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April 8, 2007
Thousands of more cars to deal with - Pols push for solutions to Atlantic Yds. glut
Courier-Life Publications
David Yassky dusted off his list of transportation fixes for Atlantic Yards and is shopping it around to anyone who will listen.
The Atlantic Yards project is giving traffic study engineers a buffet of food for thought.
The latest suggestions include a tunnel below Fifth or Sixth Avenues running from Flatbush Avenue to north of Atlantic Avenue.
If that isn’t in the offing, perhaps a traffic circle at the Flatbush/Atlantic/Fourth Avenue intersection similar to Grand Army Plaza.
Both were among the suggestions from Assemblymember Hakeem Jeffries and City Councilmember David Yassky in a letter recently sent to Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff and Empire State Development Corporation Downstate Chair Patrick Foye.
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FCRC spokesperson Loren Reigelhaupt responded that much of what Yassky and Jeffries are now proposing as ‘new ideas’ have already been analyzed or included in the FCRC traffic plan which the state approved in the fall of 2006.
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Finally, they suggested the creation of a community advisory task force to oversee and have input on every stage of the Atlantic Yards project.If implemented, this task force would join several others task forces created – both for and against – since the project was announced in 2003.
Jeffries and Yassky contended in their letter that FCRC “should fund a significant portion of, if not the entire expense of the traffic mitigation caused by the Atlantic Yards project…”
The letter also suggested that a substantial amount of the public funds — $100 million from the state budget and $205 from the city budget – be reserved for traffic and transportation improvements minus the cost of what FCRC is assuming.
NoLandGrab: It looks like Yassky and Jeffries are looking to slip in some realisitic measures, which have already been proposed by Ratner, behind some fantastic and financially prohibitive proposals that are non-starters, in order to claim a win-win for the neighborhood.
There might be some sense behind their proposal to require Ratner to pay for traffic and transportation improvements, but it is being downplayed in the press by some of the irrational items on the laundry list.
Posted by lumi at April 8, 2007 8:28 PM