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March 19, 2010
DOT Creates Car Mayhem On Little Old Park Place
Bike Rides in Brooklyn... And Other Matters.
Blogger Matthew Weinstein reports on the traffic disaster that Bruce Ratner's street closings have wreaked on Park Place — traffic impacts that were completely unforeseen in the 4,000-page Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement.
The term Park Place appears in only a handful of places in the gigantic ass-covering document, and only in the context of being an intersection with Vanderbilt Avenue. The traffic studies did not anticipate backups on Park Place — it didn't even analyze possible effects on that quiet residential street — so needless to say, neither did it proffer any remedies.
But take heart, Mr. Weinstein, these non-impact impacts should only persist for 30 years or so.
I'm a bicyclist and the very last person you know who would criticize the DOT for restricting car traffic. Kudos to them for all the new bike lanes in our city and other traffic-calming schemes designed to make our streets quieter, safer and more breathable and to get people out of their cars and into mass transit or onto their bikes or feet!
However! Bruce Ratner recently broke ground for his mega-development and stadium at the Atlantic train yards. Not only is this ill-begotten land-grab-of-a-scheme stinking to high heaven from corruption and public/private malfeasance, it's also creating havoc on our quiet, residential streets due to collusion, I believe, between the billionaire developer and the city to make things go smoothly ... not for you and me but for Ratner and his stadium.
If you live in Prospect Heights, you may have noticed a huge uptick in traffic on little old Park Place, a narrow, residential eastbound-only street. But you may not know the reason. Here's why. If one drives south on Flatbush Avenue - i.e. from the Manhattan Bridge heading toward Prospect Park, there are very few opportunities to turn left (eastbound). Yet, large amounts of people live in our neighborhoods to the east of Flatbush Avenue: in Prospect Heights and Crown Heights and beyond.
If you live in those neighborhoods and want to go east from Flatbush Avenue, once you pass Lafayette Avenue, you cannot turn left for almost a full mile, until you reach Park Place! That's because --
• There's no left on Hanson Place - it was closed permanently a while ago.
• There's no left on Atlantic Avenue.
• There's no left on Fifth Avenue or Pacific Street - closed permanently.
• There's no left on Dean Street - ever! (until last week one could at least make a left after 7 pm and all day Sundays).
• There's no left on St. Marks Avenue.
This traffic nightmare was "designed" by the folks at DOT and it has transformed Park Place from a relatively quiet and traffic-free street into a major eastbound thoroughfare. Long lines of traffic between Flatbush Avenue and Vanderbilt Avenue are common - cars very often take several red light cycles to finally pass through the intersection at Vanderbilt.
Posted by eric at March 19, 2010 9:41 PM