Park Slope

The entrance to Prospect Park at Third Street in Park Slope was closed off to car traffic in April 2009. Since then it's been graced by these barricades. With the completion of the Prospect Park West re-design, there's even more reason to make this a welcoming entrance for people walking and biking to Brooklyn's flagship park.

They call it No-Park Slope for a reason: At many times of day, motorists looking for a legit spot in this Brooklyn neighborhood wind up cruising the streets endlessly in frustration. Because on-street parking spaces are some of the cheapest real estate in the city, drivers snap up the bargain and create parking shortages, leading to excess traffic and double-parking. In the end, everyone pays for the cheap price of parking: motorists who lose time, pedestrians and cyclists endangered by excessive traffic and double-parking, and bus riders delayed by congestion. Now it looks like there's some relief in sight.

The Prospect Park West bike lane has bestowed order and virtually eliminated the raceway conditions on a street where speeding used to be the norm.

A lot of neighborhood activists swear by the maxim that it's easier to organize against something than to drum up support for something new. But apparently this rule of thumb doesn't apply to the Prospect Park West bike lane.

Before I get to the "intrigue" part of this post (it's juicy), first let me say that if you haven't checked out the Prospect Park West re-design yet, you owe it to yourself to head on over and take a look. Last time I checked, some of the finishing touches have yet to appear, but it's already one of the most effective street transformations the city has undertaken.

Reader Ed Ravin sent in these photos of a collision between an ambulance driver and a pedestrian in Park Slope, which happened around 3:00 p.m. on Saturday. He writes: