Downtown Brooklyn

Three narrow blocks near Willoughby Plaza in Downtown Brooklyn could become "shared space" streets under a DOT plan to blur the lines between sidewalks and car lanes. The concept has been under discussion for years as a way to slow motorists and give pedestrians more breathing room, and the city is now studying this concept in earnest. There are some funds allocated for construction, and DOT is planning to get feedback on potential designs at a public meeting next month.

The Brooklyn and Queens waterfront is in the midst of a grand transformation that's only just begun. Newly built Brooklyn Bridge Park is already firmly established as one of the city’s most stunning public spaces. The Brooklyn Navy Yard now hosts glitzy fashion shows by international designers like Alexander Wang and Dior. Long Island City’s waterfront is a wall of glassy new condos. Many more changes are coming.

Reader Eric McClure spotted these flyers today on cars "up and down Jay Street between Johnson and Willoughby," in the 84th Precinct. This comes a few weeks after attendees at a public workshop identified illegal parking as a major safety hazard and a major source of dysfunction on Jay Street, where pedestrians, cyclists, buses, and private motorists all mix near the Manhattan Bridge approach.

Jay Street, the north-south route often overshadowed by nearby car-clogged Adams Street and Flatbush Avenue, is a major artery in the heart of Downtown Brooklyn, flush with pedestrians going to and from the subway and cyclists heading to the Manhattan Bridge. It's also overrun with illegally-parked drivers, creating an obstacle course for anyone trying to navigate the street.

It's filled with double-parked cars. On just about every block, drivers stand illegally in bus stops, block the bike lane, and make illegal U-turns. If you've ever walked to jury duty in Brooklyn or biked over the Manhattan Bridge, you know Jay Street is chaos incarnate.

A cyclist was struck and killed by a driver this morning in the Bronx, and EV Grieve reports that a restaurant worker who was hit by a motorist last week while biking in Brooklyn died from his injuries.

This morning, U.S. DOT announced the winners in the latest round of its highly-competitive TIGER grant program. While upstate New York won grants for two projects -- a highway teardown in Rochester and a complete streets project in Olean -- New York City missed out, with applications for ferry improvements, a greenway connection in the Bronx, and the redesign of a busy intersection in Downtown Brooklyn failing to make the cut.

If you were hoping for inspiring leadership from the City Council on transportation issues after the next election, you may want to look somewhere other than District 35, which covers the neighborhoods just east of downtown Brooklyn. Two-thirds of households in the district are car-free, according to the 2000 Census. But while most candidates supported traffic calming improvements at a forum last night, they were unanimous in their opposition to removing on-street parking spaces, and many were reluctant to support policy changes that would cut down on driving in the district.

To make biking between Brooklyn and Manhattan safer and more appealing, one thing that needs to be addressed is access to the Manhattan Bridge from downtown Brooklyn. With the high volume of traffic between the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, and local streets, the area can be both dangerous and confusing, especially if you haven't biked these streets before.