Red Hook

Eventually, New York City intends to build a biking and walking path along the Red Hook waterfront, one link in the longer Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway. It's going to be several years before that project gets built, so in the meantime DOT plans to make streets a few blocks inland safer for biking and walking. The question is, why not keep the safer, multi-modal surface streets after the permanent project wraps up?

It looks like some parts of Manhattan north of 59th Street could be getting Citi Bike sooner than previously expected.

Cut off from the rest of the borough by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and lacking direct subway access, Red Hook can feel like an isolated part of Brooklyn. A study from the Department of City Planning, released last November, calls for expanded pedestrian space, new bus service to Manhattan, and bicycle and pedestrian safety fixes throughout the neighborhood.

In the space of a few hours this afternoon, one cyclist's experience, chronicled in real time on Twitter, summed up NYPD's indifference to keeping bike lanes clear of motor vehicles.

Following the vehicular killing of 14-year-old Nicholas Soto in Red Hook Monday morning, anonymous police sources were quick to blame the victim, though the crash happened near a school bus and sent Soto through the air, witnesses said. According to press accounts, NYPD won't say if the driver who struck Soto was speeding through an area of Red Hook where drivers routinely endanger lives. Meanwhile, the local precinct community council is scheduled to meet tonight.

A motorist killed a teenager in Red Hook this morning.

Construction continues on the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway along Van Brunt Street, with a two-way buffered bike lane extending the greenway south through Red Hook striped recently, but there's a conspicuous gap in the route that won't be filled until at least this fall.

A Brooklyn woman who was struck by a truck driver in Red Hook Wednesday was the latest victim among six city pedestrian and cyclist fatalities in the last week.

Last night, the transportation committee of Brooklyn Community Board 6 voted unanimously in favor of a new PARK Smart zone for Atlantic Avenue, Smith Street, and Court Street, and for a Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway segment connecting Van Brunt Street to Valentino Pier in Red Hook.