On an errand in Red Hook yesterday, a reader encountered three separate instances of stopped traffic as a result of an 18-wheeler trying to take a short cut down a side street. This particular scene took place at the corner of Van Brunt and King Streets and got our correspondent ranting:

Why can’t these idiots turn on to Imlay at Hamilton, and then curve down the westernmost 1/2 block of Pioneer to Conover (hugging the shipyard), and route their trucks on streets more appropriate for their traffic? Snapple, other manufacturing warehouses, Fairway, everything…it’s all accessible that way. Why do they insist on plugging up Van Brunt, attempting these side
street short cuts with huge multi-point turns that many of them are
simply too big for in the first place?

Why indeed.