Williamsburg

Police officers from Brooklyn's 94th precinct are, at this moment, clipping bike locks and seizing bicycles parked along Bedford Ave. according to Community Board 1 Transportation Chair Teresa Toro. The precinct gave Community Board members no advanced notice of the police action. Phone calls to the precinct have gone unanswered. Toro, who also works for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, reports that Council Member David Yassky's staff is looking into the situation and says:

All of the bicycles parked on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg had these flyers stapled to them recently. The reverse side of the flyer has translations in Spanish & Polish.

When I first met Brian McCormick, Milton Puryear and Meg Fellerath in the spring of 2002, they were picking up trash and planting tulips alongside a Brooklyn-Queens Expressway off-ramp in Cobble Hill. I asked them what they were up to and they told me they were working to create a waterfront greenway for Brooklyn -- a linear park running from Greenpoint to Red Hook. I didn't have the heart to tell them they looked like a gang of juvenile delinquents paying off 40 hours of community service for shop-lifting. Clearly, these people were either insane or visionary.

Emil Choski has given his Car-Free Bedford Avenue project a serious face lift. The 22-year-old freelance graphic designer and community organizer's new web site includes a three dimensional "flyby" visualization accompanied by some very un-Williamsburgy classical music. With apologies to the Meatpacking District and Ninth Avenue, Emil's project has to be my favorite grassroots livable streets initiative going right now. When is Dan Doctoroff going to wake up and give this kid a job at the Economic Development Corporation?! Choski writes:

The BQE, as seen from Lorimer Street.

The Department of Transportation's recently announced streetscape renovation at the Bedford Avenue L subway station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn marks the first time ever in New York City that car parking spaces have been removed to make way for bicycle parking.

Streetsblog has gotten a hold of a draft of DOT's plan to widen the sidewalk and install new bike racks at the Bedford Avenue L subway station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. As diagrammed above, the plan calls for the elimination of five motor vehicle parking spaces on N. 7th Street at Bedford Avenue, alongside the subway station stairwell on the southeast corner (see the corner at the bottom of the diagram).