CB 7 Approves 50-Block Ped Safety Project for Sunset Park's Fourth Ave
In an overwhelming 31-2 vote (with three abstentions), Brooklyn Community Board 7 passed a motion last night in favor of re-engineering Fourth Avenue in Sunset Park for greater safety. The NYC DOT project [PDF] will add a substantial amount of pedestrian space at intersections from 65th Street to 15th Street, widening medians and narrowing crossing distances on the 88-foot wide street.
Image: NYC DOT
This stretch of Fourth Avenue, currently three moving lanes in each direction plus turn bays, is one of the deadliest streets in Brooklyn, with seven pedestrians killed in traffic between 2006 and 2011. Some of the current medians are less than two feet wide. Under the plan, the narrowest medians would at least triple in width, and wider ones would expand too. The pedestrian space will be reclaimed by converting 17-foot wide combined parking and travel lanes on each side of the street into 13-foot wide parking lanes, though three travel lanes will be maintained northbound during the morning rush, from 38th Street to 17th Street. The changes would be implemented with low-cost materials — epoxy, gravel, planters, flexible posts — and DOT can complete them by this fall.
At a hearing hosted by CB 7's Fourth Avenue Working Group on Monday, neighborhood advocates said the changes were a long time coming.
Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of the environmental justice non-profit UPROSE, said she could remember discussing traffic calming and greener infrastructure for Fourth Avenue with CB 7 district manager Jeremy Laufer 15 years ago. "This is not new," she said, urging the board to vote for the plan. "We've been talking about these things for a long time in Sunset Park. If we miss the opportunity, we might not get these improvements."
Lined with schools, subway stations, churches, and stores, Fourth Avenue is full of destinations for this bustling neighborhood of predominantly car-free households. DOT has been working intensively with neighborhood groups and local schools to develop the Fourth Avenue plan. A workshop in February brought together English-, Spanish-, Cantonese-, and Mandarin-speakers to gather ideas about what needs to change on the avenue.
"Almost everyone who goes to school on Fourth Avenue walks there," said project manager Jesse Mintz-Roth. "The narrowness of the medians came out over and over in the workshops."
Last week, three children were struck by a turning driver at Fourth Avenue and 44th Street, one of whom was injured. The crash was fresh in the minds of several participants at Monday's hearing, including Yesenia Malave-Lee, PTA president at P.S. 503, who said the threat of traffic violence looms over every parent walking their kids to school on Fourth Avenue. "I'm all for the changes being made here," she said.
Filed Under: DOT, Pedestrian Infrastructure, Streetsblog, Sunset Park, United Puerto Rican Organization of Sunset Park
If DOT Doesn't Add a Bike Lane to 4th Avenue Now, How Long Will It Take?
By David Meyer	| Aug 23, 2016
Sunset Park residents are calling on DOT to change its plans for Fourth Avenue to include a protected bike lane, the Brooklyn Paper reports. They make an excellent point: If DOT doesn't change the design of an upcoming capital project on Fourth Avenue, it's going to be very difficult to add a protected bike lane on what should be a […]
Pedestrian Injuries Down 61% on Fourth Avenue in Park Slope After Road Diet
By Stephen Miller	| Apr 21, 2015
As in Sunset Park, the Fourth Avenue road diet has yielded impressive street safety dividends for Park Slope, including a 61 percent drop in pedestrian injuries. Now, DOT is moving forward with plans to cast its changes in concrete. Between Atlantic Avenue and 15th Street, the road diet widened medians, shortened crossing distances, and trimmed the number of […]
Deadly Fourth Avenue in Sunset Park Poised to Get Life-Saving Road Diet
By Ben Fried	| May 3, 2012
It's hard to imagine a street in more dire need of a safety upgrade than Fourth Avenue in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Lined with schools, senior centers, subway stations, churches and stores — and situated in one of the city's top walk-to-work neighborhoods — the street is a magnet for pedestrians of all ages. It's also […]
Pedestrian Injuries Down Nearly 30% After 4th Ave Road Diet in Sunset Park
By Stephen Miller	| May 21, 2014
A year and a half after implementing a road diet on 50 blocks of Fourth Avenue in Sunset Park, DOT returned to the Brooklyn Community Board 7 transportation committee last night with a report on how the redesign has affected safety. The results are positive: More people are walking on Fourth Avenue, while speeding, crashes, and […]
Traffic-Calming Road Diet Could Come to Fourth Avenue in Park Slope
For years, Fourth Avenue has been identified as one of Brooklyn's most dangerous streets for pedestrians. Recently, DOT has been working neighborhood-by-neighborhood — in Bay Ridge, Sunset Park, and Park Slope — to redesign Fourth Avenue for greater safety. Last week, the agency unveiled its proposals to calm traffic and add pedestrian space on 28 […]
DOT Is Getting Serious About Protected Bike Lanes for 4th Avenue
By David Meyer	| Mar 16, 2017
DOT will present a redesign for Brooklyn's 4th Avenue with protected bike lanes from 65th Street to Dean Street. It's an important shift from earlier plans that called for casting the current street design in concrete without adding bike infrastructure.