Call it water under the bridge.
The city has backed off its plan to close one of three lanes of the Cropsey Avenue Bridge leaving Coney Island towards Gravesend around the clock this summer after the local community board complained that it would worsen the neighborhood’s already onerous summer traffic problems. Plus, the plan was dangerous because it could have trapped the thousands of tourists who flood the area every summer if they had to evacuate in an emergency, according to the district manager.
“Our concern was if people had to leave the area and they couldn’t leave quick enough,” said Eddie Mark.
Members of Community Board 13 originally raised concerns in February when reps from the Department of Transportation presented the plan to close one lane in each direction of the six-lane bridge through the fall — from 7 am to 6 pm every day — to paint the concrete with a protective coating to resist corrosion. But when agency reps added that the Gravesend-bound lane — from Bay 54th Street to Hartford Place — would also remain closed every night to store the heavy equipment required for the work, board members went ballistic.
The agency has now cancelled plans to do any work on the Gravesend-bound lane entirely. The new plans call for work — which began last month — in only one of the three Coney Island-bound lanes, which will remain closed 24 hours a day to house the equipment until the work is done by the end of the year, according to a rep. The remaining two Coney Island-bound lanes will remain fully open to traffic.
Mark said the new plan was a better fit for the community, since there are many routes — via both car and train — for tourists to enter Coney Island during the summer, but limited ways for them to get out, especially in cars.
One board member said the back-and-forth underscored the difficulties that have sprung up as a result of the area’s rapid growth, and stressed that when the city plans future infrastructure projects, it must keep in mind that Coney Island is teeming with tourists in the summer months.
“Nobody wants to hear that Coney Island has become a victim of its own success, but they keep jamming in more and more people and more and more things, and it’s still a peninsula with limited ways in and out,” said Ida Sanoff. “They’ve got to wake up and smell the coffee.”
