Want to Get Park Slope People Angry? Mess withTraffic
The Department of Transportation proposal to make Sixth and Seventh Avenues one-way has stirred up a hornet's nest of opposition in Park Slope. The developments have been detailed over at Streetsblog, which first broke the story of the plan that could turn both avenues from two-way streets into one-way streets with speeding cars. Latest to join the chorus of voices--which hasn't even been formally presented--is the Park Slope Civic Council, which has drafted a letter to Mayor Bloomberg and other city officials. It reads in part:
While the Park Slope Civic Council will reserve final judgment until after the details have been heard, several of you have contacted me asking for our initial reaction. The Civic Council is seriously concerned that the primary result of this plan will be to move more traffic through our neighborhood faster, not to improve pedestrian safety. You should also know that the response from neighborhood residents, many of whom have contacted us, as I'm sure they have you, too, has been overwhelmingly negative.DOT has already indicated that the plan requires community support to go forward. If we were to wager money, we'd bet that this plan is a non-starter.
Our specifics concerns are:
This plan is about moving more traffic through the neighborhood faster.
One-way streets have a higher motor-vehicle carrying capacity than two-way streets...
One-way thoroughfares are less friendly to neighborhood life.
Turning local streets into one-way arteries that encourage higher speeds springs from an anachronistic and discredited school of transportation planning. The irony would be if all the attention the DOT proposal has drawn helps spur action to turn Park Slope's biggest one-way highway--Prospect Park West--back into a calmer two-way street.
There is a public meeting on the idea in Park Slope on March 15 in the auditorium at Methodist Hospital. Here are links to some of Streetsblog's excellent and original coverage of the issue:
posted by rsguskind at 7:30 AM
2 Comments:
isn't this all connected to atlantic yards? they need to move MORE traffic at the edges just to try and clear out the center. perhaps the DOT is being all friendly like now, cause they know that later this scheme will be mandated by some remediation plan. dot: "it's not us, it's them." them: "it's just the law." us: "the cars are killing us."
what's truly ridiculous is that, if the DOT plan goes through as proposed, and the atlantic yards demapping goes through, then 5th ave. between flatbush and atlantic will disappear, 6th ave. will go north even though from flatbush to atlantic is goes south, and 7th will go south even though carlton (almost an extension of 7th) from flatbush goes north. so you'll have a missing street and streets that change directions at flatbush making traffic one giant clusterfuck.
Post a Comment
<< Home