March 29–April 4, 2019 Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 AWP 5
DOORED
Cyclist injured Downtown
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Paramedics took an injured
cyclist to the hospital
on March 25 after someone
doored him on Jay Street
Downtown.
The biker was coming
down the bustling thoroughfare,
headed towards the Brooklyn
Bridge, and slammed into
a parked car’s open passenger
side door when he cycled from
the street into the bike lane between
two potted plants at the
corner of Willoughby Street just
before 3:30 pm, according to a
witness at the scene.
“He opened the door and
he was driving in fast into
that lane,” said Joe, who didn’t
want to give her last name.
Paramedics rushed to the
scene and helped the guy, who
was limping as they guided
him to the ambulance.
The man, who is in his 30s,
was not seriously injured and
emergency personnel brought
him to Brooklyn Hospital, according
to a spokeswoman for
the Police Department.
At the scene, a cop car
idled next to the bike lane
— in the same spot the car
in question was parked, according
to Joe.
“How the cop car is, that’s
how the car was parked,” she
said.
The vehicle was no longer
on the scene and Joe and
Photo by Kevin Duggan
A cyclist suffered non-life-threatening injuries after
he slammed into an open passenger side door on
Jay Street on March 25.
other bystanders didn’t want
to tell this reporter whether
the driver fled.
The police spokeswoman
could not immediately provide
any information on the person
who opened the door.
Just a few feet away, a driver
in December struck a cyclist,
who claimed she swerved out
of the same bike lane to avoid
a parked police van.
The Boys in Blue cuffed
that driver after they caught
up with him as he tried to flee
the scene.
HEIGHTS...
Continued from page 1
have convinced Robert Moses
to reroute the Brooklyn-
Queens Expressway from going
through the Heights to its
perimeter overlooking the
East River in the 1940s.
It also championed the designation
of the neighborhood
as the city’s first Historic
District in 1965, and advocated
for the establishment of
Brooklyn Bridge Park during
Riding high!
New elevated bike lane
will border Prospect Park
By Colin Mixson
Brooklyn Paper
The city plans to install a
raised, two-way bike lane on
Ocean Avenue along the border
of Prospect Park as part
of a grander scheme to ring
Brooklyn’s Backyard with
dedicated paths for cyclists.
The elevated bike lane
would run flush against the
sidewalk on the Prospect Park
side of the avenue, separating
bicyclists from traffic in the
same way that the pedestrian
pathway does, according to a
spokeswoman for the Department
of Transportation.
“The raised bike lane will
create a dedicated and protected
space for cyclists outside
of the roadway,” said Lolita
Avila.
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the 2000s.
Most recently, the association
has been on the forefront
of grass-roots efforts to
dissuade the Department of
Transportation from its plan,
which it announced last September,
to repair the Brooklyn
Queens Expressway’s triple
cantilever by constructing
a six-lane highway along the
beloved Promenade on the top
level of the crumbling structure.
The group partnered with
architect Marc Wouters to offer
an alternative plan to construct
a parallel roadway along
the hilly mounds of Brooklyn
Bridge Park, which would
spare the scenic walkway.
The department has since
told community leaders it is
reconsidering its plans given
the numerous alternatives that
have recently emerged , including
a plan by New York City
Comptroller Scott Stringer to
build a park along some of the
roadway, a reported scheme
to turn it into a three-level
park inspired by Manhattan’s
High Line, or Council Speaker
Corey Johnson’s idea to tear
down the triple-cantilever altogether.
The reconstruction and the
jail relocation will remain top
on the list for Bray’s remaining
three months at the organization,
he said, adding
that the roadway in particular
will dominate the association’s
mission long after
he leaves.
“The BQE is unquestionably
going to be our priority,
not only for the next several
months but also several months
after that,” Bray said.
The civic honcho will leave
his position to focus more on
health issues within his family,
which he said have worsened
in recent months.
“My number one priority
is to focus on the health needs
of my family,” Bray said. “It’s
something we’ve been dealing
with a number of years
but it has gotten worse over
the last few months.”
between the expressway and
Myrtle Avenue.
More than 200 locals
signed a petition supporting
the project, according to an
International Charter School
parent and CB2 member, who
said the new location would
better serve students — and
keep them safer — than its
current split-site classrooms
Downtown.
“The traffic down there
is pretty haphazard itself, in
terms of kids crossing the
street on Willoughby and
Hanover,” said Juliet Cullen-
Cheung, who was joined by
fellow International Charter
School parents and students,
and its principal Ellen Borenstein,
at the meeting.
Still, Cullen-Cheung encouraged
planners to thoroughly
vet the site as they
move forward with the project,
claiming the area has become
more pedestrian friendly in
the 13 years she’s worked at
the nearby Navy Yard, but that
it still draws many big rigs
due to its history as a manufacturing
zone.
“I think that Clinton Avenue
is a little rough right now,”
she said. “The truck activity
that’s happening over there,
that’s something that needs
to be mitigated. I think that
the developers and the school
can address that, as well as
the noise concerns and the
environmental concerns once
they actually do the actual
air-quality testing.”
The leader of the school’s
parent-teacher association
praised those locals who voiced
concerns about its possible new
site, calling the debate a sign
of the community’s care for its
youngest residents.
“Honestly, being at this
meeting tonight and hearing
how concerned you are about
our children is a dream, we
want to be in a place that you
care about our kids’s safety,”
said Jaclyn Carter.
Educators hope to open the
new school as soon as 2021,
should the Board of Standards
and Appeals approve the rezoning.
Renderings of the
proposed building — which
would be constructed by Barone
Management, the same
firm behind the redevelopment
of Dyker Heights’s Angel
Guardian home — show
it would rise five stories, and
include a little less than a football
field’s worth of space, including
an enclosed gym on
the top floor.
Continued from page 1
The forthcoming lane will
rise six inches off of the street,
and take up two feet of space
on the 30-foot sidewalk, according
to a member of cycling
advocacy group Transportation
Alternatives, who
told this newspaper about the
scheme after reps for meadow
steward the Prospect Park Alliance
announced the project
at a March 19 meeting
of the Prospect Park Community
Committee — a coalition
of more than 30 local
groups that meets with the
city about issues related to
The city is planning to
build an elevated bike
path on part of an Ocean
Avenue sidewalk bordering
Prospect Park.
Photo by Colin Mixson
the green space.
Installing the lane will
also require chopping down
56 trees along that stretch of
Ocean Avenue sidewalk, but
park keepers plan to replace
the axed plants with more than
150 new trees as part of the
larger $9.6-million project to
repair sidewalks, create new
entrances, and install amenities
including lights and
benches along Ocean and
Parkside avenues, according
to Transportation Alternatives
member Michael Drinkard’s
notes from the meeting.
Prospect Park Alliance
leaders are overseeing construction
of the raised Ocean
Avenue bike lane, but the
Transportation Department
will handle the installation
of the project’s other cycling
paths on Prospect Park Southwest
and Parkside Avenue, as
well as new protected lanes
on Flatbush Avenue, a separate
effort that city reps last
June discussed with the community
committee, Drinkard
said.
“I think it’s awesome that
the park is going to be lined by
protected bike lanes,” he said.
“My feeling is most people at
the park and the Alliance are
really excited by it too.”
The Ocean and Parkside
avenue project is still in its
design phase, but the Parkside
Avenue component is not
fully funded, according to alliance
spokeswoman Deborah
Kirschner, who said officials
hope to complete it by
fall 2021.
Brooklyn’s
boulevard
battle lines
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