Brooklyn Community Board Supports DOT’s 9th Street Plan

5:06 PM EDT on June 14, 2007

Last night, Brooklyn's Community Board 6 narrowly voted in favor of a resolution supporting the Department of Transportation's plan to put Park Slope's 9th Street on a "Road Diet."

So, that's that. After two months of fighting it's all over but for the Thermoplast. We would enjoy saying that the group of 9th Street residents who so intensely and irrationally opposed this plan "lost" last night but, in fact, they won because come July, their street is going to be a safer, more pleasant and functional place. Nevertheless, expect them to be out in force and going ballistic the first time there is a fender bender or the cops come around with parking tickets.

Gowanus Lounge has the story:

In the end, after nearly two months of wrangling and angry debate, the plan to install bike lanes and other traffic calming measures on Ninth Street in Park Slope was narrowly endorsedby Community Board 6 last night. The vote was 17-14 with twoabstentions. In April, CB6 had referred a motion endorsing the planback to its Transportation Committee, which held another meeting andproduced another motion in supportof the bike lanes. The support is conditioned on efforts to directbicyclists to Prospect Park's 15th Street entrance, to study trafficcalming measures on Prospect Park West and to examine the impact of thebike lanes after they are installed.
The Board's vote, however,was largely a formality, as the Department of Transportation hasindicated it would go ahead with the plan regardless of Community Boardbacking. There was a final burst of debate before the vote last night,with opponents again speaking out against the measure as supportersheld up signs in favor of the bike lanes. DOT intends to begininstalling the bike lanes shortly.

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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