Brooklyn

On November 24, a woman and an 11-year-old girl were hit by different vehicles at the same Brooklyn intersection -- Liberty Avenue at Crescent Street -- in the space of 90 minutes. Both victims were injured; the girl, who was hit by a cement truck, was hospitalized.

Via Brownstoner, the Department of Transportation is building out a nice street redesign project in Brooklyn right now as a part of its Ft. Greene Bike Lane & Traffic Calming Project (download a project description here). Formerly a 70-foot-wide one-way street, Carlton Avenue, above, has been converted to two-way operation with five-foot bike lanes on either side. DOT is now building a 20-foot wide planted median in the middle. The Carlton Ave. improvements are similar to recent projects on Park Slope's 9th Street and Vanderbilt Ave. in Prospect Heights.

From Robert Jones's blog This Is the Diaspora comes a disturbing tale (well worth reading in full) of how a beautiful bike ride on a sparkling fall day turned into a humiliating encounter with the police -- all because Jones detoured onto the sidewalk of Malcolm X Boulevard in Brooklyn for a few seconds to avoid traffic:

The street re-surfacing men and machinery were out in force in Soho last night. Houston Street Bike Safety Initiative Director Ian Dutton snapped this photo on Prince Street. Once the street is repaved, the Department of Transportation will stripe the hotly debated Prince and Bleecker Street bike lanes.

I'd bet that people walking outnumber people bicycling across the Brooklyn Bridge by at least 100 to one. I cycle across the wooden-slatted walkway that soars over the top of the bridge regularly now, and every time I do so I think about this. My rolling bicycle negates the space for scores of people every second, forcing them into a relatively skinny strip that is half as wide as the whole walkway.

Council member Lew Fidler delivers his Tax & Tunnel plan to the Commission.

 

Quick, easy, inexpensive on-street bike parking in Montreal. Why not Williamsburg, Brooklyn?

The MTA has been taking a lot of flack following yesterday's dust-up over MTA workers seizing bicycles locked to the Bedford Avenue subway station stairwell railing in Williamsburg. Perhaps the wrong transportation agency is taking the hit on this one.