In response to complaints by residents, business owners, and elected officials, the Department of Transportation (DOT) has taken measures to ameliorate the effects of the bike lanes it installed on both sides of Kent Avenue last October.
On the west side of the street from South 8th to Division Avenue, the DOT has replaced “No Stopping” regulations with “No Standing” regulations to enable the pick up and drop off of passengers.
Additionally, the agency has removed “No Parking” regulations on portions of South 11th Street between Kent and Wythe avenues, which the agency expects will create 16 parking spaces. The DOT is also considering lifting “No Parking” regulations on nearby portions of South 5th Street and Wythe Avenue in the hopes of creating an additional 57 parking spaces.
Prior to these measures, the DOT installed a bus pick-up and drop-off zone outside the Zafir Jewish Center for Special Education near S. 8th Street, and established a loading zone for Carriage House Papers north of Grand Street.
The lanes are a prelude to the Brooklyn Greenway, an ambitious network of two-way lanes envisioned to one day surround the entire Brooklyn waterfront. In April, Community Board 1 voted to approve the Greenway by a resounding 39-2 margin.
But since the lanes and the “No Stopping” regulations were installed in October, a controversy has erupted among many neighborhood residents and business owners.
Many residents of the southern stretch of Kent Avenue — a predominantly Hasidic area with a large percentage of car owners — complain the lanes have disrupted their lives by making parking and picking up/dropping off people impossible. These residents have also complained that cyclists create unsafe conditions by not obeying traffic laws.
(There has been speculation that the opposition of these Hasidic residents stems from a religious ban forbidding Hasidic men to look at women who aren’t dressed in the modest clothing common to Hasidic women. Hasidic opponents deny that this is the basis for their opposition.)
Many of the light manufacturing businesses along the stretch have said the lanes prevent them from loading and unloading cargo, effectively making it impossible to run their businesses without running afoul of new traffic regulations.
The controversy over the lanes has erupted at various community meetings, and has even carried over to Kent Avenue itself. In mid December, in an event organized by the environmental advocacy group Times Up!, a group of cyclists dressed as clowns took to Kent Avenue to advocate on behalf of the lanes.
A week-and-a-half later, opponents hung up a 4-by-8 foot plywood sign delineating a wholly unauthorized detour route for motorists because of the “bike lane and parking problem created by NYC Department of Transportation.” The sign also threatened that school buses would block the lanes while picking up and dropping off children.
Another casualty of the controversy was the removal of CB 1 Transportation Committee Chair Teresa Toro from her committee chairmanship after Toro and CB 1 Chair Vincent Abate had a falling out that stemmed from the lanes.
In December, a group of area elected officials — including Council Members David Yassky and Diana Reyna, along with State Senator-elect Daniel Squadron, and Borough President Marty Markowitz — requested the DOT remove the lanes pending a solution that would be palatable to the whole community.
Yassky spokesman Tim Roberts said the councilman was generally pleased with the DOT’s recent measures, and seemed willing to back off his position that the lanes should be removed.
“We [called for the lanes to be removed] because we wanted DOT to come up with some solutions, and they did,” Roberts said.
Still, Roberts stressed that while the DOT addressed many concerns of the residents, the agency did not yet address the northern and eastern portions of Kent Avenue, where the businesses are still grappling with the effects of the lanes.
Karen Nieves of the East Williamsburg Valley Industrial Development Corp., an advocate for businesses on the stretch, said the DOT’s measures “really do not help the businesses. They’re concentrating on the residential.”
Nieves was dismayed by what she characterized as the DOT’s slow response to the businesses’ problems.
“In speaking with the businesses, it seems like nobody has contacted them, nobody has reached out,” she said.
Isaac Abraham, a leader in the Hasidic community and a staunch opponent of the bike lanes who is running for City Council in what is currently Yassky’s seat, was critical of the DOT’s measures as well.
“It’s a band-aid on the community’s forehead for a headache,” he said.
