DOT Scraps Safety Plan for Two Brooklyn Avenues

After spending all of 2021 developing a safety plan for two dangerous Brooklyn avenues, the New York Department of Transportation is starting from scratch. 

The announcement came after two young girls were injured by a reckless driver last Monday. As Dave Colon reports for Streetsblog NYC, “It’s unclear if the girls would have avoided injury under the one-way conversion, but the redesigned street would have been narrower and featured curb extensions, perhaps slowing down the driver or creating more visibility.” The original plan would have converted the two street segments to one-way and installed parking-protected bike lanes. 

Prior to this incident, there were 54 other reported crashes on Seventh Avenue this year, injuring six cyclists, six pedestrians, and 11 drivers. The agency plans to bring a new proposal before officials and community members in the coming months. According to Colon, “the DOT’s Sunset Park proposal was an ambitious proposal to tame a pair of avenues with multiple traffic calming measures,” but “was doomed after vocal opposition from Assembly Member Peter Abbate, who originally demanded that any street redesign focus on making it easier for motor vehicle drivers.”