April 5, 2008: Vol. 31, No. 14
Past issues
The Paper in print
RSS feeds
Print edition (PDF)
Email Alerts- The current issue
- Neighborhood Map
- Bay Ridge
- Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights
- Brooklyn Heights
- Downtown, DUMBO
- Carroll Gardens
- Cobble Hill, Red Hook, Boerum Hill
- Fort Greene
- Clinton Hill, Crown Heights
- North Brooklyn
- Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick
- Park Slope
- Prospect Heights, Windsor Terrace, Greenwood Heights
- GO Brooklyn
- Brooklyn Cyclones
- Not Just Nets
- Police Blotter
- Perspective
- Parenting
- Politics
- Transit
- Media archive
- The Brooklyn Bride
- Brooklyn Boom
- Classifieds
- Merchant news
- About The Paper
- RSS Feeds
-
Truck off! Rigs gone wild
The Brooklyn Paper
Caught! Our photographer snapped this big rig driving on Kingsland Avenue.
Similar stories
Print this story
digg
del.icio.usKingsland Avenue in Williamsburg has become a highway to hell — thanks to hundreds of big rigs that illegally use it as a shortcut through the residential neighborhood.
Truck drivers making local deliveries have the right to use local streets, but a Department of Transportation study found that far too many of them are going where they don’t belong, breaking the law — and bruising a few eardrums — in the process.
“The noise here is pretty terrible,” said Adam Gucwa, who lives on the portion of Kingsland Avenue, south of Norman Avenue, that is off-limits for trucks. “When the trucks go past it shakes our house. It sounds like our whole building is falling down.”
But noise is only a part of the problem, said Assemblyman Joe Lentol (D–Greenpoint), whose office coordinated the study.
“These trucks create traffic, noise and pollution,” the lawmaker said. “Large trucks barreling down narrow streets where our children play is downright dangerous.”
To determine which streets truckers use illegally, the DOT installed cameras on local roads near major truck routes. Kingsland proved to be the most popular, with as many as 267 trucks driving down it in a single hour.
“We spotted several hundred a day on Kingsland, easily,” said Amy Cleary, a spokeswoman for Lentol. “On some days, there were more than 1,000.”
Now that authorities know where to find illegal truck traffic, they plan to install motion or weight sensors in the roads for three months this summer. The sensors will trigger cameras that photograph the trucks’ license plates, which would allow the city to send summons to the drivers.
The plan would have to be approved in Albany, where it faces a future filled with potholes.
But even if it passes, some residents doubt that ticketing will stop trucks from rumbling down their blocks.
“The drivers seem to like using this street,” said one Kingsland Avenue woman.
“I’ve been living here for 70 years and it has never let up.”
©2008 The Brooklyn Paper
Enter your comment below
By submitting this comment, you agree to the following terms:
You agree that you, and not BrooklynPaper.com or its affiliates, are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually-oriented material or any material that may violate applicable law; doing so may lead to the removal of your post and to your being permanently banned from posting to the site. You grant to BrooklynPaper.com the royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content in whole or in part world-wide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.
