Brooklyn

Update: NYPD has identified the victim as 83-year-old Irvin Gitlitz.

New York's cargo bike industry is a tough business. One of the top constraints is geography. Most of the current operators, like the ones we profiled last week, concentrate on Manhattan below 96th Street. But a new group is trying to organize cargo deliveries in Brooklyn.

City Council Member David Greenfield is keeping an eye on the investigation into a fatal collision in Brooklyn last weekend, which so far points to the culpability of both drivers involved in the crash.

No one was criminally responsible for a grisly high-speed crash in Brooklyn this weekend that left one bystander dead and three members of her family injured, according to NYPD.

The guerrilla bike lane on Bergen Street now has an official imprimatur. It may be hard to believe, but the tug-of-war over whether bike riders or parked cars from the 78th Precinct belong in the Bergen Street bike lane -- tough one, isn't it? -- now has an unexpected referee. Over the weekend, NYPD barriers popped up on the edge of the bike lane where it approaches Flatbush Avenue, replicating a citizen-led effort that flourished for about a week this summer.

Over the past week, the long G train outage caused by flooding from Hurricane Sandy brought the need for changes to the Pulaski Bridge into starker relief. Streetsblog received multiple reports of extreme crowding on the bridge's narrow bike and pedestrian path, which could have been relieved with a protected bikeway across the bridge.

Last month, Council Member Mathieu Eugene hosted a forum to address traffic calming needs along Cortelyou Road in Brooklyn. While the event generated a lot of ideas and suggestions from neighborhood residents and business owners, many participants have been discouraged by the lack of follow-up from Eugene. Now, some are turning their desire for safer streets into action.

Last year, Hilda Cohen, Ali Loxton and their neighbors picked up the pieces of a torpedoed bike lane proposal for Lafayette Avenue, showing DOT and Brooklyn Community Board 2 the community's broad support for safer cycling on the busy street. After 1,400 signatures and countless hours of work, Lafayette Avenue from Fulton Street to Classon Avenue was recently striped with a shared lane for bicyclists.

The Department of Transportation has rejected neighborhood demands to implement residential parking permits around the Barclays Center and Yankee Stadium, according to a DOT report released last Friday. DOT cited the availability of on-street parking spaces during Yankee games, the large number of non-residents parking on the street for purposes other than visiting the stadium, and the heavy costs of administering and enforcing an RPP program.