Park Slope

Just about every New York City neighborhood has to deal with the consequences of dirt cheap on-street parking. When you practically give away spaces at rock-bottom prices, it guarantees double parking and endless cruising for spots by bargain hunting drivers. Which is bad news for all the bus riders, cyclists, and delivery drivers who have to contend with the clogged curbs, extra traffic, and lane-blocking vehicles that result.

Tonight, at a transportation committee meeting of Brooklyn Community Board 6, DOT will present plans for a two-way protected bike path along Prospect Park West, from Union Street to Bartel Pritchard Square. The proposal would reduce the number of traffic lanes on the high-speed thoroughfare from three to two, according to the meeting agenda.

How fast do cars travel on Prospect Park West? Criminally fast. All the time. Members of Park Slope Neighbors clocked cars routinely exceeding the 30 mph speed limit -- including one sociopath racing at 65 mph -- during a ten-minute stretch earlier this month. Prospect Park West and Eighth Avenue form a one-way pair funneling drivers to and from the free East River bridges and the Prospect Expressway, a configuration that makes for hazardous conditions. Last summer a school bus driver struck and killed cyclist Jonathan Millstein on Eighth Avenue. A few weeks ago a 57-year-old pedestrian was nearly killed a couple of blocks away from the Millstein incident. Parents are afraid to walk with their children across the corridor's dysfunctional intersections. NYPD enforcement is sorely lacking.

If you want to use the Livable Streets Community site to organize in your neighborhood, this week we've got a great example of what you can do with your group.

"Ouch" was my first thought, as I lay on the ice in my building's parking lot, my scooter and black shoulder bag some feet away from me. What I would later learn was a broken hip screamed for my attention in a strange but compelling new language.

Commenter Don Wiss gives this update on the condition of the man hit by a car at the intersection of Carroll and Eighth Avenue last week, and the circumstances of the crash:

The following is an eyewitness account from a tipster who came upon the aftermath of Monday's driver-pedestrian collision on Carroll Street and Eighth Avenue in Park Slope. The victim, a 57-year-old man, was in critical condition Monday afternoon, and police have no new information as of this writing. NYPD would not release a name. At the time, our tipster was told the victim had died shortly after the collision.

Brownstoner reports that a pedestrian was struck after 8 a.m. today on Carroll Street in Brooklyn, at the intersection of Eighth Avenue. According to NYPD, the victim, a 57 year old man, is in critical condition at Lutheran Medical Center. The driver struck him while traveling east on Carroll, behind the wheel of what the police report calls "a 2005 Toyota Suburban." A passerby informs Streetsblog that the impact was forceful enough to leave a deep, bowl-shaped depression of cracked glass in the windshield.