Fort Greene

After the first Citi Bike stations were installed in Bed Stuy and Clinton Hill over the weekend, NYC DOT Policy Director Jon Orcutt told Transportation Nation that bike-share implementation will "be moving through the Brooklyn area and then into Manhattan over the next few weeks." And it looks like stations have now been installed at least as far west as Adelphi Street and as far north as Flushing Avenue.

Last night Brooklyn Community Board 2's transportation committee voted 7-0, with one abstention, to support the conversion of Fowler Square Plaza in Fort Greene from a temporary public space to a permanent feature of the neighborhood. The committee vote followed a DOT presentation showing that Fowler Square Plaza has had a minimal impact on traffic and is overwhelmingly popular with businesses, plaza users, and nearby residents.

A reminder for readers who live in and around Fort Greene: The Brooklyn Community Board 2 transportation committee is taking up the matter of Fowler Square plaza tonight, and if you head over to 180 Remsen Street to weigh in, you can help this new public space become a permanent neighborhood fixture.

Combining public seating and tree protection, the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership has begun a second round of street furniture installations. The project is bringing 28 tree guards and 22 benches to Myrtle Avenue between Flatbush and Classon Avenues by the end of the year, joining 40 tree guards and benches that were installed in 2011.

This weekend, three Brooklyn plazas became hubs of neighborhood activity.

DOT is scheduled to go before Community Board 2's transportation committee on December 18 with plans to make the new pedestrian plaza at Fowler Square in Fort Greene a permanent redesign. Before the city went ahead with reclaiming this block of North Elliott Place for the plaza, a small, vocal contingent -- mostly upset that they would have to slightly alter their driving routes -- predicted that the new public space would be unsafe for walking. Previously, another opponent claimed the plaza would "split the neighborhood apart." Now that everyone has had the summer and fall to see the plaza in action, we thought we'd check in with some local business owners about what they think of the project.

Streetsblog reader Chad Kellogg, a cyclist who lives and works in Fort Greene, came upon this scene earlier today. He writes:

Council Member Letitia James and Assembly Member Joseph Lentol joined local residents on Park Avenue in Brooklyn yesterday to push DOT and other city agencies to implement recommendations from the Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Partnership's pedestrian safety plan. The plan calls for a set of pedestrian safety improvements and traffic enforcement measures to make Park Avenue less of a BQE service road and more of a neighborhood street.

In 1959, when the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway was under construction, Park Avenue in the Wallabout section of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill was converted from a neighborhood street to a service road that would run underneath the new elevated highway. Walking on the street hasn't been the same since. With 160,000 cars roaring by overhead each day, two lanes in each direction on the surface, and more than 300 parking spaces in the median, the street is not what you would call pedestrian-friendly. It's also dangerous, with a crash rate higher than three-quarters of Brooklyn streets.