Tonight: Weigh in on Bike-Share Stations for Downtown Brooklyn

There's an important meeting of the Brooklyn Community Board 2 transportation committee coming up tonight, where the DOT bike-share team will present proposed locations for Citi Bike stations.

The bike-share siting process has been praised by several community boards, and like all the other CBs within the bike-share service area, Brooklyn CB 2 hosted a public workshop where participants expressed their preferences for station locations. But the Brooklyn Daily Eagle makes it seem as if the entire program was sprung on the unwitting district overnight. Under the headline "Heights battles bike stations," the paper quotes Judy Stanton, executive director of the Brooklyn Heights Association, who complains that bike-share will take up street space better suited for parking cars.

Of course, the fact is bike-share will increase options for getting to and from Brooklyn Heights and other neighborhoods, not limit them. For every parking space that's no longer available for cars, the neighborhood will gain many more public bicycle docks. Siting the stations in the street will preserve a much more important commodity than car storage: the neighborhood's scarce sidewalk space.

To help ensure that rationality prevails, head to tonight's meeting, to be held at 6 p.m. in the Founders Hall Auditorium at St. Francis College, 180 Remsen St.