No Land Grab

Arena concerns hit home

Net effect of housing will be road woes, say foes
It's not the home games - it's the housing.

By HUGH SON
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Brooklyn residents afraid that sports fans flocking to Bruce Ratner's proposed Nets arena will create a traffic nightmare have something else to worry about.

Basketball games will generate a fraction of the traffic compared to Ratner's nearly 7 million square feet of planned residential and office space, the Daily News has learned.

According to preliminary figures from Community Consulting Services, a Brooklyn-based transit think tank, the other parts of the project, which Ratner has named the Atlantic Yards, will bring 9,000 vehicles to the neighborhood on a regular weekday.

Arena events like Nets games will add 2,500 vehicles to that total - but that would be limited to nights there are home games and other happenings.

Compared to the rest of the development, the arena traffic "is not a big deal," said CCS engineer Brian Ketcham, who authored the study. "The community should be concerned about the bigger picture; that's the Catch-22."

While a Ratner press release stated that the project's proximity to the Atlantic Ave. subway and LIRR terminal will "drastically reduce vehicular traffic," that location also may pose its largest hurdle. Transit experts, politicians and commuters deem the intersection of Atlantic, Flatbush and Fourth Aves. - adjacent to Ratner's 21-acre dream development - a traffic black hole.

"It's definitely a bottleneck," said Gene Russianoff, a lawyer for the Straphangers Campaign. "That intersection is always the choke point when you're headed from Manhattan to Brooklyn."

State Sen. Velmanette Montgomery (D-Brooklyn), who represents the area where the arena would be built, has a view of the clogged intersection from her district office. During rush hour, she says, "those streets are pretty much a parking lot."

If Ratner's entire project becomes reality, "the traffic there is going to be a nightmare - just unbearable," said Montgomery, who is opposed to the plan.

"It's no leap of faith to say that what is already a bad intersection will get much worse with more development," added Robert Perris, district manager of Community Board 2.

According to Ratner spokesman Barry Baum, part of the plan includes a widening of two blocks of Flatbush Ave. between Atlantic Ave. and Dean St. The new northbound lane would likely be used for bus service.

The extra capacity doesn't hurt, Ketcham said - "but it's not even scratching the surface when it comes to fixing the problem."

The traffic engineer believes that even a widened Flatbush Ave. will be "overwhelmed" by cars from Ratner's development - as well as the extra traffic stemming from the downtown Brooklyn development plan.

Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Boreum Hill and northern Park Slope will also bear the burden of increased traffic as cars make use of local side streets - not just the location of the arena and Atlantic Yards, sources said.

Brooklyn straphangers and bus riders won't be spared, either. The CCS study estimated there will be 29,000 more subway riders and 10,000 more people on buses pouring into the redeveloped neighborhood.

Russianoff said he thought the project's location was a good one in terms of public transportation, but he had questions about the impact of all those riders.

"What will this mean for crowding? A big issue is whether there is enough existing capacity on the subway and LIRR," Russianoff said.

A spokeswoman for the Economic Development Corp. said the city's environmental impact analysis of the Ratner project will be available for public review at a March 24 hearing.

While the success and scope of Ratner's project may depend in part on whether the billionaire developer can ease concerns about traffic, one Brooklyn resident has already decided she's against it.

Astrid Tsang, 25, said that she is regularly caught in gridlock for 10 minutes at Atlantic and Flatbush Aves. when she takes a cab to Park Slope after a night out in Manhattan.

"I think it's going to be an absolute nightmare," Tsang said of the arena and Atlantic Yards. "It's already a nasty intersection."

Originally published on February 29, 2004

[Photo caption: Crowded intersection of Flatbush, Atlantic and Fourth Aves. will see 9,000 more cars and 40,000 more transit users per day if the Atlantic Yards project goes through.]