Clarence Eckerson put together a really nice little StreetFilm featuring some of the public space improvements that are now underway in various parts of New York City. He's got before-and-after shots of 9th Street Bike Lane, DUMBO Pearl Street Piazza, Broadway Bus Bulbs, the Bedford Avenue Parking Swap, and, a personal favorite, the bike rack that sprouted up outside of his own apartment building.

The debate is over, and as of today the Ninth St. bike lanes are swiftly becoming a reality.

Photo: Courtesy Zoe Ryder White

A view of the area now occupied by the Wollman Rink circa 1930.

Last night the Prospect Park Alliance hosted a "community input session" for the proposed Lakeside Center, a facility that is to replace the 45-year-old Wollman rink and "provide Park visitors with a state-of-the-art, year-round facility featuring two new outdoor ice skating rinks, classrooms, and several amenities" including "a cafe, gift shop, information desk and exhibit space." The new center will be a "green" building designed to "restore the landscape and lake vistas of the original Olmsted and Vaux design" for the park.

As so often seems to be the case in outer borough community meetings, a good portion of last night's discussion centered around the question of automobile storage. While there were none of the histrionics of the 9th Street traffic calming meetings, some of the most intense concerns were expressed by people who use the 300-space Wollman Rink parking lot for visits to the park and for Q train park-and-rides. They want to make sure that a sufficiently large (and free) parking lot is designed into the new plan.

Before the meeting started, participants were invited to check out the historical research that had been done showing the evolution of this particular area of the park. Prospect Park Alliance president Tupper Thomas kicked off the meeting by conveying that the purpose of the Lakeside Center was to replace the Wollman Rink, the parks's "most unattractive feature," and create the "great center the park never had."

The laundry list of potential uses for the new facility is long and as the programming process continues, Thomas is asking for more input from the community. For those interested there will be another meeting on Wednesday, May 30th from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm.

Thomas said that, in the new plan, as currently conceived, car parking would be moved to the area known as Breeze Hill. She said the Prospect Park Alliance is working with transportation consultant Sam Schwartz to develop the plan and minimize conflicts between automobiles and park users. The number of parking spots would be reduced to approximately 150.

Dashed lines indicate current location of Wollman Rink and locker house (upper center) and parking lot (left).

A community member asked Thomas about building an underground parking lot under the new facility. She said that that would be very expensive and "out of the picture" unless a donor was willing to fund it in return for having their name put on, well, an underground parking garage.

She also said that the MTA likes having parking in that area so that people can use it as a commuter lot with its close proximity to the Q stop at Parkside Avenue.

A resident living in the area of the Parkside Avenue and Ocean Avenue intersection noted that the entrance there to the park is not pedestrian friendly. It seems that attempting to fix some of the conflicts there would be included in the plans for the new facility.

Thomas, who has supported efforts to expand car-free hours in Prospect Park, was also asked if the parking lot could be eliminated completely in anticipation of a completely car-free park. Her response was that "Brooklyn is still not a car-free place."

She was also asked if there would be a fee for parking in the new parking lot, given that people taking the subway pay $2 to get to the park and that people using the new facility would be charged admission for some of the amenities. Her response was that they had previously proposed the idea of weekend parking charges, but this idea was "beaten down in the press." However, she does see the validity of the argument for charging a fee for parking in Prospect Park.

A crowd of about 65 people were on-hand for DOT's presentation and the Q&A period that followed. Supporters outnumbered opponents of the plan by a two-to-one margin, at least. And the composition of the crowd highlighted a stark generational divide, with opponents of seemingly all falling into the 45-to-80 age bracket.

I'm Seeing Green has a report on the meeting and the arguments that were put forward in opposition to the bike lane portion of the plan in particular. The blog notes:

What was missing from it all was a feeling that maybe, just maybe, the roads could be for us all... bikes, cars, trucks, buses and walkers. Being a strong proponent of shared streets, it was sad for me to see so many staking out their personal positions without regard to the larger picture.

Prior to the meeting, Borough President Marty Markowitz weighed in with a letter of support for the 9th Street "Road Diet" plan. "I believe that it incorporates traffic calming measures which are much desired by the greater Park Slope community," he wrote. "I would therefore like to indicate my support for the concepts presented in this proposal." No word on whether Road Diets would become part of the BP's annual "Lighten Up Brooklyn" public health campaign. 

A staffer from Velmanette Montgomery's office was handing out letters of support from the State Senator at the front door. And Council Member Sara Gonzalez sent a representative to read a strong letter of support at the beginning of the meeting. Council Member Bill de Blasio has, likewise, expressed support for the plan. State Senator Eric Adams and Assembly Member Jim Brennan, both of whom have expressed doubts about the plan, were not present at the meeting.

Along with the more than 350 letters generated by Park Slope Neighbors, Transportation Alternatives and Streetsblog readers, the approval of these elected officials virtually guarantees that DOT has more than enough public support to go forward with its 9th Street plan regardless of how the full Community Board votes on June 13.

So, good work, folks. I would say that this is a win. But stay tuned!

Konrad Kaletsch's street safety petition to DOT, July 2005.

Tonight, the Department of Transportation's Traffic Safety and Bike Lane plan for Park Slope's crash-prone 9th Street comes up before the transportation committee of Community Board 6 for the second time. Here are  the details:

6:30 pm at Old First Church
729 Carroll Street at 7th Avenue

As has been documented ad nauseam here on Streetsblog, a small but vocal group of 9th Street residents with influence on the Community Board have set out to kill DOT's "Road Diet" plan. They enlisted the support of State Senator Eric Adams, who represents the two blocks of 9th Street closest to Prospect Park and Assembly Member Jim Brennan, who has written a letter in opposition to the plan despite an overwhelming number of calls, letters and visits to his office in support of it.

Advocates of DOT's plan have generated 275 letters of support to Borough President Marty Markowitz and 160 to Community Board 6. The vast majority of these letters were written by Park Slope residents for whom 9th Street is an important community street. At least 20 9th Street residents have expressed support for the plan as well.

The Community Board may very well be a forum where it is simply impossible for advocates of this plan to win. Still, supporters need to show up, make their presence known and rational voices heard.

Tomorrow evening the transportation committee of Community Board 6 is meeting to take up DOT's 9th Street Safety and Bike Lane plan. The meeting will be at 6:30 pm at Old First Church, 729 Carroll Street at 7th Avenue. Park Slope Neighbors and Transportation Alternatives have generated nearly 400 letters of support for DOT's plan. Still, it will be important for Livable Streets advocates to show up and make their presence known. Speaking of letters of support, here is an important one:

May 13, 2007

Dear Borough President Marty Markowitz:

I led my neighborhood in a successful endeavor to make 9th street a safer thoroughfare for both pedestrians and vehicles in August 2005. Your support at that time made a huge difference (the result that had the greatest impact was the new traffic light installed at 10th street that slows traffic entering the 9th st intersection). 

There is a new initiative to make changes to the street that further fulfills on making 9th street safe. I am referring to the DOT plans to reduce the two lanes to one and adding bike lanes and a meridian in the middle.  Having looked at the proposal, I see that it is a safety win/win for pedestrians and vehicles and not only support the plan myself, but believe that the 1200 people that signed the 2005 petition would support this step toward safety and traffic calming as well. 

I request your support once again in urging DOT to move forward with this improvement.  Thanks.

Sincerely,
Konrad Kaletsch
XXX Ninth Street
Brooklyn, NY 11215

Photo: Aaron Naparstek, August 2, 2005, 8:10 am

On Thursday, May 17, the transportation committee of Community Board 6 will take up the 9th Street issue once again. This very same committee voted in favor of DOT's plan back in March but that wasn't good enough for the full board, who sent the plan back to committee, presumably, for more information from DOT. It is important that people who support DOT's "Road Diet" plan show up, make their support known and, most important, try to educate Community Board members about its benefits for the neighborhood. Mark your calendars:

Thursday, May 17, 6:30 pm
Old First Church
729 Carroll Street
(corner of 7th Avenue)

Likewise, supporters will need to come out to the general board meeting on Wednesday, June 13, 6:30 pm. It would be sad to see CB6, the Community Board with, probably, the highest rate of cycling in the entire city reject a traffic safety plan for 9th Street because it includes bike lanes.

One of the main reasons why this group of 9th Street residents wants to eliminate the bike lane portion of the plan is because they believe that bike lanes will prevent them from double-parking and will also cost them more in traffic tickets.

Robert Levine, the Community Board member who has been leading the neighborhood opposition, has been telling elected officials and anyone else who will listen that the fine for double-parking in a bike lane is higher than normal double-parking fines.

There is no basis in reality for Levine's claim. The Department of Finance web site makes clear that double-parking in a bike lane, Violation 48, carries the same $115 fine as double-parking anywhere else, Violation 46.

And here's the kicker: It turns out that the New York City parking summons doesn't even have a check box for double-parking in a bike lane! Violation 48, "Stopping, standing or parking within a designated bicycle lane," isn't even on there. (Thus exists the special niche filled by this web site).

Unfortunately, Levine doesn't seem to be much interested in policy arguments, studies or facts. On 9th Street he is pursuing a kind of "Swift Boat" strategy -- just keep raising doubts, stoking anxiety and throwing mud at DOT's plan and eventually some of it sticks, people have doubts and the plan becomes "controversial."

Don't make the mistake John Kerry made in the 2004 presidential campaign. Livable Streets advocates need to show up next Thursday and make sure that the facts are known. I fully believe that the more people understand DOT's plan for 9th Street, the more they will see that it is thoughtful, responsive and something that needs to move forward.

The Department of City Planning just released its 2007 New York City Bicycle Survey. With over 1,000 survey respondents, the report documents several trends and key findings regarding bike commuting, parking, and facililties in the city. Some of the highlights include:

• For Bicycle Commuters: 44% start in Manhattan and 41% start in Brooklyn; 81% end in Manhattan and 10% end in Brooklyn.
• At the work place: 52% park and lock their bikes outdoors, 48% indoors.
• The average commute time for cyclists is 35 minutes.
• The most common reason that non-commuting cyclists do not commute by bike is because of driver behavior/traffic and lack of safe storage at work.
• The most common reason commuter cyclists do commute by bike is because it is healthy/good exercise and because it is environmentally friendly.

The report contains some great graphics. The map above shows where bike commuter trips originate, broken down by ZIP code. It turns out that Park Slope 11215 is the neighborhood with the highest rate of bike commuting in the entire city. Manhattan Valley 10025, at the northernmost end of the Hudson River Greenway runs a close second. The neighborhoods of western Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan are up there too. And while we're at it, check out the massive bike commuting dead zone known as Eastern Queens, in gray above.

Not to make everything into a 9th Street issue but I hope this data shows State Senator Eric Adams' chief of staff, Ingrid P. Lewis-Martin that it would be far more accurate to refer to supporters of DOT's plan for bike lanes on 9th Street as "constituents" rather than "outside groups" and "special interests," the terms she used in my phone call with her.

The entire report can be downloaded here.

For those who are just coming in to the story, a few weeks ago the Department of Transportation put forward a thoughtful, responsive and well-designed "Road Diet" plan for Park Slope's dangerous, crash-prone 9th Street. Sadly, a rather well organized group of residents led by a Community Board 6 executive committee member named Robert Levine has set out to kill the plan (or, at least, get rid of the bike lane portion of it).

Here is an unedited video clip of Levine making his case against DOT's plan at last month's CB6 board meeting:

Levine says at the outset, "I'm not against traffic calming. I'm not against bike lanes. I think the combination of both on 9th Street is a dangerous situation." To Bob, the bike lanes and the traffic calming are two entirely separate things.

I've now sat through three community meetings on this issue and have tried hard to explain how neighborhood streets designed to accomodate motorists, pedestrians, transit users and cyclists tend to be safer, more functional and more community-friendly than streets designed only for motor vehicle traffic. Bike lanes, in other words, are traffic calming and congestion relief and even a way to free up some parking spaces if they help people making local trips to leave their cars at home. U.S. planners call this idea "Complete Streets." In Europe, many call it "Shared Space."

While Levine is relatively calm in the video clip above, it has been exceedingly difficult to explain these ideas because each time I have spoken at a meeting he has, literally, tried to shout me down or use some procedural tactic to prevent me from being allowed to speak. It seems that the last thing Levine wants is for his neighbors to actually see DOT's plan and understand it.

Why all of the emotion and anger over this project (and where the heck was it when a 77-year-old woman was mowed down on 9th St. and Seventh Ave. in August 2004, about four doors down from Levine's own house)?

Bike lanes are clearly the primary target. But in the video above Levine's intensity kicks up a notch when he gets to the topic of double-parking:

We were told years ago that we can double park on 9^th Street the way one-way streets can [on street cleaning days]. The precinct captain told us at a block meeting that we would be allowed to do that since it wouldn't block the buses and there would still be plenty of room because the street is wide. And that lasted about a month until the meter maids started giving out tickets.

The bike lanes, it seems, are in the way of Bob Levine's double-parking. And while you might think that city officials would never prioritize double-parking over facilities that keep cyclists safer, get them off the sidewalks and help the city as a whole become more environmentally sustainable, Levine has been effective in getting elected officials to press his case.

State Assembly Member Jim Brennan has contacted DOT on behalf of the Ninth Street Block Association and in a letter to Acting DOT Commissioner Judith Bergtraum, State Senator Eric Adams wrote, "Prior to placing these lanes on a street used as a main traffic hub, one must consider alternatives." Adams asks, "What studies or proof has been provided to demonstrate that bike lanes contribute to a decrease in accidents?" Adams' Chief of Staff, Ingrid P. Lewis-Martin likewise told me on the phone, "the jury is out" on whether bike lanes make streets safer.

Actually, the jury delivered a clear verdict on that issue.

In September 2006 New York City's Departments of Transportation, Public Health and the NYPD came out with a report entitled, Bicyclist Fatalities and Serious Injuries in New York City 1996-2005 (PDF). The unprecedented multi-agency study found that of the 225 bicyclists who were killed on the streets of New York over that ten year period, only one fatality took place in a marked bike lane. The report concluded that bike lanes enhance motorists' awareness of bikes and are a significant contributor to cyclist safety.

If, however, as seems to be the case with Levine, your interest is in removing cyclists from 9th Street rather than keeping them safe, there is still a significant body of independent research showing how a "Road Diet" like the one proposed for 9th Street helps pedestrians and motorists by reducing the rate of car crashes, smoothing traffic flow and making a street safer and more comfortable for all users.

Bike lanes, it turns out, can be beneficial to New Yorkers who aren't even using bikes.  

Fortunately, Levine seems to be fighting a losing battle. This week's Brooklyn Papers letters page contains an absolute outpouring of support for DOT's plan and at its most recent shout-down, the Park Slope Civic Council managed to pass a motion thanking DOT for its "response to long-standing community concerns regarding the unusually high rate of motor vehicle crashes, injuries and fatalities along Park Slope's 9th Street" and offering some good suggestions for how to make the plan more palatable to the neighborhood. Council Member Bill de Blasio supports DOT's plan and it looks like a number of other elected officials are coming aboard as well. There will be an important meeting of CB6's transportation committee on Thursday, May 17 that supporters of DOT's plan need to attend.

I'm optimistic that by the end of July we'll see slimmer, trimmer, safer 9th Street. But the opponents of this plan have the energy, local political clout and free time to make things difficult. Let's just hope the politicians allow the planners do their job.

This weekend's full-page Wall Street Journal article on the measures that European cities are taking to make themselves more bike-friendly makes for an interesting comparison to what I'm seeing in my own neighborhood. While Brooklyn's Ninth Street Block Association "expresses concern" (i.e. yells and screams) that new bike lanes will increase traffic congestion, European cities, with 30 years of experience to look back on, see it quite differently:

Danish and Dutch officials say their countries might have been more congested if protests in the 1970s and 1980s had not sparked the impetus for building bicycle-lane networks. The arguments for more biking were mostly about health and congestion -- only in the past year has the environment started to be a factor.

And now with concerns about climate change growing, Europeans are setting aggressive targets to increase bicycling:

Norway aims to raise bicycle traffic to at least 8% of all travel by 2015 -- double its current level -- while Sweden hopes to move from 12% to 16% by 2010. This summer, Paris will put thousands of low-cost rental bikes throughout the city to cut traffic, reduce pollution and improve parking.

The city of Copenhagen plans to double its spending on biking infrastructure over the next three years, and Denmark is about to unveil a plan to increase spending on bike lanes on 2,000 kilometers, or 1,240 miles, of roads. Amsterdam is undertaking an ambitious capital-improvement program that includes building a 10,000-bike parking garage at the main train station -- construction is expected to start by the end of next year. The city is also trying to boost public transportation usage, and plans to soon enforce stricter car-parking fines and increase parking fees to discourage people from driving.

Meanwhile, bicycle riding is becoming as big a status symbol in some European cities as a blinged out Cadillac Escalade is here in New York City.

I bet that we are less than three years away from this culture shift in New York City. I will be shocked if we don't have a City Council candidate in 2009 racing to campaign events on a bicycle and making a real show of it:

Riding a bike for some has more cachet than driving a Porsche. Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende sometimes rides to work, as do lawyers, CEOs (Lars Rebien Sorensen, chief executive of Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, is famous for his on-bike persona) and members of parliament, often with empty children's seats in back. Dutch Prince Maurits van Oranje is often seen riding around town. "It's a good way to keep in touch with people on the streets," says Tjeerd Herrema, deputy mayor of Amsterdam. Mr. Herrema's car and driver still make the trip sometimes -- to chauffeur his bag when he has too much work to carry.

For Khilma van der Klugt, a 38-year-old bookkeeper, biking is more about health and convenience than concern for the environment. Her two older children ride their own bikes on the 25-minute commute to school while she ferries the four-year-old twins in a big box attached to the front of her bike. Biking gives her children exercise and fresh air in the morning, which helps them concentrate, she says. "It gets all their energy out." She owns a car, but she only uses it when the weather is really bad or she's feeling especially lazy.

Caroline Vonk, a 38-year-old government official, leaves home by bike at 8 a.m. and drops off her two children at a day-care center. By 8:15, she's on her way to work, stopping to drop clothes at the dry cleaner or to buy some rolls for lunch. On the way home, she makes a quick stop at a shop, picks up the children and is home by 5:55. "It is a pleasant way to clear my head," she says.

Can you imagine New York City government or an advocacy group like T.A. running a program like this?:

The programs for non-natives target those who view biking as a lower form of transportation than cars. "If they don't start cycling it will hurt," says Marjolein de Lange, who heads Amsterdam's pro-bicycle union Fietsersbond and has worked with local councils to set up classes for immigrant women.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, 23 women -- many in head-scarves -- gathered at a recreational center north of Amsterdam to follow seven Fietsersbond volunteers to learn to navigate through traffic. The three-hour event cost €3 (about $4) and included practice weaving in and out of orange cones and over blocks of wood. It ended with all of the women gathering in a park for cake and lemonade.

Though she faltered at times, Rosie Soemer, a 36-year-old mother of two who came to the Netherlands from Suriname, was sold. "It is so much easier to go everywhere by bike," she says.

As the Department of Transportation's "Road Diet" plan for Brooklyn's 9th Street stirs up the ire of a small but well-organized and politically-connected group of home and car owners, it's worth taking a look at this Parsons Brinckerhoff presentation, "Applying the Road Diet for Livable Communities." PB's case studies show that, after properly executed Road Diets, car crashes and speeding are drastically reduced, pedestrians "feel" that streets have become safer and more pleasant, and very little excess traffic is diverted to neighboring streets. Someone want to forward this to State Senator Eric Adams? 

Thanks to Streetsblog reader Greg Raisman from Portland for forwarding this along.

Sources say that first-term Brooklyn State Senator Eric Adams has delivered a lengthy letter to Department of Transportation Acting Commissioner Judith Bergtraum expressing opposition to DOT's 9th Street traffic safety and bike lane plan. Though the Senator, a former cop, has no urban planning or traffic engineering background, he questions DOT's assertion that its plan is an effective way to calm traffic and make Park Slope's most dangerous and crash-prone street safer for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists.

Check that: Adams doesn't seem to be interested in cyclist safety on 9th Street at all, despite the fact that he represents Prospect Heights, Park Slope and Windsor Terrace, districts with some of the highest rates of bike commuting in the entire city, along with Prospect Park -- the number one bicycling destination in Brooklyn. Rather, Adams seems to be angling for a DOT plan that, essentially, de-maps 9th Street as a bike route. Now that's a heck of a way for a public official to celebrate Bike Month and show his support for the Mayor's new Long-Term Sustainability Plan.

If you live in Adams district, now would be a really good time to call, fax or visit his office and let him know of your support for DOT's plan. You might also suggest that he get his mind wrapped around the concept of "Complete Streets" -- the idea that urban streets function better and more safely when they are designed for all different types of users, not just speeding motor vehicles.

572 Flatbush Avenue
Brooklyn, New York 11225
Phone: (718) 284-4700
Fax: (718) 282-3585

Senator Adams needs to hear from constituents who support this plan because he spent Saturday morning two weekends ago meeting with a group of about fifteen mostly car- and brownstone-owning 9th Street residents who are deeply opposed to DOT's plan. A source who was at the meeting reports, "everyone kept saying they aren't anti-bike and that this isn't about double-parking, though, it always seemed to come back to double-parking."

Adams, along with his State Assembly colleague Jim Brennan, who has also sent a critical letter to DOT, both seem to have been swayed by Ninth Street residents' factually incorrect claim that the fines for double-parking in a bike lane are higher than the fines for double-parking elsewhere. In fact, it's a $115 fine either way. But more important: The DOT plan does nothing to prevent motorists from double-parking. DOT's presentation actually includes a diagram of vehicles double-parked on the three-foot buffer just outside the bike lane. The DOT plan shows drivers how to double-park (see slide 12)!

Of course, the bigger issue here is the fact that a Brooklyn State Senator, a former law enforcement officer, appears to be prioritizing a fundamentally illegal activity -- double-parking -- ahead of pedestrian safety, bicycling and three years worth of community efforts to get DOT to fix a street where two fifth grade boys and a 77-year-old woman were killed in 2004 while crossing the street, in the crosswalk, with the pedestrian signal giving them right-of-way.

Former Senator Carl Andrews, supporter of Car-Free Prospect Park, we miss you, man.

DOT's press office just called to say that there is no consipracy to hide the plan for 9th Street. They sent it to me a few days ago but it got stuck in their e-mail inbox. Doh!

Download the presentation as a PDF here. 

At the big Houston Street bike lane meeting a couple of weeks ago, DOT's Ryan Russo and Josh Benson told Manhattan's Community Board 2 that physically-separated bike lanes should only be installed on streets with a maximum of 8 intersections per mile. Houston Street has 18 intersections per mile which, they believe, makes it not a good spot for a Class I bike lane.

Ninth Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn has exactly 8 intersections per mile. It therefore meets DOT's own standards for when a physically-separated, on-street bike lane is warranted! On top of that, neighborhood people are upset about the idea of a bike lane preventing them from occassionally double-parking to load and unload their cars. A physically-separated bike lane might be an answer to those concerns and a real win-win.

The lanes could be put between the sidewalk and parked cars as is done in so many great biking cities around the world. Here is an example from Copenhagen, Denmark:

Another possibility would be to run both lanes between the sidewalk and parked cars along the southern side of 9th Street, away from the double-parking commotion in front of the grocery store, post office and car service station. Here is a two-way bike lane I saw in Paris, France recently (no one is riding because it is in the middle of a hail storm):

It's just Thermoplast. Can't we experiment in New York City?

Ninth Street is a very wide street for the number of vehicles that actually use it. Overly wide streets may tend to encourage speeding and create dangerous conditions. On 9th Street we often see these dangers where the left-turning vehicles have to cross two lanes of traffic while keeping an eye on pedestrians in the far-off crosswalk.
Vanderbilt Avenue in Prospect Heights had a very similar problem to 9th Street. So, in May 2006 DOT striped a 15-foot wide median with left-turn bays, reducing Vanderbilt to one travel lane in each direction and bringing left-turning cars closer to the crosswalk where the pedestrian conflicts occur.

Many in Prospect Heights will tell you that the Vanderbilt median has helped to calm traffic, make left-turns less dangerous, and foster a safer, more pleasant pedestrian environment. In the future DOT says that it hopes to turn the striped median into a raised, planted median kind of like Park Avenue in Manhattan.

DOT's success on Vanderbilt Avenue is, I believe, the basis for the 9th Street proposal. But no one at DOT is talking very much and these planning processes are done in secret, so who really knows?

Here are some Vanderbilt Avenue before and after photos:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Ninth Street is very broad. It's got two wide travel lanes going in each direction and a lane of curbside parking on each side. DOT, I've been told, believes that 9th Street has "excess capacity," especially up towards the Park. In other words, the street is much wider than is needed for the number of vehicles that actually use it.

Car-free moments on 9th Street above Seventh Ave. are not hard to find.

Overly wide streets often tend to encourage speeding and create dangerous conditions. The intersection of one-way Eighth Avenue and 9th Street is a well known hot spot. In July 2005 a sedan went through the front door of Dizzy's Restaurant after making an ill-considered left turn on to Eighth Avenue. With a busy subway entrance and a sidewalk café right there, "I expected to see bodies strewn about the sidewalk when I came outside," said Dizzy's owner Matheo Pisciotta. Miraculously, no one was hurt.

Dizzy's Restaurant after a sedan came through the front door for brunch, July 13, 2005.

After that incident, a 9th Street resident named Konrad Kaletsch teamed up with Ben and Matheo, the owners of Dizzy's, to launch a petition drive for safety improvements along 8th Avenue and 9th Street (pictured above). They collected 1,187 signatures and even got Borough President Markowitz pushing DOT to make some fixes.

When cars aren't coming through the front door, Dizzy's is a Livable Streets posterchild.

Parts of the proposal that DOT is offering tonight appear to be in direct response to the community concerns put forward two years ago. Specifically, the community asked DOT to install left-turn lanes on 9th Street so that motorists wouldn't be so far away from the crosswalk they were turning in to.

So very much unlike DOT's March 15 one-way plan, today's DOT proposal isn't being dropped on the comunity from completely out of nowhere. It has been in the cooker for a couple of years as part of the package of Greater Downtown Brooklyn Transportation Improvements (PDF) that emerged from the fabled Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project. Likewise, the bike lanes are part of a comprehensive, long-term, citywide bicycle plan which aims to install more than 200 miles of new bike lanes throughout the city and create better connections to city parks, in particular.

Could DOT be doing a much better job of including community stakeholders in the actual planning process? You bet. But it is nice to see the agency responding to real concerns rather sending in a traffic engineer with solutions to problems that we don't have.

Photos: Aaron Naparstek

While I haven't managed to get a look at DOT's proposal, we know a few things about it: It will include some pedestrian improvements at Grand Army Plaza, new bike lanes for Red Hook and a new design for 9th Street. The Grand Army Plaza changes, supposedly, include some of the improvements that the community has been advocating via the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. The Red Hook bike lanes sound pretty straightforward. As for 9th Street, DOT wants to do the following:

• Install two bike lanes heading in each direction.
• Stripe a median down the middle of the street with left-turn bays for cars at the intersections.
• Eliminate one travel lane in each direction.

Not surprising -- it's Brooklyn, folks! -- there is some opposition brewing to the 9th Street changes, the bike lanes in particular. Below is a discussion thread I found on the Brooklynian web site. Fans of MyBikeLane.com will have to wrap their heads around the idea that their bike lanes are actually blocking motorists ability to double-park. Is it only a matter of time before someone starts MyDoubleParkingSpot.com?:

Ninth Street Residents and Businesses

The Mar. 29, 2007 meeting of the Transportation Committee of Community Board 6 will discuss adding a painted centerlane (similar to Prospect Park SW) for left turns, AND bicycle lanes.

That will mean there will be only one lane for driving, and NO ability to stop your car to drop off/pick up at anytime because you will be blocking the bike lanes.

Please come out to the meeting to voice your opinion/opposition to these changes

Transportation Committee of
Community Board Six
Mar. 29, 2007
6:30 PM

Old First Reformed Church
729 Carroll Street
(Corner of 7th Avenue)