In Red Hook: Traffic, Traffic, More Traffic (and No Bike Racks)

You could see and feel the change on the streets of Red Hook within days of the Fairway opening: hundreds of extra cars and increased pedestrian activity. While Gowanus Lounge knows that Red Hook could not remain frozen in a time warp of abandonment and wild dogs roaming the waterfront, the change still comes as a system shock. The commotion is almost enough to make you turn around and leave, except for that pesky supermarket beckoning with all of its goodies.

Now, come stories about mounting traffic issues in Red Hook and residents' concerns. Cops in the local precinct are predicting accidents; residents are complaining that the NYC Department of Transportation is moving slowly. The co-chair of the Red Hook Civic Association told the Carroll Gardens Courier that "The DOT has been as helpful to Red Hook as FEMA has been to New Orleans." Then, he added, "It's a disgrace."

In this week's Brooklyn Papers, Ariella Cohen reports that the DOT will do a traffic analysis in the fall. (Perhaps faster, we think, if someone is pancaked by a car.) And to think, not so long ago, Gowanus Lounge went to the Red Hook waterfront to catch a lonely and deserted vibe. (If you leave the immediate area of the Fairway, there are still plenty of peaceful spots in the Hook and, failing that, the Sunset Park waterfront beckons.)

Mlik.org offers another take on the problem--that of the bicyclist:

I find Red Hook a nice quick bicycle ride from Carroll Gardens, and hope that the traffic doesn’t ruin that. What I don’t like is having to park my bike across the street and down the block, because Fairway hasn’t taken it’s non-driving customers into account when building their store. Maybe they just didn’t think of it: everyone walks or takes a cab in Manhattan, and drives to grocery stores in the suburbs. But Brooklyn is flat and spread out, and perfectly suited to bike riding. There were at least 15 other cyclists there that day, and everyone was finding weird spots to lock their bike, like the completely inconvenient fence around the parking lot, or, like me, to street signs on the other side of the street. I sent Fairway an email requesting that they build a bike rack. The email address is info@fairwaymarket.com, and I hope a few others do the same.

We won't get into how Brooklyn Papers Editor Gersh Kuntzman was almost swallowed up by a monster Red Hook pothole when he bicycled over to cover the Fairway opening.

Of course, last week's reports of the mind blowing extent of the Red Hook drug trade and the 1,000,000 transactions a year were enough to conjure visions of drug dealers directing traffic in the streets around the Red Hook Houses. ("Yo, you got to move it. Cop and move, man. Cop and move. You got your rock, now jet. No double parking!) The lessening of traffic that the NYPD giveth, the Fairway, the new cruise ship terminal and just-plain-increased-interest in the nabe after a lot of publicity taketh away.

Wait until Ikea adds thousands of cars to Red Hook's streets every day when it opens in 2008. Traffic must have been one of the things Mayor Bloomberg was talking about, when he said, "I happen to be a supporter of it. But I think if I lived there, I don’t know whether I would be, quite honestly."

We conclude this ramble with our transportation solution of choice: Ease public access to Red Hook with a trolley line and, in the meantime, significantly improve bus service.