OPINION: A Brooklyn Dad Reflects on Five Years of Safe Streets Advocacy

My section of Greenpoint is getting safer streets thanks to five years of relentless volunteer work from our community’s parents and neighbors. On Tuesday, the city revealed plans for new crosswalks at entrances to McGolrick Park, slip lane closures, and diverters to eliminate deadly cut-through from nearby highways.

It’s a great first step and a long time coming — for me, almost nine years. I’m a dad, and that’s what radicalized me to push for street changes like these to make my neighborhood safer.

My daughter was born in 2017. Raising her here in North Brooklyn opened my eyes to the dangerous streets around us. I began to attend community board meetings, rallies and protests. I learned the gold standard for safe streets is design, not enforcement or signage. 

Our son was born in 2021 and our daughter entered Pre-K at P.S. 110. School drop-off was madness. Five hundred kids and their backpacks, bikes, scooters, dogs, grandparents and siblings converged on the corner of Monitor Street and Driggs Avenue. Cars and trucks roared past. The sidewalks were so full that families pushed onto the street.

I learned the city had granted the school a sometime-car-free play street. Some residents of the block, however, were pissed. They held an angry meeting where the then-principal blamed the parents who advocated for the play street and publicly abandoned the street closure without any plan to address the dangerous pick-up and drop-off conditions.

Frustrated, we got to work.  We surveyed parents and found only 10 percent of our families drove to school, yet the entire space around P.S. 110 prioritized drivers. Parents wanted more sidewalk space, slower traffic and street closures at pick-up and drop-off. We presented this report to the school administration. They wanted no part of any closure because they were afraid that some neighbors might be upset. 

So we knocked on the neighbors’ doors. Everyone we spoke to hated the giant trucks and cut-through traffic that raced down their park-side street.  Two hundred neighbors signed on to support a street direction reversal to eliminate cut-through traffic. The city said no. 

Then, in May 2023, a driver killed a neighbor on an e-bike in front of the school. We held a vigil. We installed a ghost bike. We held community visioning sessions and gathered neighbors’ concerns: people wanted calmer traffic, safer spaces for kids and access for residents, local businesses and emergency vehicles. We crafted a proposal around these needs. The centerpiece of this plan was a pedestrian plaza between the school and park to prevent cutthrough traffic and make a space where children and cars can’t mix. 

In February 2024, a driver killed another neighbor in the crosswalk of a notorious intersection two blocks from the school at Driggs and Sutton Avenue. I’d previously witnessed a neighbor get hit by a car at that exact location. A driver nearly ran over my family in the same crosswalk after refusing to stop for them. It felt like we were in the middle of a boiling pot of water. The streets were persistent deadly threats to the entire neighborhood. 

Every single organization that operates in McGolrick Park supports our proposed pedestrian plaza. Fifteen local businesses support it. Over 550 neighbors have signed our petition. Every one of our elected officials supports it. We presented it to our local NYPD precinct and the officers told us every school should have something like this.

Now, after five years, thousands of volunteer hours from dozens of people and hundreds of conversations, change is happening. The diverters on Driggs will stop the flow of cut-through traffic while preserving access for local residents and businesses. Once chaotic traffic will become predictable and calm. Our kids and neighbors will be much safer. 

DOT’s plan is not quite what we envisioned. It does not address a decades-long call to stop cut-through trucks on Morgan, Kingsland, Humboldt and other nearby streets. It does not create a car-free environment in front of the school. We will continue to work for those interventions.

I’ve found joy in this work: meeting neighbors, learning the area’s history and organizing bike-to-school riders. It’s a glorious glimpse of what our streets can be: joyful, welcoming and safe. The community makes itself beautiful. I’ve also found frustration in this work. The indifference or helplessness that people in power feign when presented with an idea that might inconvenience drivers for the safety of children enrages me. 

Conversely, there’s also more discomfort with this work than I would prefer. Like most people, I don’t want conflict with my neighbors.  When I feel overwhelmed by fear of conflict, I remind myself I’d rather be afraid of that than of having my kids (or someone else’s kids) run over and killed. So I opt for conflict, even if it’s uncomfortable for me.  When it gets stressful, I tell my kids, “I’m feeling nervous.” And they say “Why?” And I say “Some people are mad at me.” They say “Okay.” And then it feels manageable again.

Our streets, generally, are designed solely to move as many cars as possible as quickly as possible. Children’s safety is more important. If kids can use the street safely, everyone can. I hope that this work inspires others and will be replicated throughout the city. Come visit our new diverters. May they be fruitful and multiply. 

Mayor Mamdani’s call for universal school streets on the campaign trail last year meant so much to so many of us, but he’s yet to advance that pledge as mayor. I hope that changes — the greatest city in the world should have the safest and most inviting streets in the world. 

I dedicate my small role in this work to my two kids, and to the kids of all ages that walk, scoot, ride, run, shuffle, stroll, stagger or roll through our wonderful neighborhoods every day.