It's a long walk from the Red Hook West houses to the nearest subway stop at Smith-9th Street, and even longer to train connections at Fourth Avenue. Without night-time B77 service, a lot of commuters from the largest public housing project in Brooklyn will have to make that trek -- including a dash beneath the BQE -- on a regular basis. With MTA rescue talks currently at a standstill in Albany, about 100 Red Hook residents marched yesterday in protest of the austerity measures that will soon take effect. Clarence Eckerson documented the rally, organized by the Red Hook East and West Tenants Association.

The B77 serves Velmanette Montgomery's Senate district. Last week, after we ran a post questioning why Montgomery had basically taken the same position as the Fare Hike Four, her office emailed us to clarify. We were directed to a statement on the senator's website, which is best summed up by the following tagline: "Before we cut the service, let's cut the fat."

Given that the MTA has in fact streamlined itself under Lee Sander, and that its crushing debt load will get even worse without a solid, long-term funding plan -- not to mention the service cuts and fare hikes about to hit Montgomery's constituents -- shouldn't the senator be doing all in her power to push for a viable rescue of the MTA? We have a call in to Montgomery's office to find out what she proposes to do next.

The Forum for Urban Design announced the winner of its Red Hook bicycle plan competition Monday night, awarding top honors to Brooklyn native Jonathan Rule. The competition sought out ideas to make transit-poor Red Hook the city's most bikeable neighborhood, asking entrants to lay out bike routes and design a bike parking "loft" for the Smith-9th Street subway station.

Rule's winning entry includes more than a dozen bike rental "nodes" sponsored by local businesses -- a proposal that could be described as a neighborhood bike-share network. His bike loft design, less attention-grabbing than the massive, F train-encircling wheel proposed by runner-up HOK Sport, gets points for feasibility.

What happens to the winning design now? Forum director Lisa Chamberlain hopes the competition entries rub off on jury members from DOT and City Planning, reports The Architect's Newspaper. Optimistic readers will note that there is extra time to incorporate some of Rule's ideas: The MTA recently pushed back a planned renovation of the Smith-9th Street station from 2010 to 2011.

We hate to pile on more bad news today, but these tipster-submitted photos of the Brooklyn Ikea grand opening bear witness to the onslaught of traffic about to engulf Red Hook. Apparently, the cars queuing up for cheaply-constructed furniture are stretching the store's 1,400 parking spaces to the max (which would explain why Ikea thought it necessary to annex the old Revere Sugar refinery lot next door). Judging from this anecdotal evidence, Red Hook will not only be subject to the 17,000 car trips projected for peak days, but most of those vehicles will be of the huge, extra-cargo-hauling variety.

One shopper, at least, braved the trip on a bike, despite the fact that Ikea's website doesn't supply directions to cyclists. His picture comes after the jump.

Earlier this week, the Forum For Urban Design announced the Red Hook Bicycle Master Plan Design Competition, offering cash prizes for the best proposals to "re-imagine Red Hook as the most bicycle friendly neighborhood in all of New York."

Plans should center on the creation of a bike loft parking facility at the Smith/9th Street subway station, now scheduled for a 2010 remodeling. The Forum envisions a garage with space for at least 100 bikes, accessible to both neighborhood and visiting cyclists via "dedicated bike lanes and routes." Plans should also include feasible funding proposals.

Competition details may be found on the Forum For Urban Design web site, as well as in this video from Brian Lehrer Live, in which Lehrer interviews the Forum's Lisa Chamberlain and Loreal Monroe while looking at a couple of Streetfilms for inspiration.

The registration deadline is June 2; submission deadline July 31.

When I first met Brian McCormick, Milton Puryear and Meg Fellerath in the spring of 2002, they were picking up trash and planting tulips alongside a Brooklyn-Queens Expressway off-ramp in Cobble Hill. I asked them what they were up to and they told me they were working to create a waterfront greenway for Brooklyn -- a linear park running from Greenpoint to Red Hook. I didn't have the heart to tell them they looked like a gang of juvenile delinquents paying off 40 hours of community service for shop-lifting. Clearly, these people were either insane or visionary.

At the time, Brian, Milton and Meg had no serious funding, no office and no particularly powerful allies or sponsors. They just had a great idea and a ton of persistence. They kept picking up trash, planting flowers, organizing the community and pushing their idea. Today the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative is a professional non-profit organization with capital funding from the federal government, an office on Columbia Street and all kinds of high-powered allies and sponsors. They may or may not be insane, but they are definitely visionary.

Personally, I find the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative to be one of the most inspired and exciting community-driven development projects in all of New York City (take that, High Line). This Thursday evening, BGI is hosting a benefit event on the beach at East River State Park. There will be cocktails, hors d’oeuvres and music. If you are not already involved in the Greenway, this is a great chance to get in on the ground floor of shaping the future of Brooklyn’s waterfront and, in the process, creating a more livable city.

Thursday, June 28th, at 6:30 pm
East River State Park, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
RVSP: Buy tickets online
View the invitation (pdf)

For a few short hours last weekend, Red Hook, Brooklyn, had an answer. In the middle of Van Brunt Street, the neighborhood's main drag and the primary conduit for the dramatically increased vehicle traffic generated by the new Fairway, an artist erected a mental speed bump in the middle of the street.

When I heard about it, I thought of what Allan B. Jacobs says about great intersections: "The reason great intersections work is because of the creation of a pedestrian realm where the cars know this. When streets become unsafe, it is almost always when the pedestrian realm does not exist."

In many parts of Van Brunt Street, the pedestrian realm effectively does not exist. One person has been killed on Van Brunt since Fairway moved in--a death that was essentially predicted by the chief of the 76th Precinct--and a resident interviewed by the Brooklyn Paper said he sees "accidents every week and near accidents almost daily. It wasn't like this even a year ago."

Red Hook locals angered by last year's pedestrian death demonstrated to protest the traffic conditions, and the DOT eventually responded by saying a traffic light will be installed--at some future point--at the corner of Van Brunt and Sullivan.

It's a shame, though, that a traffic light is the only solution the city thinks to look for, and that the warrant for a traffic light only becomes relevant once the number of car trips reaches a certain threshold. Because there is still question whether a traffic light is really what is needed. Perhaps a stop sign, or more permanent forms of mental speed bumps, would yield better outcomes.

Red Hook in transition: Will the neighborhood be defined by cars and traffic or people and places?

Until Fairway came into the neighborhood, the sidewalks and many businesses of Van Brunt Street were among the most important destinations in Red Hook. Though the experience of them has been degraded by increased traffic (and just wait until IKEA opens), they remain valuable to the people living there and in the surrounding neighborhoods. The city's DOT, EDC and consultants, however, see Van Brunt not as a destination in itself, but as a street with excess road capacity, prime to be exploited. Until there is congestion, or more people die, the "impacts" of the new traffic will not show up on their radar.

By just focusing on moving traffic and then evaluating its impacts later, we are degrading and isolating our existing neighborhood destinations and the communities they define. If transportation planning is supposed to facilitate getting people places, then its primary goal should be to create places worth going to, then maximizing their accessibility by creating more successful places nearby. This is perhaps the very nature of how we create a great, livable and walkable street.

In the name of mobility, transportation planners have forgotten to create and support destinations, and have instead often degraded existing destinations along the way. Mobility may be increasing, but we are accomplishing less and less while moving around more and more.

The Added Value market and farm project is creating a destination that celebrates the neighborhood.

Let's take food shopping as an example. A destination like Fairway offers a limited and predictable set of benefits-a dazzling selection of food flown from in around the world (made possible by a food system that emphasizes food mobility while undermining food access). Red Hook's Added Value farmers' market, in contrast, or any other such market in Brooklyn, doesn't offer that global selection. But if you shop there, especially if you travel by foot or bike or public transit, you might well accomplish 10 other things along the way-several of which may have been unplanned. It is this wealth of unplanned destinations that make many of Brooklyn's neighborhood streets some of the best in the world.

This simple piece of temporary artwork in the middle of an intersection is a strong statement that neighborhood streets need attention as more than just conduits to "keep traffic moving smoothly." Perhaps this small act can be a turning point for Red Hook and for the city. Perhaps we start planning for neighborhood and community outcomes first, with the idea that local action will engender the broadest citywide outcomes (rather than the other way around). But it all comes down to how we treat each intersection, and good planning is very likely going to be more art than engineering.

I recently took this boat, a water taxi, from Red Hook to South Street Seaport. Landing at the Seaport after having just been in Red Hook about five minutes earlier gives one an odd supernatural sense of having been teleported.

Not surprisingly, the opening of the popular new Fairway Market in Red Hook, has significantly increased daily motor vehicle mayhem in this formerly moribund corner of Brooklyn.

Last Thursday evening, July 6, at about 10 pm, Red Hook suffered its first-known Fairway casualty when a woman was hit by a gray minivan at the intersection of Van Brunt and Wolcott Streets. The van had just exited the Fairway parking lot five blocks away. Her name and condition has not been released, though, hospital officials say that she is alive.

For months prior to the opening of the new Fairway, Red Hook residents clamored for DOT to do something to prevent the expected traffic crush. The 16-block stretch of Van Brunt from the waterfront to Hamilton Avenue has only one traffic signal and that was installed with the opening of the new Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in April.

The Daily News spoke with some of the locals about the situation:

"We need a damn light," said Madigan Shive, 29, a waitress at the Hope and Anchor diner just steps from the [crash] scene.

"This neighborhood is just not ready for the traffic," she said, adding two weeks ago she saw a car strike a kid on a bicycle at the same intersection.

Red Hook Civic Association President John McGettrick has also been pressing the city for a traffic signal at Van Brunt and Wolcott Streets.

DOT refuses to install one and has chosen to wait until the Fall before doing any analysis of or planning for the traffic problems created by the new grocery store and the neighborhood's booming development.

Agency spokesperson Kay Sarlin told the Daily News that traffic signals could not be installed on Van Brunt because the area's traffic counts did not meet federal guidelines. She said:

There also must be a certain number of cars traveling through the area to meet federal standards for new traffic lights, she said, and added that as recently as this winter - when DOT studied the need for cars - "the traffic didn't warrant it."

This line about adhering to federal standards is something that DOT often tells community groups when DOT does not want to do what the community is asking it to do.

The federal guideline that Sarlin is referring to is the Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices, or MUTCD.

MUTCD is just a guidline. It is not law. The manual provides a set of recommendations that municipalities around the country can choose to follow or not. Very often, these guidelines are completely irrelevant to New York City, which has a very different transportation environment than most of the rest of the sprawling, suburban United States.

But don't take it from me. Let Michael Primeggia, DOT's Deputy Commissioner for Traffic Operations explain it to you himself:

Below is a one-minute video clip filmed at a Union Square community meeting in October, 2005:

For some time now, community and business groups around Union Square have been pushing to make a number of improvements to the area. One of the smaller items on their list is a mid-block crosswalk connecting the north side of Union Square Park to the entrance of the Barnes & Noble on 17th Street.

In this video clip you will first see DOT Manhattan Borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione telling the communty that federal guidelines prevent the city from installing a mid-block crosswalk on 17th Street, the same thing Sarlin told the Daily News.

Next, an audience member, off camera, asks whether these federal guidelines "are a legal requirement or not."

Primeggia, who rarely speaks in public, jumps in to answer the question. He says, "None of the warrants are legal requirements. They all are guidelines that we use and that we choose to follow."

Just as there is no federal rule or law preventing DOT from installing a midblock crosswalk at Union Square, there is no law preventing DOT from installing traffic signals in Red Hook. As Primeggia says, The federal standards are just "guidelines." DOT can "choose to follow" them or not.

Clearly, it is important for a big city transportation agency to have a strong set of policies and to implement them consistently. But when DOT tells New York City communities that a federal "warrant" prevents the installation of traffic signals, crosswalks, or anything else, DOT is trying to pass the buck and avoid accountability. Federal guidelines are not forcing these policies on New York City's streets. These are policies that DOT is choosing to implement.

If you are interested in delving into this issue further, check out this fascinating 15-minute video clip in which The Open Planning Project's Mark Gorton, a professional engineer himself, breaks down DOT's engineering methodology and shows how it harms New York City:

(Photo: Bluesage on Flickr)