Neighborhood residents who've fought for a safer intersection at Parkside and Ocean cheered DOT's plan when the agency unveiled it in December.

We have a late breaking addition to the Streetsblog calendar. Tonight the transportation committee of Brooklyn Community Board 14 will be discussing DOT’s plan to add more pedestrian space and realign the intersection of Parkside Avenue and Ocean Avenue at the southeast entrance to Prospect Park [PDF]. The redesign will be made possible by relocating a park loop entrance for cars from this intersection to Lincoln Road. An average of 20 people are injured in traffic at this location every year, and the project is expected to cut that number in half.

Neighborhood residents campaigned long and hard for safety improvements here, but Community Board 14 has a spotty record on livable streets. If you live in the area and want to see this project move forward, tonight’s meeting gets underway at 7:00 at 810 East 16th Street, by Avenue H.

An intersection redesign at Ocean and Parkside Avenues will close a Prospect Park entrance to automobiles. DOT predicts the change will prevent ten people from being injured every year. Image: NYC DOT

After years of neighborhood activism, the Department of Transportation plans to install much-needed safety improvements at the dangerous intersection of Ocean Avenue and Parkside Avenue, at the southeast corner of Prospect Park. By closing a park entrance to automobiles, DOT will simplify the intersection and shrink the space dedicated to traffic, preventing an estimated ten injuries per year [PDF].

On average, 20 people are injured every year at the corner of Ocean and Parkside, placing it in the top two percent of the most dangerous intersections in Brooklyn, according to the Department of Transportation. The juncture of two wide avenues is complicated by the further intersection of a park drive entrance. The five-point intersection is right next to a subway station; thousands of people cross the street to get to the train every say.

Neighborhood residents have been pushing for a safety fix for years; Streetsblog first covered their campaign in 2008. Now, the redesign is set to be put in place by July, 2012, according to local activist Carrie McLaren, who attended a meeting about the project with DOT Tuesday night.

The key to the safety improvements is closing the park drive entrance to automobiles. That shift allows DOT to create some new pedestrian space and realign the heavily-traveled crosswalks. By putting the crosswalks closer to the points where drivers execute their turns, the redesign should make motorists more aware of people walking across the street. That should help reduce the incidence of dangerous failure-to-yield violations: More than half of the pedestrian crashes at the intersection took place when the pedestrian had the walk signal.

All told, the redesign will shrink the space between the crosswalks from around 6,900 square feet to 3,400 square feet. DOT is predicting big safety gains: By their estimate, the number of crashes and injuries should drop by half, preventing ten people from being injured every year.

“I’m thrilled with the plan because it closes off the park entrance to cars, shrinks the intersection, and makes it much easier for everyone involved to travel safely,” said McLaren.

The city doesn’t expect closing the park entrance to increase congestion. Currently, the entrance is only open to traffic for two hours on weekday mornings, and only 360 vehicles use the entrance on a given day. That’s just one percent of all the traffic passing through the intersection in a day; DOT doesn’t project significant traffic disruptions as a result.

To put it a different way, in the same two hours that 360 cars enter the park at that corner, 1,300 pedestrians walk across the intersection of Ocean and Parkside.

In addition to making safety improvements, DOT is also reworking curbside regulations on Parkside Avenue to make room for a larger bus stop and delivery space for a supermarket.

Prospect Park loop, Saturday afternoon.

This was the scene on the Prospect Park loop Saturday afternoon. With two pedestrians having sustained serious injuries in collisions with cyclists on the southwest side of the park over the last six months, NYPD and the Parks Enforcement Patrol set up at the base of the hill where the crashes happened. (The Daily News, in a typical he-said/she-said style piece, claimed credit for the police checkpoint this weekend.)

Heightening awareness of the need to look out for other park users is all to the good. But Doug Gordon at Brooklyn Spoke raised a good question this morning. Namely: Why can’t locations with a history of traffic crashes that cause injuries also get NYPD checkpoints?

It seems like only bike-ped crashes elicit this kind of response from police, while locations where motorists cause fatalities are forgotten as soon as the crash scene is cleared and the NYPD declares that “no criminality is suspected.”

Around the corner from Streetsblog HQ is one of the most crash-prone locations in the city. The intersection of Lafayette and Canal saw 13 crashes and one pedestrian injury in the month of August alone, but I’ve never seen officers on the scene, on the lookout for motorists who fail to yield or run a light. The more common sight is a traffic enforcement agent waving cars and trucks through crosswalks where pedestrians have the signal.

There are thousands of locations in New York City where police could hand out flyers about obeying the speed limit and yielding to pedestrians to drivers stopped at red lights. If NYPD can devote resources to bike-ped conflicts in the Prospect Park loop, why not send a few officers out to the places where people are getting maimed and killed in traffic?

#3: Before NBBL was lobbying City Hall to remove the Prospect Park West bike lane, Marty Markowitz and Iris Weinshall were lobbying DOT to not even build the PPW bike lane (PDF). #4: NBBL has a U.S. Senator on their side.

If opponents of an effective street safety project repeat dishonest distortions about it often enough, does that make their position true? Apparently, the Daily News editorial board thinks so. An opinion piece they published over the weekend on the Prospect Park West bike lane might as well have come straight from the desk of Gibson Dunn lawyer Jim Walden, the corporate litigator, Chuck Schumer campaign donor, and rumored Brooklyn DA hopeful who’s now representing bike lane opponents “pro bono.”

A decade ago Daily News reporters were crusading for safety improvements on Queens Boulevard, leading to measures that prevented injuries and saved lives. Now, without any hint of skepticism, truthseeking, or other basic journalistic impulses, the Daily News editorial writers seem content to lift talking points straight from street safety opponents, aligning themselves with the goal of making New York more dangerous. They apparently believe the narrative spun by the anti-bike lane group known as “Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes” and their spin-off, “Seniors for Safety” — a story in which DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan is the only person in New York who wants safer streets for biking and walking, and the local community could, at any moment, “erupt into open revolt.”

It can be time-consuming to visit the neighborhood you’re opining about, do nuts-and-bolts research, or fact-check the faulty assertions in a lawsuit before you reprint them for hundreds of thousands of readers, so Streetsblog has compiled this handy list for the future reference of the Daily News editorial staff, or anyone who’s actually curious about how this project came to be and what the opponents are really after (hint: it’s not safety or “better bike lanes”).

The NBBL narrative obscures the following:

1. Community groups asked for the project

   One of NBBL’s basic tenets, unchallenged by the tabloid dailies, is that the city foisted the Prospect Park West redesign on the neighborhood. But the fact is that public pressure to tame traffic on Prospect Park West had been mounting since 2006, when the Park Slope Civic Council’s traffic and transportation forum highlighted rampant speeding on PPW as a major quality of life concern.

   Later that year, after holding a series of public workshops, the Grand Army Plaza Coalition produced a report including recommendations for better bike access to GAP, and in 2007, Brooklyn Community Board 6 asked the city to study the implementation of a two-way, protected bike lane on PPW. Park Slope Neighbors later gathered 1,300 signatures asking for a two-way bike lane and traffic calming measures on the street — all before DOT proposed the PPW redesign in 2009. No one had to convince people that their neighborhood streets could function a lot better.

2. DOT’s safety data is rigorous and honest

   Data collected from the six-month study period after implementation of the re-design clearly shows that the incidence of speeding on PPW has gone down significantly, and the early results indicate that crash and injury rates have declined. You can’t be “for safety” and oppose a project that produces these benefits, so NBBL has attacked the data and cherrypicked numbers to undermine confidence in DOT’s methodology.

   To do this, NBBL claimed that DOT typically doesn’t use multi-year averages of crash data to ascertain the effect of street redesigns, when the truth is that this is exactly how DOT and other transportation agencies measure safety effects, because that’s the statistically rigorous way to do it. As Gary Toth, a 34-year veteran of the New Jersey Department of Transportation, told Streetsblog: “It is the opponents’ lawyers who are grasping at aberrations and doing the very thing they accuse the DOT of — selectively picking data to stack the deck in their favor.”

3. Before NBBL was lobbying City Hall to remove the PPW bike lane, Iris Weinshall and Marty Markowitz were lobbying DOT to not even build the PPW bike lane

   From the beginning, the campaign against the bike lane has been spearheaded by opponents with political clout. In October 2009, after the PPW redesign had been approved by CB 6, Borough President Marty Markowitz wrote to Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, asking her not to install the redesign. “I am joined in this request by former DOT Commissioner, Iris Weinshall — who absolutely agrees that the installation of a two-way, barricaded bike lane would cause incredible congestion,” Markowitz wrote in a letter [PDF] obtained by Streetsblog through freedom of information requests. The attempt to perform an end-run around a multi-year community-led planning process had begun. Weinshall would later join Louise Hainline and Norman Steisel in penning a letter to the New York Times on behalf of NBBL, speciously claiming that the redesign increased danger on PPW.

4. They have a U.S. Senator on their side

   NBBL leaders have taken to saying that only “a small number” of their members are politically connected. But it only takes one former deputy mayor to go over the heads of the local community board and get direct access to City Hall. It only takes one former transportation commissioner to lend an air of legitimacy to spurious claims about a traffic-calming project increasing risk. And if that former DOT chief is married to a U.S. Senator, that’s all you need to enlist City Council members to start agitating against the current DOT and its projects to improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists.

5. They have media access that would make Snooki jealous

   In the annals of NYC NIMBYism, NBBL may be the only neighborhood-level opposition group that has hired a PR firm to get its message out to the press. They’ve also received a helping hand from Marty Markowitz’s office, which offered to put members of NBBL in touch with CBS2 reporter Marcia Kramer last October, according to email correspondence obtained by Streetsblog. CBS2 aired a Kramer segment in February featuring Markowitz, NBBL member Steve Spirn, and video footage provided by NBBL. The coordination between all these parties is never revealed to the viewer, who sees a series of bike lane opponents that seem unrelated to each other. Kramer never mentioned NBBL herself during the segment; only after she kicked it back to the anchor did he say that a group called “Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes” planned on suing the city.

6. Most people like the redesign

   A phone survey commissioned by Assembly member James Brennan found a 3-2 margin of support for keeping the bike lane — and that was using a sample skewed heavily toward car owners. A web survey put out by City Council Members Brad Lander and Steve Levin and Brooklyn CB 6 received 3,000 responses and found 70 percent support for keeping the redesign. And at the last CB 6 hearing that invited public testimony on the bike lane, about eight times as many people signed up to speak in favor of the redesign as signed up to speak against it. The only way to set off a community “revolt” related to the bike lane would be to remove it.

7. NBBL is very upset about a single blog comment

   In the NBBL narrative, DOT conspired to, in the words of Gibson Dunn attorney Jim Walden, “enlist an individual (the ‘Blogger’) to wage a viral campaign against critics of the PPW configuration.” The “viral campaign” Walden refers to consists of a blog comment posted here on Streetsblog last April by Aaron “The Blogger” Naparstek (who had stepped down as  Streetsblog editor-in-chief about three months before posting the comment in question). The Blogger’s notorious comment was not, in fact, prompted by DOT overlords calling on him to attack opponents. It wasn’t even directed at specific individuals — all that was known at the time was that bike lane opponents had put up an anonymous flyer around Park Slope advertising an upcoming meeting. The comment was mostly a parody of that flyer. Yes, this is what all the fuss has been about.

8. The defense of the Prospect Park West bike lane came from the bottom up

   Picture this scenario: You’re engaged in the goings on in your neighborhood and involved with a local civic group, and about five years ago you participate in public forums and workshops where people talk about what needs to change to make the neighborhood a better place to walk and bike. The ideas coalesce into a vision. It can be tough to get the city to take a community-generated plan and run with it, but after a lot more organizing and signature-gathering, the city draws up an official plan based on part of this vision. The community board approves the plan, and then the following year the city implements it.

   This is the point in the Prospect Park West story when NBBL appeared on the scene, sending letters to deputy mayors and then threatening to sue the city for installing the PPW redesign. All those engaged neighborhood residents who put in the hours to brainstorm how to fix their streets and gather signatures in support of their ideas didn’t need any prodding from the city to defend the new bike lane. There was no DOT-orchestrated campaign to “collude with bike lobbyists to mislead the public and attack opponents,” as the NBBL lawsuit alleges. The defense of the PPW bike lane is the work of many engaged residents who want to preserve a hard-won safety improvement for their neighborhood.

9. The NBBL lawsuit is flimsy

   The NBBL complaint is “largely public relations, with no more law behind it than is minimally necessary to avoid sanctions for frivolity,” according to an NYU Law School professor who specializes in government law.

10. 

    Photo copyright Dmitry Gudkov, used with permission

Noah Kazis contributed reporting to this post.

New and expanded pedestrian islands and sidewalks on the north side of GAP will create safer and more direct connections to walk to the central plaza area. (This image comes from DOT's 2010 presentation on GAP and may not include minor changes to this part of the plan.)

Construction on a slate of pedestrian and bike improvements for Grand Army Plaza is scheduled to move forward this summer, NYC DOT announced this Saturday. The redesign includes a major expansion of the pedestrian islands at the north side of GAP and the addition of a two-way, protected bicycle connection linking Union Street to Eastern Parkway on the southern side. It does not include the two-way, protected bike lane on Plaza Street shown in DOT’s 2010 presentation on this same project, which Community Boards 6 and 8 both approved last year.

DOT made its revised presentation Saturday at the Grand Army Plaza Coalition‘s annual meeting. It was an anniversary of sorts for GAPCO, a partnership between the area’s major cultural institutions and neighborhood residents, which formed in 2006 to make Grand Army Plaza a welcoming public space instead of a traffic vortex. Since then GAPCO has put together several public workshops and site visits, producing a conceptual blueprint for city agencies to work from [PDF].

Image: Google Maps

The big difference between last year’s DOT plan and this year’s is that the two-way, protected bike lane on Plaza Street has been set aside until an unspecified date in the future. Plaza Street encircles most of GAP, and a two-way path would create a safe hub for cyclists to take the most convenient routes to and through the space. But after last year’s CB votes, some Plaza Street residents contacted the city saying the parking-protected bikeway would cause traffic back-ups, even though Plaza Street receives little traffic and is already just one lane wide.

So call it the NBBL effect: Despite the multi-year community-based planning process that informed last year’s presentation, and despite the community board votes in favor of it, DOT seems unwilling, for now, to stir the pot so close to the litigious and well-connected NIMBYs of Prospect Park West, who happen to have  U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer on their side.

The improvements scheduled for this summer are still significant, and they represent a major milestone in the campaign to make GAP more accessible to pedestrians and cyclists. Starting in June and wrapping up in August, the city plans to build out these improvements, which Streetsblog reported on last April:

• On the north end of the plaza, northbound traffic on Flatbush and southbound traffic on Vanderbilt will cross at a greatly simplified X-shaped intersection. The pedestrian spaces that define the boundaries of the “X” will be much more generous and well-defined than the mish-mash of poorly-connected islands and striping that people navigate now. Walking to the central public space will be safer and simpler, especially if you’re approaching from Park Slope.
• The area between the arch and the central plaza will be set off with DOT’s epoxy-and-gravel surface treatment, seen on Broadway and other pedestrian reclamation projects. Physical barriers will be added to keep cars from illegally cutting across.
• On the south side of the plaza, pedestrian islands will be expanded and crosswalks will be added, making it easier to walk between Union Street, Plaza Street, and the greenmarket area. The greenmarket area will also be set off with epoxy-and-gravel and have physical barriers from traffic.

The bike improvements to be built out this summer should greatly improve east-west connections on the south side of the plaza and create better transitions at the northern end of the Prospect Park West bike lane. A new two-way, separated bike path will run from Union Street to Eastern Parkway, making bicycle access to Prospect Park, the GAP greenmarket, and Prospect Park West much improved.

The south end of the GAP plan (looking south toward the Brooklyn Public Library) expands pedestrian space and clearly sets it off from the asphalt expanse of the roadway. It also includes a two-way connection for bikes between Eastern Parkway and Union Street. Photo: Amy Sara Clark/Patch

Without the two-way Plaza Street lane, however, GAP won’t be as useful and convenient a hub for bicycling as it could be, and it’s hard to say when that missing piece will get filled in. NYC DOT downtown Brooklyn coordinator Chris Hrones said outreach to Plaza Street residents would continue, and that the city intends to pursue the unfinished part of the project at a later, unspecified date.

No one from the PPW opposition attended the meeting, but their presence was felt nonetheless. “DOT is excellent about coming to the community, presenting to the community, working with the community, and getting the proper sign-offs from the community,” GAPCO coordinator Rob Witherwax said in his introduction, praising DOT for being engaged on the project from the beginning. “For people who after the fact don’t like the result to say the process was bad is patently false.”

DOT will be taking the revised proposal before CB 6 and CB 8 (again) in the next few weeks. The full presentation will be online then. In the meantime, Amy Sara Clark at the Park Slope Patch has some photos of the plan shown Saturday.

Via Andy Shen at NYVelocity, here’s the video of this week’s press conference and rally at City Hall, where Council Members Ydanis Rodriguez and Brad Lander kicked off the push to set traffic signals in Central Park and Prospect Park to flashing yellow during car-free hours. It’s encouraging to hear some clear thinking from Council members about traffic enforcement, and great to see the big crowd that turned out on a cold, rainy Wednesday for this event.

The NYPD has handed out 230 tickets to cyclists for running red lights in Central Park so far this year. And while police have apologized for most of the “speeding” citations they hit cyclists with earlier this week, Central Park precinct commander Philip Wishnia has given no indication that the red light tickets will stop.

Rodriguez introduced the bill on Wednesday, and word is that you’ll see it pick up more co-sponsors starting next week.

Video: Kevin Scott

The Third Street entrance to Prospect Park as imagined in the winning entry, "Stone Garden."

The Park Slope Civic Council announced the winners yesterday in its design competition for the Third Street entrance to Prospect Park, which has sported rickety metal barricades since it was closed to cars in April 2009.

In addition to designing a better gateway to the park, the entries had to be movable, to allow for emergency vehicle access. And they got points for feasibility: The winner could potentially serve as a template for Third Street and other entry points to the park.

“Stone Garden,” an entry from Jordan Yamada and Peter Zaharados, took the top prize in the competition. The stones would be set into recessed grooves and could be re-positioned to clear a path for emergency vehicles. The award announcement notes that Stone Garden appealed to the jury on several levels, but that “the design would likely be modified in its mechanical functions, if brought to prototype stage.” Operationally, those grooves (and the stones in the bikeway) could be problematic for passing pedestrians and cyclists.

“The Tree Grove,” an aluminum sculpture that would rotate on a central pivot, took the runner-up position, followed by the “Third Street Arches.” Follow the jump for renderings and see all the winning entries in this slideshow.

"The Tree Grove," by Kevin Dohn.

"Third Street Arches," by Ivan Himanen.

Bike lane supporters will need to turn out and respectfully make their presence felt next Thursday. A few well-connected opponents can make these projects disappear. Photo of the PPW bike lane: Jeff Prant

Mark next Thursday on your calendars. It’s a critical day for one of the city’s most innovative livable streets projects. If you care about safer streets, it’s going to be an excellent time to respectfully show your support in public.

That morning, at 8:30, opponents of the Prospect Park West bike lane are holding an event at the corner of Carroll Street and PPW to call for its removal. They’re posting flyers around Park Slope and inviting the press to turn up and get the whole thing on camera. Here’s a look at how the bike lane opponents are advertising their event:

Bike lane opponents are pasting this flyer around Park Slope.

To coincide with the anti-bike lane demonstration, Park Slope Neighbors, the Park Slope Civic Council, and Transportation Alternatives’ Brooklyn Committee are putting together a show of support for the bike lane and its traffic-calming effect on the street. They’ll be gathering at 8:00 a.m. at Grand Army Plaza.

Neighborhood groups collected more than a thousand signatures in support of this project before DOT implemented it, and more than 1,700 people now belong to the pro-bike lane Facebook group. Next Thursday you can come out and show the press how many people support this traffic-calming improvement to the neighborhood.

The PPW bike path has tamed traffic and made the street safer for everyone. Average speeds are down 25 percent and compliance with the speed limit is up 400 percent since the lane went in, according to data collected by Park Slope Neighbors. Kids and families can bike on PPW now. Older Park Slopers can ride the lane and walk to the park without having to cross three lanes of racing traffic.

But if we’ve learned anything from the recent rash of bike coverage, it’s that a lot of reporters will jump at any opportunity to slag bike lanes or portray cyclists as reckless social misfits. We’ve received word that CBS2′s Marcia Kramer will be there, and there’s every reason to believe that reporters would be more than happy to focus on angry, rude cyclists and conflict. So let’s keep it positive and don’t give them the chance.

Bring your friends, your kids, and your parents. Bring your bike if you want to ride in the lane, or just bring your shoes and stand in support of safer streets. Bring tolerance and mercy for the other side, too. If everyone who uses the new Prospect Park West and wants to see it stay safe shows up, the opponents are sure to be vastly outnumbered.

The entrance to Prospect Park at Third Street in Park Slope was closed off to car traffic in April 2009. Since then it’s been graced by these barricades. With the completion of the Prospect Park West re-design, there’s even more reason to make this a welcoming entrance for people walking and biking to Brooklyn’s flagship park.

The Park Slope Civic Council is putting on a design competition and looking for entries that “provide an attractive, contemporary, contextually appropriate, and visually clear entrance gateway, with a sculptural, graphic, and functional contribution to the Park perimeter.” The new gateway has to maintain access for bikes, keep cars out, yet be flexible enough to allow access for emergency vehicles.

The PSCC is accepting submissions until October 25, and they’ll announce the winner on November 15. Two of the jurors are staff members of the Prospect Park Alliance, and we hear that if the winning design is realistic enough, it could be used as a prototype for this entrance and, possibly, for other gateways to the park.

Up until this summer, speeding was the norm on Brooklyn’s Prospect Park West. With three wide lanes inviting motorists to hit the accelerator, it was a street monopolized by car traffic. That changed in a big way in June, when NYC DOT converted one vehicle lane to a two-way bikeway separated from traffic by the parking lane. Physically separated bike lanes are making New York safer for cyclists and pedestrians wherever they’re installed, and this one is no exception.

The new lane feels safe and comfortable to ride on, no matter how much experience you may have as a cyclist, and it’s attracting riders of all ages. For everyone walking to and from Prospect Park, the street re-design means slower cars — compliance with the speed limit is up by a factor of five, according to a study by Park Slope Neighbors — and safer crossings at intersections.

The transformation has been dramatic, and like any major change to the street, this one has attracted some vocal critics — most notably Borough President Marty Markowitz.  While some opponents contend that the lane has been installed without public input, the truth is that community groups have been calling for traffic calming and safer biking on this street for years. Watch and see how the new Prospect Park West has made good on those demands.

A lot of neighborhood activists swear by the maxim that it's easier to organize against something than to drum up support for something new. But apparently this rule of thumb doesn't apply to the Prospect Park West bike lane.

Based on the latest tallies from Facebook, the incipient skirmish over New York's newest two-way protected bike lane -- and the traffic-calming removal of a lane for cars on PPW -- is turning into a pretty lopsided affair, with the "pro" side on top. Two days ago, membership in the lane-loving Facebook group shot past the 1,000 mark, and last I checked was getting pretty close to 1,200.

The anti-bike lane group, which had a couple days to build up a head start, now has 293 members, according to founder Lisa Napolitano.

I spoke to Napolitano, who graciously returned my phone calls, about her group and why they oppose the new bike lane. We went back and forth for a good long while, and, as one would expect, she belongs to the hard core of opponents who will never be convinced that narrowing car lanes to slow traffic and create more safe space for biking is a good thing.

She also took issue with the assertion that the Facebook counts indicate that most people don't share her views. "We as a community have to have a say," she said, meaning the people who live right on Prospect Park West. "Not the people that live five blocks away, not the people that come in from all over the city to use this."

So that's the ideal public process some opponents envision -- giving the group of people who live on PPW and don't like the bike lane veto power over an amenity that the general public uses and benefits from.

There are many ways to refute the claim that the city has run roughshod over the public process by building this project. It's tough, though, to beat this passage from the minutes of a June, 2007 Community Board 6 meeting:

DOT should, as promptly as possible, establish a class 2 bicycle path on PPW to connect the proposed 9th Street bicycle path with the 15th Street (Bartel Pritchard Square), 3rd Street, and Grand Army Plaza entrances to Prospect Park, as well as the 3rd Street/2nd Street bicycle path.  DOT should study traffic-calming measures on PPW, including the possible installation of a one-way or two-way Class 1 bicycle path on PPW.

The new Prospect Park West makes biking and walking safer for all ages. Photo: Jeff Prant

With two lanes of traffic instead of three, PPW feels like it's been reclaimed for the neighborhood. I haven't biked the new two-way path since it opened, but I've walked on each side of the new PPW, and it's a pleasure. The highway speeds and zooming traffic noise are gone, and the calming effect seems to rub off on everybody.

The experts at Project for Public Spaces, where I worked before coming to Streetsblog, will tell you that the "outer park" matters just as much as the "inner park." Well, now the west side of Prospect Park has more breathing room -- it's a much better "outer park." If you're walking next to the park, you don't feel hemmed in by parked cars and traffic, and you're not sharing the sidewalk with cyclists any more. And the bike lane is attracting kids and other riders who never would have felt safe biking on the old PPW.

Not everyone sees it this way. These folks on Facebook want to see the bike lane disappear. (They've been eclipsed by the growing ranks of this pro-bike lane group, which -- full disclosure! -- I joined today.) Last week, Courier-Life publications ran a screed against "pedal-pushing jerks in their fancy Spandex uniforms," though they were curiously silent about the business casual commuters, the pants-wearing errand-runners, and the families-with-kids-in-T-shirts-and-shorts crowd who seem to be enjoying the new lane immensely.

And, a few nights ago, staffers from Marty Markowitz's office were seen leaving an anti-bike lane strategy session held at 9 Prospect Park West. The apartment building is home to U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer and former DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall, whose daughters have both signed on to the anti-bike lane Facebook group, but I was not able to confirm a rumor that the meeting happened inside the Schumer-Weinshall residence. Streetsblog is in the midst of following up on that particular storyline.

In any event, the confrontation over this traffic-calming, sustainability-promoting piece of 21st century transportation infrastructure isn't over. So it was a pleasant surprise today to see the Brooklyn Paper leap to the defense of the new bike lane. After running a critical opinion piece last month, before the re-design was implemented, the editors have come around:

For all the hysteria in its first two weeks, the Prospect Park West bike lane has already solved many problems: it has gotten cyclists off the sidewalk, it has slowed down cars, it has turned Prospect Park West back into a neighborhood street instead of a thruway, and it has strengthened the connection between the park itself and the roadway that frames its western border.

We call that a win for everyone -- except drivers, who have had it too good for too long.

Well put.

Though no names or contact information have to our knowledge accompanied any of these fliers, local media can't resist piling on, generally trumpeting random comments as prevailing opinion and ignoring the fact that the PPW bike lane was vetted by the local community board and installed at the request of residents who prefer bike and foot traffic to another lane for speeding drivers. If any Streetsblog readers are able to attend tonight's misinformation session, please let us know how it went.

Lots of other relevant things happening over the next few days. This week's calendar post is coming up.

It's a complex project that really needs graphics to help you visualize it, but I don't have the plans just yet. Here's my bullet point description and a Google satellite view until DOT posts the full presentation online, which should happen later today.

• Image: Google Maps
  On the north end of the plaza, northbound traffic on Flatbush and southbound traffic on Vanderbilt will cross at a greatly simplified X-shaped intersection. The pedestrian spaces that define the boundaries of the "X" will be much more generous and well-defined than the mish-mash of poorly-connected islands and striping that people navigate now. Walking to the central public space will be safer and simpler, especially if you're approaching from Park Slope.
• The Plaza Street bike lane will be converted from a buffered, one-way counterclockwise path to a two-way, parking protected path, giving cyclists a safe and legal way to take the shortest routes around the plaza.
• The area between the arch and the central plaza will be set off with DOT's epoxy-and-gravel surface treatment, seen on Broadway and other pedestrian reclamation projects. Physical barriers will be added to keep cars from illegally cutting across.
  
• On the south side of the plaza, pedestrian islands will be expanded and five crosswalks will be added, making it easier to walk between Union Street, Plaza Street, and the greenmarket area. The greenmarket area will also be set off with epoxy-and-gravel and have physical barriers from traffic.
• There are several two-way bike connections planned for the south side, the general effect of which will be this: Anyone coming or going from Prospect Park West, the Prospect Park loop, or either end of Plaza Street will be able to bike safely and legally to any of those streets. Eventually a two-way path on Eastern Parkway, part of a separate capital project, will feed into this system. The plan also appears to include a small "bike roundabout" where PPW meets a two-way connection leading into the park loop (h/t @mikepstein for pointing that out).
  

Russo got a sustained round of applause after the presentation. Most comments afterward were of the helpful suggestion variety, although there were a few people who had qualms with narrowing traffic lanes or introducing new bike infrastructure. A few cranky individuals had come for the next agenda item -- the Prospect Park West bike lane -- and couldn't wait to air grievances. (For more on how that went, check out @mikepstein's twitter feed again.)

The advocates and public servants who are closest to the campaign for a better Grand Army Plaza seemed thrilled by the plan. Prospect Park Administrator Tupper Thomas said she loves the changes in store for the north side and reassured the crowd that she had worked with DOT and the Parks Department to make sure the project works well.

Robert Witherwax of the Grand Army Plaza Coalition -- the alliance of several community groups and local institutions formed in 2006 to advocate for public space enhancements -- called the plan "a huge step forward" in an email to Streetsblog.

We'll have more on this important development for Brooklyn's most iconic public space later today.

Will we ever see the headline "Bike Lane Opponent Resorts to Misinformation and Lies"? Image: NY1

The central claim that the story rests on -- the reason it's "news" -- concerns the "growing opposition" to the PPW bike lane. The same bike lane that DOT designed at the request of neighborhood residents. "Those who oppose the bike lane have started a campaign to try to stop it," Ramirez tells us.

So, who's organizing against the bike lane? Well, it's impossible to say, because the "campaign" seems to consist mainly of anonymous flyers that someone slipped under the front doors of Prospect Park West this weekend. These pieces of anti-bike lane propaganda get a brief turn on camera in Ramirez's report. Here are a few examples of the misinformation and fear that the unnamed opponent is peddling:

• The bike lane will eliminate the B69 bus route. Clever, because it's true that the B69 is being re-routed. But that has nothing to do with the bike lane and everything to do with the recalcitrance of our representatives in the state legislature to fund transit through bridge tolls or congestion pricing.
  
• Traffic will be hazardous to pedestrians and pets. I wonder how many people fall for this sort of scare tactic. Even if you're not aware that the type of design proposed for PPW has made other streets safer for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists, it just makes no intuitive sense that narrowing traffic lanes creates hazards.
  
• Police and emergency services will be impeded. Officers from the 78th precinct were on hand at last week's open house about the project. While they wouldn't say a word to reporters, they were quite jovial and didn't seem put off by the prospect of a traffic-calmed PPW. Eric McClure of Park Slope Neighbors tells us that "neither the FDNY nor NYPD nor any ambulance service nor any other city agency has voiced any opposition to the plan whatsoever."
• Park Slope residents were never notified. I'm sure that of the 65,000 people who live in Park Slope, quite a few don't know this is happening. But not because no one tried to tell them. While Ramirez does mention that Community Board 6 has held hearings on the project and asked the DOT to implement it, she doesn't mention all the grassroots organizing that led up to that CB request.
  

Last night, Streetfilms' Robin Urban Smith and I got to catch the second half of NYCDOT's info session about the Prospect Park West traffic calming/two-way bike path project. The first half of the evening is when the fuss happened -- apparently a few people made it known in no uncertain terms that they think it's crazy to narrow a wide street where more than 70 percent of drivers are speeding. When we showed up, everyone was calmly perusing the DOT posters and talking amongst themselves. The upshot is that we don't have much drama for you in these short interviews -- just clips of people explaining why they like the project.

The headline news from the event: The city is moving forward with implementation this summer, and installation is scheduled to be finished sometime in August. DOT has also made a few adjustments since they presented to Community Board 6 last year. The basic template is the same, but the parking and moving lanes are collectively a few feet wider, while the bike path is eight feet wide instead of 10 feet, with a three-foot buffer instead of a four-foot buffer. (Note: The two-way bike path on Kent Avenue is also eight feet wide.) The project won't pack quite the same traffic-calming punch as it would with the narrower, 10-foot moving lanes for car traffic that were originally planned.

In response to some CB 6 requests, the design tweaks also include flashing "bicycle warning signs" for pedestrians at signalized intersections. Rather heavy-handed if you ask me, and not something I would want to look at while walking, but if that's what it takes to move ahead with this project, so be it.

Not everyone who showed up last night was a Park Slope resident. Some of the bikeway supporters hailed from the "Marty Markowitz side of the park" in central Brooklyn. The older gentleman who appears after the halfway mark in the video -- he gave his name as Simon -- lives in Kensington and told us he's looking forward to riding the new path on his trips home.

Markowitz says he doesn't want to "stigmatize" motorists. How about just slowing them down?

And if Markowitz has given any consideration to the rampant speeding on PPW, he doesn't show it. A DOT survey last March clocked 70 percent of drivers on PPW traveling faster than the 30 mph limit, with 15 percent driving 40 mph or faster. Last month, on an unseasonably warm weekend at the outset of spring, volunteers with Park Slope Neighbors found even higher rates of speeding, observing 80 percent of motorists exceeding the limit and 30 percent driving faster than 40 mph. All this lawlessness is happening a few feet from one of the biggest walking destinations in the borough of Brooklyn, but Marty doesn't acknowledge it.

The following exchange between Bernstein and the Beep really gets to the heart of this dispute, and many others that come up when the subject is how to allocate street space:

AB: You don't seem to much care for Janette Sadik-Khan. You've called her a zealot, why?

MM: She is a zealot. I can tell you this much -- I respect her professionalism. She personally is a very nice woman. I think she's a professional -- I know she's a professional. We just disagree in certain instances where I'm acutely aware that she wants to make it hard for those that choose to own their automobiles. She wants to make it difficult, their life difficult. I really believe that.

AB: Why, why would she want to do that?

MM: Well, I think because she would like to see more people stop car usage and get on their bicycles. Or walk.

AB: Is that an unworthy goal?

MM: Within reason it is a worthy goal. If I personally walk more than I currently walk and use the bicycle more than I currently use it just for pleasure I probably would be in much better shape, for sure. However, I represent everyone. Not just a segment of the population. And I have to balance out those that feel that everyone should be on bicycles and those that feel that they need their automobile and that they shouldn't be stigmatized.

To Markowitz, giving street space to cycling and walking isn't justified if it throws the status quo out of whack. In this case, the starting point is a three-lane speedway with wide crossing distances and no dedicated space for bicycles. How does this "represent everyone," when 57 percent of Brooklyn households don't own cars? (When Markowitz departed the State Senate in 2001, more than 64 percent of the households in his district were car-free [PDF].) On Prospect Park West, "balancing out" interests calls for exactly the type of solution that Markowitz has rejected.

Instead of seeing the PPW improvements as freeing people to safely walk and bike on a popular route, Markowitz gives the impression that he feels personally attacked -- "stigmatized" -- as a motorist. He envisions a DOT commissioner conspiring to "make life difficult" for motorists and frets that the removal of a few parking spaces on Prospect Park West will cause Park Slope car owners to decamp for Scarsdale.

I suppose this post might make Markowitz feel more stigmatized, but I have some reassurances for him. No one is trying to ban driving or extinguish private car ownership in NYC. The 1,300 people who signed a petition in favor of this project are just trying to calm traffic on Prospect Park West and give people safe options for getting around without a car. It's true that people who drive won't be quite as privileged on PPW as they are right now, but there will still be space to drive and park if this project gets built.

Parking in Park Slope might get infinitesimally more difficult, but it's already a hassle. Imagine if it was easy and convenient to own and operate a car in New York City -- subsidized parking structures filling up entire blocks, freeways where the East River used to be. Would you want to live there? Fuhgeddaboudit!

The proposed protected bike lane would calm traffic, provide a safe and convenient new link in the bike network, and make walking to Prospect Park less dangerous. Image: NYCDOT.

The basic concept that DOT rolled out last year would calm vehicle speeds and shorten crossing distances on PPW by replacing a traffic lane with the two-way bike path. By giving cyclists a safe and direct on-street option, the plan also promises to reduce bike-ped conflicts on the sidewalk next to the park.

If you'd like to see this project move forward, you can see the current re-design and talk to DOT staff at Monday's open house.

Show up any time between 6:30 and 8:00 p.m. at Temple Beth Elohim, 274 Garfield Place. 

Brad Lander. Photo: New York City Council

Volunteers with Park Slope Neighbors clocked drivers scorching down this three-lane speedway as fast as 65 mph last summer. The addition of the bike lane would calm speeding traffic and shorten crossing distances for people walking to Brooklyn's flagship park. Park Slope Neighbors has collected more than 1,200 signatures asking for the bike lane (and converting PPW to two-way flow).

For Markowitz, apparently, those safety benefits are outweighed by the loss of a handful of parking spaces. In a letter to DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan last fall, he asked for the project to be "shelved indefinitely."

The new council member from the 39th sees things differently. Lander believes his constituents would benefit significantly from the project. "The Park Slope bike network is a good one and many people use it," he said, "but the lack of a good northbound route is kind of a key missing link, and this is the best way to provide it. If done right, with pedestrian islands, it can greatly improve not only the cycling but also the pedestrian experience."

Council Member Steve Levin, whose district includes the blocks of Prospect Park West north of Fifth Street, has not taken a position on the bike lane, according to a spokesperson. DOT didn't have an update on the status of the bike lane when we checked in last week.

Lander, for one, thinks it will get done. "I'm optimistic that DOT is going to move forward with this project," he said.

A safer path to Prospect Park? Fuhgeddaboudit! Photo: New York Post

The borough president last year fired off a letter to DOT about its proposal for a two-way, parking-protected bike lane on the east side of Prospect Park West, calling it an "ill-advised proposal that would cause incredible congestion and reduce the number of available parking spaces in Park Slope." The project garnered the qualified support of Community Board 6 and was set to be built in September.

Eric McClure of Park Slope Neighbors filed a report for Streetsblog last April on the CB 6 committee deliberations, and described the existing conditions on PPW:

At nearly 50 feet wide and with three travel lanes, the street encourages high speeds and reckless driving, forces pedestrians to make long crossings, and lacks dedicated cycling space, despite a high volume of bicycle traffic. Prospect Park West's existing vehicle volume, which peaks at about 1,100 cars per hour, can easily be accommodated by two lanes, [DOT's Preston] Johnson said.

In field surveys last month, DOT found that more than 70 percent of the cars on Prospect Park West were exceeding the 30 mph speed limit, and at least 15 percent were traveling at 40 mph or faster. From 2005 to 2007, there were 58 reported crashes on Prospect Park West.

The new design, set to include pedestrian refuge islands and Greenstreets landscaping, is expected to have a minimal impact on parking, with the loss of about two spaces at each signalized intersection. Yet Markowitz has pegged his objection to this negligible reduction, never mind that everyone who takes the bus, the train, walks or bikes to this side of Prospect Park -- a huge majority -- would have an easier and safer path to get there.

Inexplicably, Markowitz also claims that "the bike lane would be especially problematic during the summer surge in foot traffic," according to the Brooklyn Paper. Actually, no. The bike lane, the traffic calming, and the pedestrian improvements are especially necessary during the summer surge in foot traffic. Not that any of this would necessarily register with Mr. Lights and Sirens himself.

Streetsblog has a message in with DOT to find out if there's still a timeline to build the Prospect Park West bike lane, or if this important safety measure is on indefinite hold.