Two weeks before the water drains for good from the Floating Pool Lady on the Brooklyn Heights waterfront, getting there has been made easier.
Free shuttle service to the state-sponsored waterfront attraction was expanded this week with longer hours plus a new pick-up location on Atlantic Avenue at the corner of Hicks Street.
Between now and the pool’s closure after the Labor Day weekend, the shuttle will run from 9 am–9 pm, seven days a week — a three-hour increase.
Ever since the floating barge opened for swimming on July 4, many Brooklynites have grumbled that the waterfront pool — located on a pier at the foot of Joralemon Street west of the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway — is difficult to get to using public transportation.
And, like that old Yogi Berra joke, no one wanted to go anymore because it was too crowded.
“There was a two-hour wait for the pool on a weekday afternoon,” Boerum Hill parent Carey Johnson griped last week in an e-mail to other Boerum Hill residents. “[My husband and children] skipped it and went to [a] DUMBO park.”
Transportation planners for the state’s Brooklyn Bridge Park residential, commercial and open-space development heralded the expanded shuttle.
“By expanding the hours of operation and adding another stop we have provided more opportunities for New Yorkers to enjoy Brooklyn Bridge Park Beach,” said Henry Gutman, chairman of the Downtown Brooklyn Waterfront Local Development Corporation, which operates the shuttles and is conducting a $1-million, federally funded study of access to the “park” site.
The pool is expected to move on after the summer.
For more information, visit www.brooklynbridgepa….
