Atlantic Yards Traffic and Parking

1:20 PM EDT on June 29, 2006

Continuing to ask the questions that don't seem to occur to his salaried colleagues in the local media, Atlantic Yards Report's Norman Oder has recently been digging in to the critical issues of traffic and parking around Forest City Ratner's massive urban renewal plan for Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

Yesterday, Oder questioned the Empire State Development Corporation's decision to exclude the East River bridge crossings from its public environmental review process.

One huge challenge for the Atlantic Yards project--or any other major development at the crossroads of Atlantic, Flatbush, and Fourth avenues--involves transportation, and the solution involves citywide issues, not merely project-related fixes. That's why the decision by the Empire State Development Corporation to exclude the East River crossings from the Final Scope of Analysis--the prelude to a Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Atlantic Yards project--was so shortsighted, especially since a good chunk of Nets fans are expected to come from New Jersey.

And today, Oder ponders the mystery of how much "interim surface parking" will be included in Forest City's plans for blocks that are not scheduled to be developed for at least another decade.

Missing from Forest City Ratner's latest brochure and the AtlanticYards.com web site is any mention of the two huge interim surface parking lots planned for the Atlantic Yards site, in the north central and southeast blocks of the site, blocks that are later slated for towers and landscaped open space. How big? How many spaces? For whom? For how long? We don't know yet.

Oder's got the questions. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the answers yet:

No one's willing to say much for now.

Aaron Naparstek

AARON NAPARSTEK is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparsteks journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is the author of "Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage" (Villard, 2003), a book of humorous haiku poetry inspired by the endless motorist sociopathy observed from his apartment window. Prior to launching Streetsblog, Naparstek worked as an interactive media producer, pioneering some of the Web's first music web sites, online communities, live webcasts and social networking services. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Naparstek is a co-founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community group and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. You can find more of his work here: http://www.naparstek.com.

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