Brooklyn

When B44 Select Bus Service launched last month, regular Streetsblog readers may have recognized Lindiwe Kamau's along with the elected officials celebrating Brooklyn's first SBS route. Kamau, who is president of the Nostrand Avenue Merchants Association, spoke with Mayor Bloomberg at the grand opening and had her photo snapped by the press. Under sunny skies, it was all smiles as passengers boarded the new buses.

Maude Savage did everything right. She used the crosswalk. She looked both ways before entering the street. She waited for the pedestrian signal. Then she was hit by an allegedly unlicensed motorist in a commercial van who drove into her while making a left turn at a high rate of speed.

Three people were killed by motorists in separate crashes in Manhattan and Brooklyn over the weekend.

After years of planning, B44 Select Bus Service launched yesterday on the Nostrand Avenue corridor.  Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, and MTA Chairman and CEO Tom Prendergast marked the occasion this afternoon at a newly-expanded bus stop at Church and Nostrand.

We've been watching the progress as bus bulbs are installed and dedicated lanes are painted, and now the MTA has announced a start date for Select Bus Service on Nostrand and Rogers Avenues: November 17.

Two drivers, one of them unlicensed, collided at an intersection in Dyker Heights late Tuesday morning with sufficient force to send a pickup truck through a bus shelter where several people were waiting for the B4. James McCloskey, 71, was killed. NYPD says no one did anything wrong.

After months of work between local residents and DOT, a plan for a road diet on Fourth Avenue in Bay Ridge, advanced by Brooklyn Community Board 10's transportation committee in May, was taken up by the full board in June. After many members said they had trouble understanding the proposal, the board voted to delay making a decision. But an informational meeting about the plan last Wednesday didn't include a presentation from DOT, and a report from the board's chair might have sowed even more confusion as a scheduled vote approaches in October.

Transportation Alternatives observed nearly nine in ten Brooklyn motorists breaking the speed limit while compiling data for its new report on dangerous driving [PDF], but enforcement from NYPD remains almost non-existent. In fact, TA says it clocked more drivers speeding in 12 hours than NYPD ticketed in all of 2011. That's why speed cameras are necessary for city streets.

A senior riding a bike in Bath Beach was killed by a motorist Monday, and the Daily News used the crash to criticize the city's new bike-share system.