Order on the Court!
The Department of Transportation wants to add a protected bike lane on Court Street in Brooklyn, adding a key southbound cycling route from Downtown Brooklyn to Red Hook and taming a notorious two lane roadway.
DOT Director of Safety Projects and Programs Chris Brunson told the Transportation Committee of Brooklyn Community Board 2 on Thursday night that removing a travel lane and adding a protected bike lane on the east side of the street is essential for fixing Court Street, a pedestrian and cyclist-heavy street dominated by vehicle infrastructure and businesses.
Court Street's two lanes lead to massive issues for everyone who uses it: it has double the rate of sideswipe crashes compared to the rest of Brooklyn, thanks to drivers swerving around double parked cars, Brunson said.
And 57 percent of the pedestrian injuries on Court came when walkers were crossing with the light, meaning the injuries were specifically caused by drivers failing to yield, likely due to the offset nature of the side streets.
"The narrower street width for vehicles will de-incentivize double parking on the corridor," said Brunson. "Whenever we see double parking on a corridor with multiple lanes, it usually indicates excess capacity, because people say, 'Hey, I can just camp out in this lane, no one really is bothered by that.' When there's only one lane, people aren't going to camp out in one lane."
The general contours of the design involve cutting one travel lane from two-lane Court Street and add a protected bike lane to the east side of the street between Schermerhorn Street and Hamilton Avenue. Most of the bike lane will be parking-protected bike lanes, but in certain areas the DOT will use a different design:
- Between State Street and Atlantic Avenue, and West Ninth Street and Atlantic Avenue the agency will use Qwik Kurbs and maintain three travel lanes to keep larger traffic volumes moving through the intersections
- At Bergen Street and Congress Street, and at Sackett Street the parking lane will be a travel lane between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Eyes on the street
Court Street is a busy, commercial stretch of Brooklyn that drivers, cyclists and pedestrians all rely on to get around, and Brunson went over the many reasons that the reallocation of street space needs to be done in order to make life easier for everyone. Between 2022 and 2024, there were 165 reported crashes on the mile-long corridor that caused one death and injured 15 cyclists, 23 pedestrians and 35 drivers. The street was a Vision Zero Priority Corridor due to the number of severe injuries and deaths on the street in the last five years.
People who use Court Street to get around on foot and on bike told Streetsblog that they didn't feel safe on the block thanks to the double parking and excess space for cars and trucks.
"Court Street's not great, all the way Downtown Brooklyn is just double parked cars," said Ryan Greet. "So it's you feel like you're taking your life in your hands a little bit. My son's school is actually on Court, so I can't avoid it fully, but I do skip around and come up again, and avoid the Downtown Brooklyn part between Atlantic and Cadman Plaza."
Brunson noted in his presentation that pedestrians and cyclists are huge populations on Court. At nine of 12 analyzed intersections, pedestrians outnumbered vehicles. And despite the fact that there's no bike infrastructure on Court, he said that about 1,000 cyclists per day used the street when the data did a cyclist count last October. (There is a Trader Joe's at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and many other business attractions.)
The plan will eliminate 59 parking spots between Schermerhorn and Hamilton, which comes out to about 2.5 spots per block. Those parking spots will be turned into pedestrian islands and curb extensions, as well as turn-calming and daylighting all the way down the corridor. And in order to give businesses on the block reliable curb access, metered commercial loading zones will be in place during the morning and early afternoon, and those spots will become all-vehicle metered parking all other times.
The DOT aims to get the bike lane installed this summer. The agency still needs to present it to Brooklyn Community Board 6. The Community Board 2 Transportation Committee passed a resolution in support of the plan with five votes in favor, three abstentions and no votes in opposition.
Additional reporting by Jonah Schwarz
