Extended Sidewalks on Atlantic
Construction recently started for sidewalk extensions on Atlantic and Clinton Streets in Cobble Hill. This is part of DOT’s larger project to calm traffic in Downtown Brooklyn, in the effort to improve safety and traffic conditions. One of the more recently completed sidewalk extensions was at Smith and Bergen, which was met with mostly positive…
Construction recently started for sidewalk extensions on Atlantic and Clinton Streets in Cobble Hill. This is part of DOT’s larger project to calm traffic in Downtown Brooklyn, in the effort to improve safety and traffic conditions. One of the more recently completed sidewalk extensions was at Smith and Bergen, which was met with mostly positive response from pedestrians, and now that the weather’s nice, a fruit cart has parked in the extra sidewalk space.
Calming Traffic at Bergen and Smith [Brownstoner]
Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Report [NYC DOT] GMAP
I walked up Court Street this morning, and the same thing is definitely going on on the southeast corner of Court and Atlantic. Hopefully it will encourage drivers making the left off Atlantic onto Court to come through the intersection more slowly, because I’ve seen some cars (livery cabs especially) blow through there at speeds that aren’t really safe with so many pedestrians around.
Riiiight, because pigeon was a) just talking about trucks and b) saying that everyone everywhere who drives is evil.
Oh, wait, he was bemoaning the exceptional number of crappy drivers while acknowledging that it was a broad generalization to refer to all drivers everywhere as bad.
pigeon, you are an idiot.
How do you think all the food and other things you walk to the store to buy get there? Magic? no, trucks. New Yorkers are totallly irrational about surface transportation. I think it is subliminal messages the MTA emits in the subways: “…..you want to be undergorund….its good to be underground….traveling above ground is unnatural and immoral…only bad people drive things with wheels on streets……”
A cheaper solution and, I think, a much better use of our tax dollars is to create speed bumps (what does a bag of asphalt cost?) intermittently along busy streets. As a pedestrian and driver I’m amazed at the dangerous driving habits I see every day. And for a City strapped for cash there’s a surely a bounty to be gotten just by enforcing the rules – just “tagging” the liverly guys alone could finance the construction of a new school or two.
Do not question the absolute wisdom of Emperor Bloomberg and Commissioner Sadik-Khan. They are all knowing and the rest of us are idiots.
“Does it strike anyone else that Brooklyn drivers have a strong tendency to be sociopathic, horn-honking, exhaust-spewing, oil-guzzling, pedestrian-killing maniacs who don’t care about any person or thing outside of their vehicles?”
Posted by Union Street.
That is a vast generalization, but…
Amen!
Too many drivers are as described above.
Brooklyn is a walking city.
Pedestrians — not vehicles — matter most.
I live on this corner, and the thing that baffles me is that the southern Atlantic/Clinton intersection is not the problem. The issue that I deal with every time I leave the house is cars maniacally turning *from* Atlantic onto Clinton, and nearly mowing over right-of-way pedestrians in the crosswalk on the *northern* side of the intersection. This is a constant occurrence — cars frantically trying to cut the left turn across traffic, or wheel around the right turn on two wheels to make the light. Cars approaching the southern intersection with too much speed? When does that happen with all the traffic?
The ideal means of transportation in the city is a bicycle I have to admit. Except when you need to transport something heavy (luggage,furniture,large pets,garden supplies) or when you need transport items in bulk (like supplies for a grocery store or retail store) or when it rains, or snows, or sleets, or when it is really hot and humid, or really cold and windy. But on a nice spring day to take just yourself from point a to point b -a bicycle can’t be beat.
Why not add protected bike lanes instead?