Photo: @daniela_oneL via Gothamist

The Post is reporting that a Williamsburg man was killed this morning as he crossed Borinquen Place near Keap Street. The victim, 57-year-old Lepoldo Hernandez, was walking to meet a friend to carpool to work when he was struck by two drivers in succession. The first driver was traveling eastbound, and the second driver struck Hernandez as he lay in the street.

While police, as usual, are already telling the press that they “suspect no criminality,” Gothamist’s John del Signore cites a report from a local resident at the scene who was told that the first car was “going like 50″:

There was a crowd of onlookers and I saw the sheet over the body in the street. I did not see any vehicles around that looked damaged or anyone speaking with police, but witnesses said both drivers stayed at the scene. Motorists speed like crazy down this street to get on the Williamsburg Bridge. I watch them run the light, pass in the bike lane, and speed like it’s a free for all.

This fatal crash occurred in the 90th Precinct, which will hold its monthly precinct community council meeting tonight. To voice your concerns about neighborhood traffic safety directly to Deputy Inspector Michael M. Kemper, the commanding officer, head out to tonight’s meeting. The 90th precinct meetings happen at 7:30 p.m. on the second Wednesday of each month, at 30 Montrose Avenue. A detective at the precinct confirmed that tonight’s meeting is set to happen as scheduled.

The intersection of Morgan Avenue and Meserole Street, where a truck driver hit and killed a cyclist last night. Image: Google Street View.

A flatbed truck driver struck and killed a cyclist in East Williamsburg shortly after midnight last night.

As first reported by Gothamist, the 30-year-old male victim was riding to the right of the truck while traveling southbound along Morgan Avenue, according to NYPD. The driver turned right at Meserole Street, striking the cyclist, who was dead by the time an ambulance arrived three minutes later.

Police say the driver did not stay at the scene, but the truck was found legally parked one block away. An NYPD spokesperson said the department might pursue charges but would not do so until the driver is located.

Two months ago, Erica Abbott, a professional dancer, was killed in a traffic crash while riding her bike on Bushwick Avenue a few blocks away. Last year, a garbage truck driver hit and killed a cyclist while turning from Varick Street onto Meserole.

Erica Abbott. Photo via Daily News

A 29-year-old woman was killed Tuesday night while riding her bike in Brooklyn.

Erica Abbott was traveling southbound on Bushwick Avenue at Powers Street when, according to police and media reports, she fell into traffic and was run over by the driver of a Mercedes.

The Daily News says Abbott was riding near a construction site when she “suddenly lost her balance near a pile of loose wood on the street after a car horn honked and she turned her head.” An NYPD summary of the crash simply states that Abbott “fell off of her bicycle.” The driver, an unnamed 34-year-old woman, was traveling in the same direction. She remained at the scene.

Abbott was pronounced dead on arrival at Woodhull Hospital. According to NYPD, “There is no apparent criminality and the investigation is ongoing.”

Gothamist reports that Abbott was a dancer with an MFA from SUNY Purchase. She was the third known city cyclist killed this month. On August 2, Chris Doyle was hit by a truck driver less than a mile away from the Abbott crash site. Jeffrey Axelrod was run over by a cement truck at Chrystie and Delancey Streets in Manhattan on August 18. No charges were filed in the deaths of Doyle or Axelrod.

Update: A reader contacted Gothamist with details regarding conditions on Bushwick Ave.:

I’m not sure if this information will help with anything, I just picture some idiot commenting and saying “who drives a bike through a construction site.” I live on Bushwick Ave and there is a new condo building going up. There were 2 wooden barricade type structures to block off an area. They were both in the street next to the sidewalk, but one blew over with the storm over the weekend and was in the way of any biker or car for that matter. I have no idea why it wasn’t picked up Monday or Tuesday. I can see how you wouldn’t even see it if on a bike. It would put you into harms way if you were trying to swerve around it. Now we have lost someone and an ugly condo is going up. Really not fair.

The News presents the NYPD’s reasoning like so:

“The bicyclist was at fault,” a police source said. “He should have seen the driver was about to turn. The bicyclist tried to rush by and you can’t do that. The driver had to be going about 5 m.p.h.”

While we soon learn that the cyclist was wearing a helmet, the piece does not inform readers whether the truck driver signaled his turn, whether the truck was equipped with the proper mirrors, or whether the driver should have been able to see the victim before turning into him and crushing his skull.

To cap it off, the Daily News included this poll:

So I guess that’s how to settle the question of what causes crashes. If only there was some rigorous data and analysis the Daily News could get its hands on instead.

Add a whole lot more cars and some shuttle buses to this picture, and you've got the approved plan for the New Domino. Image: The New Domino

In terms of transportation, the developer has now promised to provide shuttle buses to nearby subway stations. With room for 1,428 cars, the project is far from a model of sustainable planning, but with the fight over New Domino now at a close, it's worth remembering that livable streets advocates won some real improvements during the land use review process: the shuttle buses and last month's reduction in off-street parking.

The bottom line remains, however, that with 1,428 parking spaces, this is an auto-oriented development. "The transportation plan hinges on bringing more cars into the neighborhood," said Ryan Kuonen, an organizer with Neighbors Allied for Good Growth, a local community organization. Still, she said, "It could have been worse -- the plan used to be worse."

With both Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn strongly supporting the project, final approval was all but guaranteed. "This thing was going to get passed," said Kuonen. The only question was how the New Domino would change on the way to approval, and the adjustments that unfolded were almost uniformly towards more livable streets.

The changes were "pretty much as good as you were going to get on these issues," said Rachel Weinberger, a parking expert and professor of transportation planning at UPenn. "If this is what we get when the system is working how it's supposed to, we need to rethink the system."

The shuttle buses, if implemented well, could help make transit the mode of choice for a few more New Domino residents -- and will certainly improve their trips. The project is located about three-quarters of a mile from the closest subway stations. That's walkable, but hardly appealing in miserable weather. A shuttle will give the significant number of people who'll be taking the subway a quicker, more pleasant commute. "It's the right idea," said Weinberger, noting that the implementation will matter a lot. According to Council Member Stephen Levin's office, the routes haven't been determined yet.

The inclusion of shuttle buses at the New Domino also sets an important precedent. "It expands the envelope of what types of transportation improvements developers are responsible for," said David King, a planning professor at Columbia who had previously called for including shuttle buses at Domino. "In most cases developers are only responsible for parking," he continued, explaining that buses are very rarely a condition for approval. If it becomes widespread practice to require large-scale developments to improve residents' access to transit, not just give them space for cars, that's a tangible shift. 

Shuttle buses can only do so much, however. First, they'll be targeted only at New Domino residents. "It's really solving a problem for the people moving there," said Kuonen, "not the people who are already living there." One easy way to ensure that these shuttles are a community benefit, not just a resident perk, might be to run them all the way to Union Square; many Williamsburg residents were more concerned about adding even more commuters to the overstuffed L train than they were about added congestion on the roads.

More importantly, shuttle buses will do little to counter the car use induced by all that parking. "They will serve the people who don't have a parking space," said Weinberger. "It's not going to be of huge relevance to those who have a car," she continued, citing research she just completed showing that in New York City, residents with parking are likely to drive to work, even if they live near good transit options. The congestion-busting impact of the shuttle buses, therefore, will be limited. 

So about all that parking. Here too, livable streets activists won a small victory. Local organizing convinced Borough President Marty Markowitz to request a 266-space reduction in the amount of parking at New Domino, which the City Planning Commission agreed to enact -- a rare case of the review process yielding a less car-centric outcome than the initial proposal. 

Of course, the amount of parking originally proposed was so enormous that the New Domino will still add a flood of cars to the neighborhood, congesting the free Williamsburg Bridge just feet away, guzzling gas and exposing pedestrians and cyclists to greater danger. The policy that larded Domino with parking in the first place -- attempting to build enough off-street automobile storage to match the car-ownership rates of the surrounding area -- needs to be discarded as too disconnected from broad transportation goals. 

Moreover, while the shuttle buses could quite easily disappear after a few years, these parking spaces are forever. That's why it rankled when the mayor promised a comprehensive traffic and transit study for the area as one piece of yesterday's deal. The city has already made a huge, and permanent, transportation decision. If, years from now, that comprehensive study finds that the inclusion of so much parking was a bad decision for the neighborhood, the horse is already out of the barn. The only way to align this project with the goals of PlaNYC, significantly reducing the amount of parking, won't be an option.

As the City Council considers the parking-laden New Domino mega-development, sustainability-minded representatives have the power to ensure that the project doesn't put thousands of new cars onto Williamsburg's streets. All council members have to do is to request reductions in the amount of off-street parking included at the site, currently 1,428 spots. The developer's only stated objection to reducing the amount of parking is that compliance with environmental law requires it. That's not a concern that need constrain the City Council. 

As we reported in April, the developer, CPC Resources, decided how much parking to include at New Domino by using formulas prescribed by the environmental review process. "We don't want to include parking for parking's sake," said CPC Resources senior vice president Susan Pollock. She claimed her hands were tied. 

Of course, since then, the amount of parking at New Domino has been reduced by 266 spaces, so there's clearly some flexibility. It is true that the poorly designed formulas used in environmental reviews indeed lead to outsized parking lots, but not because developers are required, per se, to construct them. "CEQR is a disclosure process," said Tom Angotti, a professor of planning at Hunter College. "It doesn't require anything." According to Angotti, the developers were trying to avoid an "unmitigated impact" on the neighborhood parking situation, in which those New Domino residents whom the environmental review designates as drivers would take street parking from current residents. "They don't have to mitigate that if they don't want to," said Angotti.

In fact, the New Domino is in a part of town where having too little parking, as defined by environmental review, can safely be ignored. For proposed projects in certain zones, even a large parking shortfall "is generally not considered significant due to the magnitude of available alternative modes of transportation," according to the city CEQR technical manual [page 16-65 of this PDF]. Not enough parking, the manual seems to be saying, just isn't a concept that makes sense in many parts of New York.

It's understandable why the developer might be wary of having any unmitigated impacts at all. At Monday's City Council hearing on the New Domino, Council Member Stephen Levin, an opponent of the project, mined the environmental impact statement for quotes about potential burdens it would impose on the neighborhood. CPC Resources and the company's environmental consultant repeatedly fell back on a stock answer: "We have addressed all of the impacts." Losing that defense could weaken their case. 

But City Council members don't have to worry about that. They have the latitude to account for the fact that some residents identified as drivers in the technical analysis might switch to transit or ride a bike, rather than deal with parking a car 20 blocks away. They can say that the precepts of PlaNYC, environmental sustainability, pedestrian safety, and congestion mitigation all call for reducing the number of cars at New Domino. There's just one question: Will they?

Local activists have made Williamsburg's New Domino a little less auto-centric. Image: The New Domino

How few parking spaces should be attached to new developments to make New York a more sustainable city?

That's the big question for developments like Brooklyn's New Domino, the huge project slated for the Williamsburg waterfront where developers originally proposed 1,694 parking spaces for about 2,400 residences. Neighborhood activists recently won a 266-space reduction in the amount of parking but still face an onslaught of new automobiles.

Last week, the City Planning Commission approved the New Domino in a unanimous vote. One of the only changes the commission demanded from the project's developers was to eliminate one parking lot, reducing the number of parking spaces from 1,694 to 1,428. The 266-space reduction was not based on studies or research. It came straight from a request by Borough President Marty Markowitz.

While the reduction was a victory for livable streets, the fact that more than 1,400 parking spaces remain highlights the immense disconnect between the developer's initial proposal and goals like reducing traffic or encouraging sustainable transportation. To make the Williamsburg waterfront a real beacon of sustainable planning, it's clear that the New Domino would have to include substantially fewer than 1,428 spaces.

"It's still going to be an auto-oriented development," said David King, a professor of planning at Columbia University who specializes in parking. "1,400 is just a lot of parking spaces, however you cut it."

"In the Department of City Planning, there's a group that thinks New York City will collapse on itself if you stop attracting families with cars."

The local community board and Council Member Stephen Levin had asked for even larger reductions in parking. When Community Board 1 requested fewer parking spaces, their resolution called for "a level significantly less than the maximum allowed under zoning," or 1,541 spaces, according to land use committee chair Ward Dennis. Dennis wouldn't speak for the board as to whether 1,428 was "significantly" less than 1,541.

So how, at New Domino or in any big project down the line, would you figure out the right amount of parking? 

"That's a community decision," argued Rachel Weinberger, UPenn professor and parking policy expert. "It's a vision thing." According to Weinberger, the transportation effects of off-street parking are fairly well-documented, so setting parking levels is a matter of deciding which outcomes you want.

Attaching guaranteed parking spaces to housing is one of the fastest ways to ensure that residents drive, she said, pointing to "Guaranteed Parking, Guaranteed Driving," a report she co-authored for Transportation Alternatives in 2008, as well as more intensive research she is currently conducting. Accordingly, asking how much parking to include is another way of asking how much congestion, environmental damage and danger to pedestrians a community is willing to tolerate in return for making driving more convenient. 

Exactly how many car trips are generated by each off-street space is "an impossible to answer question," said Weinberger, because "it's such a dynamic system." But it's perfectly clear that every space eliminated leads to fewer trips by car. 

King agreed, saying that at a parking-laden site like New Domino, "people may not be likely to drive into Midtown Manhattan, but they'll keep a car and drive for all their other trips." That residential parking leads to more driving, he said, is increasingly well-established. If your only goal is to reduce the number of cars on the road, he added, "there shouldn't be any parking built whatsoever."

While the effect of building less parking on traffic is fairly clear, the effect on the real estate market is less so. That's where things get interesting. Would enough people buy or rent parking-free apartments to make them commercially viable? Or would less parking squelch growth in green, transit-rich NYC?

Both King and Weinberger argued that to really understand how to set off-street parking levels, we need market research about the demand for car-free housing in New York. "We have no idea what would happen if there was no parking" at New Domino, said King, "because no one has built anything on that scale recently." If you really couldn't sell parking-free housing, the right amount of parking for new developments would necessarily be higher than zero.

Of course, looking at neighborhoods with scarce parking just across the river, like Alphabet City, added King, "I suspect it would work out just fine" at a site like New Domino. Older Brooklyn neighborhoods have very low off-street parking levels and very high real estate prices. In Park Slope, only five percent of car owners store their cars at home.

But the institutions pushing more off-street parking on New York City, King and Weinberger argued, do so because they assume that successful development requires more parking. In the Department of City Planning, said Weinberger, "there's a group of people that think that New York City will collapse on itself if you stop attracting families with cars." If you could show that big projects like New Domino would fill up even without parking, though, they might be less interested in off-street parking.

King speculated that another group might be the best target for market research: Banks. "There's no bank that's going to finance an experiment," he said, "so if the banks won't finance them, the developers won't build them." At privately financed projects like New Domino, the bank's influence is direct, but the financial sector could also influence how much parking a public agency like the city's Economic Development Corporation decides to include in its projects, said King. 

Market research -- or better still, demonstration projects -- would help determine how the New York market would respond to large developments with parking levels in line with the city's older neighborhoods. That's an answer you need to know to figure out the "right" amount of parking in a place like New Domino. 

A rendering of the New Domino, as it would look from below the Williamsburg Bridge. Image: The New Domino

The City Council has final say on the project's approval, making Levin's position especially important, since the council usually defers to the local member's opinion. Levin has said that his support for the project depends on reducing the project's size, increasing the number of affordable units, and cutting parking spaces by half. "Every parking space they provide is another car that will be congesting our streets," said Hope Reichbach, Levin's communications director. Levin wants to cut the project down to 1,600 residences, according to the Post, so in tandem with his call to halve parking, his demands would decrease the parking ratio at the project. 

Markowitz -- not known for opposing provisions for cars -- also recommended cutting parking. The borough president gave his support for the overall project, but not to one of its four underground lots -- which would trim at least 266 parking spaces.

Markowitz said that he was responding to local demands for less parking, including a request from CB 1 to cut parking. "The neighborhood was concerned about providing spaces above and beyond what current zoning allows," he said, "and since the final build-out of this project is years away, I didn’t feel that there was an immediate need to provide an allowance for that many spaces." Markowitz also recommended testing out a car-sharing program during the early stages of development to try and keep down car-ownership levels.

For now, the developer seems willing to consider reducing the amount of parking included at the New Domino. "We don't want to include parking for parking's sake," said Susan Pollock, a senior vice president at CPC Resources. But parking decisions get made in what she described as "a world called SEQRA-land," referring to the state's environmental review process. The developer chose to provide enough parking to match the very high car-ownership rate of the surrounding area in part because of the formulas used by New York's environmental law. Perversely, those formulas often give developers the incentive to build huge amounts of parking in order to avoid lawsuits claiming their project will have an adverse impact on the environment.

One solution, according to Pollock, is to update the parking calculations using data from the 2010 Census, which she said is likely to show lower car-ownership rates in that part of Williamsburg. "If we get the new data," she said, "we may be able to drop the amount." CPC Resources is currently in negotiations with the planning department about the possibility of making such an adjustment. Pollock reiterated her interest in renegotiating the number of parking spaces downward at a public hearing this Wednesday, according to the Post.

The New Domino will continue to move through the land use review process in the upcoming weeks and months. If the City Council agrees with Williamsburg residents, Community Board 1, Levin and Markowitz that New Domino doesn't need 1,700 parking spaces, and if the planning department helps to recalculate the parking levels needed to meet SEQRA standards, it would be a rare victory for parking reform. 

The New Domino development will reshape the waterfront and the streets just north of the Williamsburg Bridge. Image: The New Domino.

The New Domino's 2,200 residences would transform 11.2 acres just north of the Williamsburg Bridge, at a former sugar refinery about three-quarters of a mile from the two nearest subway stations. It fronts the Kent Avenue bike lane and the future path of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway. At a site so large and so integral to the city's bike network, but with mediocre transit access, the developer's transportation decisions are critically important. 

Determining how much parking to construct is one such transportation decision, and on that score the New Domino abandons good planning.

The development's 1,694 off-street parking spaces would bring a flood of new motorists to Williamsburg. This is, in a way, intentional. The developer is attempting to match current car ownership rates in the area, according to Martin Hopp, who's overseeing the project design for Rafael Viñoly Architects. "We felt that it was important to accommodate the anticipated parking need on-site," said Hopp, "rather than to substantially increase vehicles circling the neighborhood for the already limited on-street spaces."

Building so many parking spaces will induce New Domino residents to drive. Research indicates that free parking spaces at home encourage New Yorkers to commute by car. "The amount of parking infrastructure to provide should be based on the neighborhood's and the city's street capacity, the city's goals in terms of carbon reduction, traffic flow, pedestrian safety and so forth," said UPenn professor Rachel Weinberger, co-author of the study "Guaranteed Parking -- Guaranteed Driving" [PDF]. "Deciding how many parking spaces to provide on the basis of what is profitable and/or on the rate of car ownership in the surrounding area is completely inappropriate and represents the city's abdication of its responsibility to protect the public health and welfare."

The expense of building underground parking will probably cost the developer between $30,000 and $50,000 per space, according to Columbia planning professor David King. That means reducing parking would free up quite a lot of money, which could be spent instead on transit improvements. King recommended that New Domino provide shuttle buses to the subway, a practice that he said is common in Riverdale and some nearby suburbs, and that the developer construct less parking. "It's certainly worrisome that all this parking is being supplied," said King. "That's 1,700 cars and it's going to really overwhelm the community; there's no doubt about that."

Usually developers face pressure from local residents to provide parking for new arrivals, but in this case, some locals oppose the addition of so much storage for vehicles in their neighborhood. "It's interesting because they say they're going for LEED certification, they're going for green roofs," said Lacey Tauber of Neighbors Allied for Good Growth, a local advocacy group which has criticized parts of the New Domino plan. Her organization is calling for the developer to pare down the number of parking spaces to the city's required minimum -- 1,042 spots -- and to work with the MTA on providing more transit options. 

The developer's rendering of Kent Avenue prominently features bike lanes and ground floor retail. Car traffic is noticeably absent. Image: The New Domino.

Tauber credits the developer for including significant ground-floor retail in its plans. Between the retail and the waterfront access, she said, "it will be very pedestrian friendly once the construction is done." Tauber also sees the New Domino's bike infrastructure as sufficient, noting that "they're pretty supportive" of local cyclists. Those improvements will include public bike racks outside and bike storage and changing rooms inside.

The developers of New Domino want to make their 11 acres an attractive place to walk and bike. But they also want to build nearly 1,700 parking spaces that will generate traffic and encroach upon pedestrians and cyclists. It's a contradiction that could be resolved if the city aligns its parking policy with urban design and sustainability goals. "For most U.S. cities simply doing away with parking minimums is a good first step in parking reform," said Weinberger. "For NYC it's imperative that the city think about parking maximums."

Last night's bike lane debate. From left: Heather Loop, Lyla Durden, Caroline Samponaro, Isaac Abraham, and Baruch Herzfeld. Photo: Gothamist.

The seemingly perpetual conflict in Williamsburg over bike lanes has seen a lot of twists and turns the last few years. The issue has surfaced in City Council elections, on the local community board, and in proposed direct actions -- from a topless bike ride to intentionally blocking cyclists with school buses. Last night, each side took it inside for a debate hosted by Pete's Candy Store. 

The event pitted Isaac Abraham, an activist in the Williamsburg Hasidic community and a former candidate for City Council, against four debaters in favor of bike safety: Lyla Durden and Heather Loop, who planned the snowed-out topless ride, Baruch Herzfeld, who runs a bike repair shop in Williamsburg targeted at the Jewish community and has emerged as something of a bike-friendly ambassador to the Hasidim, and Caroline Samponaro, Transportation Alternatives' director of bicycle advocacy. With only around five Hasidim in the packed house, Abraham called himself "a sheep in a lion's den," though the evening stayed generally cordial. Durden, Herzfeld, and the evening's moderator, James Hook (also a cyclist), all wore "Isaac Abraham for City Council" baseball caps for much of the debate.

To the surprise of no one, the night did not end with a formal agreement on resolving the conflict. When it was over, Abraham still insisted that a bike lane on Bedford Avenue is "never going to sell. Not ever." Even so, the discussion seemed to have progressed somewhat from the point where bike lane opponents were objecting to cyclists' very right to the road. "What we're talking about here is baby steps," said Samponaro. For more on the blow-by-blow, you can check out the write-ups on Gothamist, Gawker, and Voz iz Neias.

As for those baby steps, the debate did raise a number of possible ways to address safety on Bedford Avenue, without necessarily re-striping the bike lane:

• Samponaro recommended a variety of pedestrian improvements, such as neckdowns or raised crosswalks. "If this is really a pedestrian corridor," she said, "let's prioritize pedestrians."
• Herzfeld called for installing speed bumps for both cars and bicycles. That would address the safety concerns of both sides of the debate, he argued.
• Samponaro also proposed making permanent, fixed school bus stops, enabling cyclists to know when schoolchildren would be stepping into the road.
  
• One audience member recommended an enforcement crackdown of all traffic laws in the area, targeting both drivers and cyclists. The suggestion got some nods from the debaters. 
• Finally, there was widespread agreement that any future action should be preceded by a more open public process. Durden complained that the city "didn't treat anyone very fairly." They removed the Bedford Avenue lane overnight, and "when they put in the bike lanes on Kent, they did it on a day when no one could move their cars [due to Shabbat]." She proposed an open meeting to build off the debate.

If there is another meeting, the sides might want to consider hashing out some terms for collecting information on Bedford Avenue. Throughout the debate, Abraham repeatedly mocked DOT studies of neighborhood streets and asserted his own data on cyclist behavior. The facts about street safety, and where the real risks on Bedford come from, might become less contentious if both sides went out and observed the street together. Although some facts are already indisputable.

The action brought together Hasidim and secular cyclists. One of those given a summons is a prominent member of the Hasidic community who volunteers to teach kids how to ride bikes, says Cummings.

A Critical Mass bike demonstration planned for Sunday won't sit well with some Hasids, says one bike advocate.

"People are going to get upset, I think," says Baruch Herzfeld, who owns a bike business under the Williamsburg Bridge. "It's better to find common ground, resolution instead of confrontation."

For your viewing pleasure this morning, YouTube footage of yesterday's early a.m. direct action on Bedford Avenue in South Williamsburg. It's hard to say for sure, but it looks like the Hasidic bike lane painters chose to stay off-camera. After the jump, a look at the results in broad daylight, courtesy of a tipster.

Photo: Gothamist.

Views of the bike lane within the Hasidic community are hardly monolithic, Herzfeld told Streetsblog. "Scores of people in the Hasidic community are actually pissed about this bike lane being eradicated at the behest of traditionalists," he said. "These members of the community may not want to 'come out' as bike warriors just yet, but they're promising continuous action until the bike lane returns."

DOT removed 14 blocks of the bike lane last Tuesday, infuriating cyclists on both the north and south sides of the Williamsburg Bridge.

This morning's display of unity between cyclists from inside and outside the Hasidic community drew officers from the NYPD and members of a neighborhood security patrol. Several people were given summonses, but no one was arrested, according to Herzfeld, who operates a bike clubhouse at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge that is frequented by secular and Hasidic customers.

Herzfeld was not present at the re-striping, but says he received text messages early this morning from those who received summonses. At one point during the confrontation between bike advocates and the neighborhood watch, a female activist was pushed off her bike by a member of the patrol, he reports, adding that the neighborhood watch also held two bike lane advocates by force until the NYPD could arrive to issue summonses. Requests for confirmation from NYPD have not been returned. 

Herzfeld, who is an observant Orthodox Jew, but not Hasidic, says he's heartened by the group's move, and says the action is a sign of things to come.

"The combined efforts of bike advocates and progressive Hasids to reinstate one of the borough's safest and greenest transportation arteries has huge implications for South Williamsburg," he said.

After DOT blasted them off last week, Bedford Avenue bike stencils have reportedly reappeared. Photo: Elizabeth Press.

According to tipsters, the neighborhood's volunteer community watch group responded to reports at around 4 am that two men were using spraypaint to recreate a section of the bike lane, which the Department of Transportation controversially removed from a 14-block stretch of Bedford Avenue last week. Police arrived at the corner of Bedford Avenue and Rutledge Street and arrested two suspects, sources said.

Streetsblog has requests in with NYPD and the 90th Precinct to confirm the arrests. In the meantime, if you have more information or pictures of the unofficial bike lane, send to tips@streetsblog.org.

CB1 transportation committee chair Teresa Toro tells us that there should be a full house at tonight's meeting, with a big crowd expected to protest a new waterfront development planned for South Williamsburg. So come early and bring snacks and some water. You may have to wait a while to speak, but hang in there, because the people who'll be up in arms about the "Rose Plaza" development are by and large the same constituents who complained so loudly about the Bedford Avenue lane. Call me naive, but I think something productive might come out of everyone getting together in the same place.

You must sign in by 6:15 to speak at the public session tonight, and getting there by 6:00 or sooner is highly recommended. Head to the Swinging 60s Senior Center at 211 Ainslie Street, by the corner of Manhattan Avenue.

A small portion of this lane is being removed as part of ongoing bike network adjustments in the area, which have included the recent addition of a barrier-protected connector lane on nearby Williamsburg Street and the completion of a unique, two-way protected lane on parallel Kent Avenue. We will continue to work with any community on ways we can make changes to our streets without compromising safety.

Clarence Eckerson sends these shots of DOT street safety improvements taken on a recent ride near the Brooklyn and Queens waterfront. Above is the newly traffic-calmed intersection of Joralemon and Hicks -- part of the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project -- which now sports two sidewalk extensions. (According to the Post, a third corner was slated for a curb extension, but DOT changed plans after residents said they were worried about how fire trucks would negotiate the turn.) Says Clarence: "I am sure the speed reductions will be dramatic, the equivalent of a chicane."

Heading towards Queens, the city's stock of bi-directional, protected bike paths is on the rise. Williamsburg Street West now connects Kent Avenue to Flushing Avenue, allowing cyclists to ride contraflow to Kent safely and legally. This is also a segment along the future Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway.

More pics after the jump.

On Kent Avenue, cyclists entering the bike path from South 4th Street now have a high-visibility entry point, which should help remind drivers not to park here and block the way.

A new planted median calms traffic on Jackson Avenue in Long Island City. At some intersections these long median strips are equipped with pedestrian refuges, Clarence informs us, concluding his tour of stuff that, apparently, has some unnamed council members calling for the DOT commissioner's head.

The NYPD's 94th Precinct in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is working hard to build on its reputation for being New York City's most infamous bike thieves. Too much demand for bike parking in the neighborhood? "I know what to do," says the 94's commanding officer Dennis M. Fulton. "Bust out the circular saw!"

This time Greenpoint resident Ben Running caught the whole thing on video tape. Running says the confiscated bicycles seemed to be in use:

They didn’t look like beat up bikes that had locked up there forever — they looked like they were being used,” said Ben Running, a Greenpoint resident and cyclist who filmed police removing the bikes from a street sign near the corner of North Eighth Street. “Bikes shouldn’t be removed without some kind of notice.

One section of the Kent Avenue two-way bike path has been painted. Two more will follow. Image: NYCDOT [PDF].

We've got another dispatch from the ongoing bike lane drama that is Kent Avenue. At Wednesday night's information session hosted by Brooklyn CB1, the DOT team gave a short presentation [PDF] outlining their plan to address truck traffic changes caused by converting Kent to one-way flow. Then the public was invited to comment.

Truck routes in North Williamsburg and Greenpoint.

A couple of things to keep in mind. The traffic changes are happening in three phases. So far only the first has been completed. Once the whole thing is finished and truckers have had some time to learn the new traffic patterns, the straightest shot heading south goes nowhere near Wythe or North 11th. DOT intends to promote this route, which takes trucks down McGuinness Boulevard instead, and work with the local police precincts to keep truckers off streets where they're not supposed to drive.

As for the notion that the project makes streets less safe (some opponents went so far as to say the new traffic patterns will endanger children), it's hard to take seriously. This is not just a one-way conversion: The crossing distances will be shorter and the roadway narrower on Kent Avenue, which motorists used to treat as a little stretch of autobahn in Brooklyn. Now that traffic will be calmer.

The bike lane was always intended to be a precursor to the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway. The new design now occupies the greenway footprint, so opposing the bike lane is tantamount to opposing the greenway. An area undergoing as much residential development as North Brooklyn sorely needs this new space for pedestrians and cyclists. Walking to the waterfront will feel much safer and more appealing, and biking to the Williamsburg Bridge won't just be limited to a few brave souls. CB1 embraced those improvements when it approved the greenway plan last April [PDF]; the same benefits should feel much more tangible once the Kent Avenue bike lane is completed next month.

Come out tonight and support the city's first two-way, on-street protected bike path.

DOT representatives will be presenting their plan to address traffic changes caused by the new one-way vehicular flow on Kent. The new design establishes the greenway footprint and re-establishes on-street parking and loading zones. No new truck routes have been created, though southbound truck traffic will travel differently than before. Plenty can be done to mitigate the truck traffic changes, but there's a lot of hearsay and misinformation floating around. You can be sure that some North Williamsburg residents living close to those designated truck routes will be there tonight, and they'll be loud. A show of support for safe cycling would give a big boost to this important link in the city's bike network.

The meeting gets started at 6:30 (sorry about the late notice) at 807 Manhattan Avenue -- the entrance is on Calyer Street.