LIRR Station All Dressed Up

Well, I have to say, yes, this has taken a very long time to do. I think a lot of the staging/timing has had to do with the work on the LIRR areas downstairs. But still...if it takes this long to do an atrium/entrance goodness knows how long an arena will take to build.

And yes, the area has really been made more treacherous than ever by the amount of street and sidewalk this whole mess has taken over for years...especially bad recently.

I was very annoyed by the closing of the opening of Hanson there. I have many reasons for this, one of which was the high-handedness of it. Tish James had a press conference yesterday AM on this. The City came in, cut off Hanson, made it two-way, got little if no buy-in from the community and put little if no education or PR out there to alert us to the change. Suddenly the street became two-way and a mother with her child nearly got run over because she had no idea. It really wasn't obvious or clear. All this week, cars have been parking in the "wrong" direction on one side of the street because even drivers were cluing in on the change.

There was no signage announcing this, nothing. A very poor job rolling out a big change. Now, my other pet peeve is that this is a gift to developers. Plain and simple.

Plus, it will push traffic up Lafayette. We already have traffic at 50 mph up Lafayette (partly because of the way the lights are timed!) and the street is only allowed to trucks making local deliveries. Meanwhile, huge big-rigs and construction company flatbeds fly up Lafayette to avoid Fulton and Atlantic cutting a path across Brooklyn.

Many streets in the area are off limits to trucks altogether but are used by them constantly. If massive 18-wheelers and even larger were to fly through streets in Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights, I'm sure they might be more ruckus over it.

I did notice the other day a large big-rig coming down Ashland rounding the bend onto Hanson (a new route) to get to the mall. The mall has greatly increased big-rig congestion in the area. For the sake of Fort Greene, I do hope the trucks making deliveries to the mall avoid Lafayette and Fulton and, instead, take Ashland to Hanson.

Oh, one thing that is also funny and makes the two-way thing kind of stupid on Hanson: the top of Hanson where it hits Fulton is still one-way!

The area is very confusing because many streets are two-way for one or two blocks and then one-way for another block or two.

Hhhh...

Posted by: BrooklynGreene at November 14, 2008 1:17 PM

Like Lincoln Center????!!!

My goodness. I do assume that was tongue-in-cheek!

Ms. BG

Posted by: BrooklynGreene at November 14, 2008 1:26 PM