Tonight's debate: Come for the bike lane drama, stay for the discussion of parking policy. Photo: Brooklyn Paper.

To get a sense of the hot transportation topics in the district, especially the North Brooklyn neighborhoods closest to tonight's venue, Streetsblog spoke to Teresa Toro, chair of Brooklyn CB1's Transportation Committee, and Michael Freedman-Schnapp of Neighbors Allied for Good Growth.

Here's what they want the candidates to address tonight:

Bike and pedestrian safety. Streetsblog readers are familiar with the twists and turns of the Kent Avenue bike lane saga. In a district that includes approaches to all three of Brooklyn's East River bridges, it's probably not the last such dispute we'll see. "There’s a clear need in the district to continue to improve biking infrastructure and to make walking safer," said Freedman-Schnapp, noting that, in addition to the bridge approaches, corridors like McGuinness Boulevard have particular safety deficiencies that need to be addressed. The fact that all three bridges remain free, Toro reminded us, attracts a disproportionate amount of traffic to the district and discourages people from biking and walking.

Truck traffic. As the latest Kent Avenue dust-up has made apparent, truck traffic is a big issue in North Brooklyn. "Truck-generating uses are important employment sources in the neighborhood," said Freedman-Schnapp, but management and enforcement of truck routes are lacking. For some sharp insight into how better truck route planning can address some of the complaints arising from Kent Avenue's conversion to one-way flow, check out this post from neighborhood blog Brooklyn 11211.

Too much parking, not enough planning. Williamsburg and Greenpoint have seen a spike in car-oriented development since a 2005 rezoning took effect. Thanks in large part to Department of City Planning parking minimums, thousands of new units have been built with more space allotted to parking compared to the existing urban fabric, causing a surge in traffic volumes.

"The rezoning had no transportation plan," said Freedman-Schnapp. "They analyzed the impacts. They had this very thick EIS. Then nothing happened to address those impacts."

The EIS badly misjudged the transportation impacts of the rezoning, Toro said, calling the end result a huge missed opportunity. "The area around the Bedford Avenue station is prime real estate because of its proximity to transit. You have such a clear demonstration of people preferring transit, and yet they're being handed the option of car ownership." She wants to know whether the candidates support studying traffic-calming improvements and enhanced bus-to-subway connections to relieve the area's growing traffic pressures.

The traffic trouble unleashed by abundant residential parking figures to intensify if projects like the Domino Sugar factory redevelopment -- where 70 percent of luxury units are slated to include parking, according to Freedman-Schnapp -- proceed as planned. It will be interesting to see where the candidates stand on reforming the city's parking requirements.

Transit crowding, transit funding. Crowding on the L train is reaching Lexington Avenue line proportions, said Freedman-Schnapp, and even northbound G service can get cramped in the morning -- problems that ultimately boil down to how well we fund our transit system. "[The candidates] can yell at the MTA all they want," he said, "but when it comes down to it, they need more money to improve service, so where’s the money going to come from?"

The Kent Ave. bike lane at work. Photo: New York Times

"It was a really great showing of community support," Santogade told Streetsblog. "The board didn't indicate that there were any changes being discussed about the bike lane." No vote was held on the matter, which has already passed through the CB1 wringer. After the public feedback, some board members also reiterated their support for the bike lane.

Stirring testimony came from regular bike lane users who described "what it was like before, with cars racing by at 50-60 mph on one side, and being afraid of car doors opening on the other side," Santogade said. "They commute there because the trains are packed and they don't have cars, and this is a vital connector on their way to work."

Notably, a member of Nydia Velazquez's staff also spoke briefly to confirm the congresswoman's support for the bike lane, which is a precursor to the long-anticipated Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway. Velazquez has secured $14.6 million in federal funds for greenway construction.

Members of the Hasidic community, widely viewed as the epicenter of bike lane opposition, did not make their presence felt at the forum. Only one representative from the community spoke against the lanes.

About half the speakers testified in support of deposed transportation committee chair Teresa Toro, who was instrumental to progress on the Kent Avenue bike lane and the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway. Some board members asked the executive committee to reinstate Toro, said Santogade, but board chair Vincent Abate, who has stated that Toro was dismissed for speaking to the press, played it close to the vest.

"He said, 'Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it,'" Santogade recounted. "He said he had four months left on the Community Board, and he’d never left an organization fractured and with unfinished business, and that he considered this to be unfinished business." No formal action was taken.

The controversy over the new bike lanes on Kent Avenue in Williamsburg (which recently resulted in the ouster of livable streets activist Teresa Toro as chair of the CB1 transportation committee) was chronicled in the New York Times over the weekend:

New York City has created more than 100 miles of bicycle lanes in recent years to encourage and accommodate the number of people who, compelled by a desire to preserve the environment or preserve their bank accounts, have taken to getting around on two wheels.

But the effort to turn the city into a place that embraces bicyclists has clashed with a long-entrenched reality — New York is a crowded, congested urban landscape where every patch of asphalt is coveted.

Gothamist has been following one of the most surreal aspects of the Kent Avenue drama—the ups and downs of the very unofficial "detour" sign pictured above, part of the anti-bike-lane campaign. On private property, it advises drivers that school buses will block the street and the bike lane while picking up and dropping off children. As of Dec. 31st, it was back up. As Gothamist writes, "The big question now is whether the city cares enough to step in and take it down."

As committee chair, Teresa was instrumental in winning New York City's first on-street bike parking, last summer's Williamsburg Walks event on Bedford Avenue and -- don't forget this -- a 39-2 Community Board vote in favor of the suddenly controversial Kent Ave. greenway plan.

It's also worth noting that the Kent Avenue bike lanes were the by-product of a decade of community-driven planning as part of the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative. Williamsburg's politically-powerful Hasidic community, offended by the loss of parking space and the potential increase in short-sleeved, female goyim rolling through the neighborhood, has vowed to make life miserable for cyclists.

We'll try to get some more details in the new year. In the meantime, get some rest over the holidays, folks. The backlash is for real and it's gonna be a fight in 2009. You can fax a letter to Mayor Bloomberg to express your support for the Kent Avenue bike lane.

Manhattan Community Board 4's transportation committee unanimously approved DOT's plan to install a physically-separated bike path on Eighth Avenue in Lower Manhattan. The committee enthusiastically recommended the plan to the full board on Wednesday. The board then voted to ignore their own committee and block the plan. Apparently, some members feel that complete streets and safe bike infrastructure are somehow incompatible with the neighborhood's gay-friendly environment. Chelsea Now has the play-by-play:

Board member Allen Roskoff was more specific. “I refer to Eighth Ave. between 14th and 23rd Streets as ‘Gay Boulevard,’ he said. “Large numbers of gay people go there… It’s where we feel at home. … The atmosphere there—the restaurants, the activity, the people walking— it’s a home to many of us that no other avenue is. I don’t think these changes are for the positive in any way, shape or form.”

Which reminds me... Have you looked in to joining your local Community Board lately? This kind of thing is going to keep happening until either the Community Board system is overhauled or we get more Ian Dutton's, Christine Berthet's and Teresa Toro's serving on local boards.

The DOT's plan for a pilot project on Eighth Avenue, which can be downloaded here, mirrors the complete street redesign of Ninth Avenue one block to the west. The Eighth Avenue bike lane also runs through part of CB2, which unanimously approved the project last month.

It's also worth noting that outcry against the bike lane at CB4 was not at all universal and that Community Boards only have advisory power. DOT can go ahead with the project with or without the board's support. Again, from Chelsea Now:

Board member David Hanzel observed that “walking down Ninth Ave., I think it’s an improved experience.” He said there’s less traffic, fewer cars making sharp turns, and it’s “more of a leisurely stroll now.”

Hanzel was seconded by longtime member Bob Trentlyon, who observed that the discussion was the “most retro conversation I’ve heard at a board meeting in a long time. … There must be two Ninth Aves., because the Ninth Ave. I see, the traffic is moving very smoothly along… There are no businesses that have gone out of business since this has happened; there are more people starting to use the bike lanes.”

On Tuesday night, Community Board 1 in north Brooklyn voted 39-2 to support adding a separated bike path to Kent Avenue, a truck route through Williamsburg and Greenpoint. The path will be part of the Brooklyn Greenway, which is slated to follow the waterfront from Greenpoint to Red Hook when complete.

What makes the overwhelming "Yes" vote especially noteworthy is that the greenway section on Kent Avenue will displace hundreds of on-street parking spaces. "That was one of the biggest hurdles, getting a community to accept a loss of parking," says Milton Puryear, director of planning for the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative. "For people who have cars that’s a lightning rod issue."

...and how it would be allocated under the proposal approved by CB1 on Tuesday. (Rendering by the Regional Plan Association.)

Two other community boards had to vote on the greenway, but parking was only affected in the CB1 district. To defuse the expected opposition, the Greenway Initiative identified side streets -- usually former industrial blocks converted to residential use -- with areas where on-street parking could be "reclaimed," such as defunct loading zones. Offsetting the loss of 500 parking spots on Kent Avenue was seen as necessary to gain community approval.

"When it first started off a lot of people didn’t think it was doable from a political point of view," says Puryear, noting that it was already an unconventional idea to add a bike path and green space to a designated truck route. "But after years of engagement, it began to evolve as something that people really wanted."

A number of factors fueled that desire. For one, the 2005 rezoning of 175 blocks in north Brooklyn left many in the community feeling like they had been denied adequate green space. "We received no open space in return for density," says Teresa Toro, transportation chair of CB1.

When the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative and the Regional Plan Association organized a public workshop about the greenway last May, residents saw a way to make up for what they had lost before. "[The participants'] responses were, 'If we have to find some parking spaces elsewhere, we should do that,'" says Toro.

Improved waterfront access was another big draw. "Kent Avenue, since it was repaved, has become something of a speedway," says Toro. By narrowing the crossing distance on Kent, the path will make the street -- and the truck route -- less of a barrier to the water.

At the meeting on Tuesday, a broad coalition of bike advocates and open space advocates supported the plan. Only one person voiced displeasure at the loss of parking.

About $9 million has been secured for the Brooklyn Greenway so far, mostly from federal grants. With the final community board vote settled, the project is now in the hands of DOT. Before construction begins on the Kent Avenue section, Toro says, DOT has indicated they will "move" some of the on-street parking and stripe down the greenway footprint.

Coming so soon after the demise of congestion pricing, the community board vote was "a shot in the arm," says Toro. "It shows that communities here in the city can still do a lot to create livable streets."

Images courtesy of Milton Puryear / Brooklyn Greenway Initiative / Regional Plan Association

The MTA has been taking a lot of flack following yesterday's dust-up over MTA workers seizing bicycles locked to the Bedford Avenue subway station stairwell railing in Williamsburg. Perhaps the wrong transportation agency is taking the hit on this one.

A camera phone-toting tipster sends along the above photo. It shows that, not only does the Bedford Avenue subway station stairwell has a posted sign warning, "Any property attached to these railings will be removed," but it also lets people know where their property has been taken and what phone number to call to retrieve it: 212-712-4500.

MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin gave Streetsblog a call to let people know that the Lost Property Unit is located on the mezzanine below the 8th Avenue ACE subway lines at Penn Station. It is open 8am to noon, every weekday except Thursdays when it is open from 11am to 6:45pm. The MTA, Soffin says, doesn't have an interest in discouraging commuters from biking but "if someone trips over one of those bikes, we could get sued, without a doubt," he said.

So, with that, it seems, the Williamsburg bike parking problem lands firmly back in the lap of New York City's Department of Transportation. Back in July, DOT eliminated a few on-street car parking spaces, bumped out the sidewalk and installed bike racks on the southeast corner of N. 7th St. and Bedford Avenue. As shown in the plan below, the northwest corner is slated to get the same treatment. We have some calls out to find out when that project will begin.

Teresa Toro, chair of Community Board 1's transportation committee has been the driving force behind these bike parking improvements. She says that at this month's meeting, CB1 approved five more locations where the community would like to see on-street car parking spaces replaced with bike racks on bumped-out sidewalks. CB1's suggestion will be sent over to DOT where, Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan has suggested that she is happy to see more projects like this move forward.

Toro says the other five recommended spots are:

• The northwest corner of Driggs and N.7th St., near the other Bedford Ave. subway entrance.
• Manhattan Ave. and Driggs, a spot near the park and with lots of nightlife and shopping.
  
• The southwest corner of Bedford Ave. and N.5th St. "There is a storefront there but the entrance is on Bedford," Toro says, "It’s nice and unobstructed and would be a really nice little bike parking plaza."
• Near the entrance to the new state park on Kent and N.8th. You're not allowed to ride a bike inside the park and there is currently nowhere to lock up outside the park.
• Bushwick and Powers Street, one block north of the Grand Street L subway stop.
  

"Commissioner Sadik-Khan has indicated that she is entirely willing to do more of these," Toro says. "DOT will get a letter from CB1. Then they'll have to send out their engineers, do their turn radius measurements and make sure these are good locations. Then we just have to find the money to do it but the biggest hurdles are past us."

The new bike racks have been installed at the Bedford Avenue L subway station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. As the Dept. of Transportation announces in today’s press release, "The
facility marks the first time car parking spaces have been removed to
accommodate bicycle parking in New York City."

DOT extended a 76-foot section of the sidewalk by five feet and
installed nine new bike racks to provide parking for more than 30
bikes. Demand for bicycle parking is high in the area around the
Bedford Avenue subway stop and it has been the scene of frequent NYPD bike seizures.

Livable Streets advocates take careful note of the work that Community Board member Teresa Toro and DOT Deputy Borough Commissioner Dalila Hall did to push this project through. It’s not easy to make change in New York City. This is how you do it.

Here’s the money quote in today’s Daily News:

"It’s superconvenient," said Matthew Holtberg, 34, a graphic
designer from Fort Greene, after unlocking his set of wheels yesterday.

But tow truck driver Luis Padilla, 46, was ticked off that three
parking spots for drivers were removed for a bike port. He came to pick
up a relative from the station and couldn’t find a legal spot. He
worried about getting a summons.

"I could have parked away from the hydrant and now I’m right in front of it," he fumed.

Previous Coverage:

• NYPD Stealing Bikes (Again) in Williamsburg, 11/10/05
• Wider Sidewalks and Bicycle Park-and-Ride for Williamsburg, 12/18/06
• StreetFilms: On-Street Bike Parking in Portland, 12/20/06 
• Small Step for Peds & Cyclists, Giant Leap for NYC, 12/22/06
• A Historic Sidewalk Widening in Williamsburg, 6/8/07
• 94th Precinct (Still) Clipping Locks & Seizing Bikes on Bedford Ave., 6/28/07

CB1 recently wrote to the 90th and 94th Precincts asking them to establish an abandoned bike tagging and removal program. Such a program would ensure that bikes being removed are indeed abandoned; and there would be notice given to the bike owner to remove his/her bike by a given date.

Biking is on the upswing in our community, and I'm proud of that. I find it unacceptable that the precinct is taking such a negative initiative and I intend to follow up. In the meantime, I am calling the 94th Precinct (interesting, there is NO ANSWER on the phone so far despite three tries and counting). I am also letting our local elected officials know about this action.

I find this particularly outrageous, given Mayor Bloomberg's and NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan's recent efforts to promote more and better biking and walking alternatives for New Yorkers. Perhaps the 94th Precinct didn't get the memo yet.

If you also oppose this action by the precinct, please write and/or call the precinct to let them know, and PLEASE copy our elected officials and CB1.

Captain Paul Vorbeck, Commanding Officer [pictured]
94th Precinct
100 Meserole Avenue
Phone 718 383 3879
Fax 718 383 8095

Assemblyman Joe Lentol
619 Lorimer Street
Brooklyn NY 11211
Phone 718 383 7474
lentolj@assembly.state.ny.us

Councilman David Yassky
114 Court Street
Brooklyn NY 11201
Phone 718 875 5200
Fax 718 643 6620
yassky@council.nyc.ny.us

The 94th Precinct was in the news a few days ago for taping notices to bikes parked in Williamsburg warning cyclists to "obey the traffic rules and regulations." The area around the Bedford Avenue subway station has been the scene of frequent bike seizures.

While acknowledging that casualties have dropped overall in recent years, safety advocates and government officials are calling on the DOT to establish measurable benchmarks for further reducing pedestrian injuries and deaths in the city, and want the agency to get moving on relatively minor improvements that would help meet those goals.

At a hearing of the City Council's Transportation Committee at City Hall on Wednesday, DOT Deputy Commissioner David Woloch and Director for Street Management and Safety Ryan Russo caught an earful from council members, transportation watchdogs, community board leaders and members of the public who have lost loved ones.

The protracted exchange between the committee and Woloch and Russo, during which even the simplest of questions couldn't elicit a straightforward response, began when Chairman John Liu asked if the DOT has a systemic master plan for pedestrian safety enhancements.

The answer, which Liu never received in so many words, might be summed up as "Not exactly."

For example, the DOT is just now assembling its first-ever comprehensive study of pedestrian injuries and fatalities, which total some 10,000 and 150 per year, respectively. And though it is rote knowledge to many ordinary citizens, the agency seems stymied by the fact that the vast number of serious collisions occur at a relatively small number of intersections.

In testimony before the committee, Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Paul Steely White pointed out that the DOT can readily recite the number of potholes and stoplights it plans to address during a given period, but that it has no target for reducing pedestrian injuries and deaths -- a task White said should be "job one" for the agency that declares pedestrian safety its "most critical mission." The "real story," White said, is that DOT has reduced auto-pedestrian collisions by improving a small number of intersections, and could replicate that success elsewhere at little cost.

"Signal timing is cheap," said White.

The new collision study, expected to be ready sometime later this year, will help the DOT in the future, Woloch and Russo said. But as of now pedestrian fatalities are "diffuse" and current stats don't indicate "where to go" to make changes, a situation further complicated by the agency's "limited resources."

The committee also learned, among other things, that the DOT does not investigate every auto-pedestrian collision; that there is no formal process for analyzing the site of a fatality in order to prevent future collisions; that there is no set process for gauging input that might remedy dangerous conditions before a collision occurs; and that three years after launching the Safe Routes to School program, in 2007 the DOT will complete improvements at 12 of 135 high-priority schools -- not a "very ambitious goal," said Liu.

Teresa Toro, NYC Coordinator of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, testified that the city should mandate physical improvements by DOT, as well as procedural changes by the NYPD. While DOT has an "obsessive preoccupation with traffic flow," Toro said, the police are "not even comfortable" enforcing laws on the books designed to protect pedestrians.

Without citing specifics, Liu said the committee has "a number of ideas" for bills that are "passable."

Photo: sc_UK/Flickr

Since breaking the news of this development on Monday, Streetsblog has learned more about the project. DOT's plan is to widen the sidewalk by five feet for approximately 112 feet along the southeast curb of North 7th Street at Bedford Avenue. For the real estate brokers out there, that's 560 square feet of new sidewalk space for Williamsburg. New bicycle racks will provide approximately 25 bike parking spaces. DOT is aiming to complete the project some time within the first six months of 2007. It will cost about $32,000 and the funding is coming from DOT's general budget.

This sidewalk widening project has been about three years in the making. In the last few years, the Bedford Avenue L subway station has become a popular park-and-ride for bicycle commuters. With increasing complaints of bikes blocking the crowded sidewalks, in 2004 the NYPD began dropping in and sawing bikes off of the street furniture with chain saws.

"Clearly, that was a bad solution," says Teresa Toro, chair of Community Board 1's transportation committee and New York City Coordinator at the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. "Everybody in the community recognizes that there are so many more people biking. There was much frustration around the police doing those bike raids, clipping locks."

Toro credits Brooklyn DOT Deputy Borough Commissioner Dalila Hall for working with the community to develop solutions. As plans were being developed to build out the sidewalks at Bedford and North 7th, DOT fast-tracked the installation of about 150 new bicycle parking spots in the neighborhood.

In April 2005, Brooklyn Community Board 1 approved a plan to widen the sidewalks and remove parking along two stretches of North 7th Street at Bedford Avenue (see the draft plan below). The widening along the southeast corner -- the part of the project that DOT has agreed to get done in the next six months -- is aimed more at improving pedestrian access to the crowded subway stairwell than increasing bike parking. "There will be a few bike racks away from the subway stairs. But the northwest corner would have been the one with a ton of bike racks on it," Toro says.

The sidewalk build-out and bike parking on the northwest corner is on hold for lack of funding. The southeast corner is being done first, Toro says, because "It has been recognized as a real need for a while. The city's Subway-Sidewalk Interface project (PDF file) identified that as a trouble spot and it came up again during the Williamsburg-Greenpoint rezoning discussions."

This raises the question: On the northwest corner, couldn't DOT install the bicycle parking directly on the street rather than taking the time and money to build-out a sidewalk extension? There are many successful designs and models for on-street bike parking in other cities. Greg Raisman of the Portland DOT pointed out in Streetsblog's comments section that the 13 on-street bike racks pictured in this video cost only $4,000 to install. Raisman also notes one downside to on-street bike parking: The street sweepers can't get in to clean the curb.

That question aside, convincing an outer borough Community Board to get rid of car parking spaces is no small task. For Livable Streets advocates interested in pushing for similar projects in other neigborhoods, Toro's Community Board political savvy is worth noting. One of the reasons why her community didn't mind giving up ten car parking spaces to bicycles is because Toro's committee was simultaneously working to reclaim curbside parking space elsewhere in the neighborhood.

"We had a lot of outdated parking restrictions from when this was an industrial community.  The use had changed for lots of buildings but the parking rules had not," Toro says. By the time the vote came up to approve the sidewalk widening and bike parking plan, her committee had already freed up 40 or 50 new parking spaces in the area. "So, it wasn't a hardship to give up five or ten parking spots. There wasn't much opposition to this," Toro says.

Only 30 percent of the households in Brooklyn's Community Board 1 own cars. "More people walk and bike than drive on Bedford Avenue. I see this as an equity issue and an acknowledgement that car owners are not the only ones who use the street and use public space."

The Department of Transportation's sketch.