they start.

And it envisions a limo-dropoff lane on Flatbush Avenue which, according to civic groups, would clash with the MTA's potential use of Bus Rapid Transit on that street.

Overall, the plan justifies desolate streets by promising jobs and affordable housing. Isn't that like justifying a team that can't pass by promising lots of slam dunks? And does anybody remember how Team USA did with that strategy in the 2004 Olympics?

Whatever happens from here, project opponents and project supporters will have to share these streets.

This spring, the DOT transformed the corner of Willoughby and Adams Streets in downtown Brooklyn from a dull gray, little-used automobile pass-through (above) into a pedestrian space complete with chairs, benches, plants, tables and sun umbrellas.  But would the people come? Filmmaker Clarence Eckerson took his video camera to the corner to find out. The result is a 1-minute, 26-second Streetfilm on the Willoughby Street transformation.  He quotes Streetsblog's own Ethan Kent:

They've created a destination for downtown office workers, for people from all over Brooklyn, to come and spend some time in a way they hadn't been able to before. The great thing about this is they just went ahead and did this. It wasn't a lot of studies. It wasn't a long plan. They just said, "Hey, let's try it. Let's experiment, see if it's possible."