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NAG and TA Call for Safety Improvements in Response to Cyclist's Death

In response to the death of 33 year-old Greenpoint cyclist Solange Raulston in a crash this weekend, Transportation Alternatives and NAG are calling for long-overdue safety improvements to the intersection of Nassau Avenue and McGuiness Boulevard. Raulston, a Greenpoint resident and well known DJ, was struck by a truck while cycling westbound on Nassau Avenue last Saturday.

Between 1995 and 2005, there were 34 crashes involving bicyclists or pedestrians at this intersection, and two fatalities, making it the most dangerous intersection in North Brooklyn. The Department of Design and Construction is using federal stimulus funds to reconstruct Nassau Avenue along most of its length by 2012, but safety improvements to the intersection with McGuiness Boulevard are not a significant feature of the plan.

T.A. and NAG are calling for additional traffic calming measures that take into account the high number of pedestrians, cyclists and trucks that traverse the intersection, including:

• Extend the curbs into the street on all corners to slow turning vehicles and shorten crossings for pedestrians
• Install wider refuge medians on McGuiness Boulevard
• Open sight lines at all corners by removing one parking spot on each corner of McGuiness Boulevard
• Give more walk time to pedestrians crossing McGuiness Boulevard

"Seldom does a week pass without flowers being laid in someone's memory at this dangerous crossing," says Paul Steely White, Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives. "No one should underrate the necessity of making the most dangerous intersection in North Brooklyn safer. Now is the time for the City to act."

"The North Brooklyn community has long been asking the City to make safety improvements at this hazardous intersection," said Lacey Tauber, Chair of NAG's Transportation Working Group. "This tragic incident is a grim reminder that the City needs to rethink its street designs to give priority to the most vulnerable users. We ask the City to address the community's concerns as quickly as possible, before another tragedy occurs here."

Image via Gothamist via Google Maps.

Want More Bike Racks? Try FixCity!

The NAG Transportation Working Group is pleased to announce that we are the first community partner on FixCity.org Bike Racks, a new website that allows community members to identify locations for new bike racks in the neighborhood!

Developed by the Open Planning Project, the Livable Streets Initiative, and the Transportation Alternatives Brooklyn Committee, the goal of the website is to identify 300 suitable spaces for much-needed bike parking in the neighborhood. Community District 1 serves as the site's pilot project -- if successful, it will go citywide next!

So please check out the site at FixCity.org and use the online mapping tool to tell us where you want a bike rack. Also check out information about how to identify a good space, including a great video made by TOPP. We'll have some fun follow-up events coming up in the next couple months, so stay tuned for more!

To volunteer to help with finding suitable spaces, email me at transportation@nag-brooklyn.org!

Briefly Noted

The NY Times identifies a trend of Western European immigrants settling in North Brooklyn.

A 40-story tower has been proposed for the Greenpoint waterfront between Huron and India (Brooklyn Paper). We are lacking details, but it sounds like the landowner is applying for a variance. The owner is represented by none other than our former Councilman Ken Fisher, who represented owners of this parcel during the rezoning, during which we do not recall the mischievous sewer pipe being mentioned.

Greenpointer notes that the holiday lights on Manhattan Avenue will not shine this year. This sad, but not completely surprising, since several of the longtime anchors of the retail strip closed this year. Most notably in our minds is George's (which truly did "have everything"), which was replaced by a Sleepy's after the family that ran the store sold the building.

From the Department of Controversy, we alert you to some thoughts about whether a lack of safe conditions on the road for bike riders inherently makes them behave like rebels on two wheels, a condition that the author, perhaps too cutely, calls "bikeism." (How We Drive)