DOT Lays Groundwork for Low-Traffic Neighborhood Around Greenpoint School
The Mamdani administration is setting the foundation for what advocates hope will be akin to a low-traffic neighborhood around P.S. 110 in a section of Greenpoint plagued by cars from nearby highways.
The Department of Transportation will install two car traffic diverters, close a pair of slip lanes to cars and clear parking near new pedestrian crossings to improve safety around P.S. 110 and adjacent McGolrick Park, officials revealed on Tuesday after years of advocacy from school parents.
“We are desperate to have this work in the ground as soon as possible,” Chris Roberti, a parent who leads the school PTA’s safe streets committee, said at a rally ahead of the Brooklyn Community Board 1 meeting where DOT presented its plans.
“The streets were built incompletely to prioritize car traffic, and we pay for it literally in blood every week,” Roberti said.
Beginning in the fall, DOT’s redesign will install two diagonal plastic diverters on Driggs Avenue, one at Monitor Street and another at Sutton Street, to direct car drivers off the corridor. The proposed design mimics one that the agency installed on the 39th Avenue bike boulevard in Sunnyside, Queens when Bill de Blasio was mayor.
Officials said the barrier at Monitor Street will also function as a protected bike lane to allow cyclists to ride through the new divider and continue onward:
Monitor and Sutton streets intersect right outside the school and adjacent park. In 2023, a driver struck and killed cyclist Teddy Orzechowski, 73, at Monitor and Driggs. In 2024, a motorist fatally hit 49-year-old pedestrian Danielle Aber at nearby Sutton Street and Nassau Avenue.
Another part of the redesign will close “slip lanes” on Engert Avenue, one connecting to McGuinness Boulevard and another at Meeker Avenue. Emergency services will maintain access, officials said.
The city also wants to add a new mid-block crossing on Monitor Street at McGolrick Park with shortened crossing distances, and daylighting and bumps to calm turns at the intersection where Aber was killed.
DOT’s proposed redesign aims to discourage drivers from using local streets as a “cut-through” from busy roads including Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Meeker Avenue and Greenpoint Avenue. More than half of drivers on Driggs Avenue are cut-through traffic, according to DOT. The new traffic diverters are meant to encourage most motorists to stay on busier roads, while maintaining access to local streets for drivers who need them.
“The issue that we’re trying to address is a lot of the vehicles on Driggs don’t actually have a destination in that area,” said Melina Lawrence, a project manager at DOT’s public realm unit. “If you’re trying to access that block of Driggs, you’ll be there. If you’re not specifically trying to access that block, you’ll find another way.”
The planned revamp echoes the “low-traffic neighborhoods” of cities like London and Paris, which have pioneered the use of diverters to keep through-traffic off local streets in recent years. Advocates have called on Mayor Mamdani to bring the low-traffic neighborhood concept to the Big Apple.
The city plans to roll out the changes in the fall and is also looking into future neighborhood-wide planning to improve pedestrian and biking conditions, including with “two-way cycling” infrastructure, according to DOT’s presentation.
Greenpoint emerged as a street safety battleground under Mayor Eric Adams, as the owners of local soundstage company Broadway Stages, Gina and Tony Argento, lobbied the then-mayor to stop a redesign of McGuinness Boulevard, leading to corruption charges against the brother and sister duo and the mayor’s top advisor.
De Blasio first proposed the McGuinness redesign after a hit-and-run driver killed Matthew Jensen, a teacher at P.S. 110, in 2021.
North of P.S. 110, Broadway Stages tried to privatize a block of Monitor Street and turn it into their own backlot for their studios in 2024, but the company’s zoning application with the city never went anywhere as prosecutors indicted the Argentos, along with Adams’s former top deputy, Ingrid Lewis Martin. That case remains ongoing.
Roberti and other advocates last year proposed DOT turn Monitor Street into a cul-de-sac and create a “Paris-style” school car-free street — something they still hope the city pursues in the future.
Local lawmakers praised Mamdani’s DOT for taking on the rampant through-traffic that has plagued the area for decades.
“The number one complaint that I’ve heard from constituents in Eastern Greenpoint is the dangerous truck traffic that comes down illegally, comes down our residential streets,” said City Council Member Lincoln Restler. “They’re just trying to avoid the lights and get from point A to point Z as fast as possible.
“We don’t need that in our community. We don’t need that in front of our public schools. We don’t need that by our neighborhood parks, and so this plan is long overdue.”
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