Stop It! Residents Demand DOT Halt Sheepshead Bay Road Traffic Plan
Residents raged at city officials Tuesday for dropping a Times Square-style pedestrian plaza on Sheepshead Bay Road and demanded the project be suspended until the community could give more input.
“We’re here because this was done like a dictatorship, not like a democracy,” said Steve Barrison, president of the Bay Improvement Group. “Time out! Stop what you’re doing.”
Representatives from the DOT and MTA walked into a firestorm of criticism at a meeting for the Sheepshead Bay-Plumb Beach Civic Association. Residents said the city steamrolled over their interests when it moved forward with the plan, despite objections from the community board.
The project, part of the Mayor’s Vision Zero campaign, turned part of Sheepshead Bay Road into a one-way, closed off Jerome Slip and East 15th Street to traffic, and moved the B36 bust stop to Avenue Z. It is supposed to make the area safer for pedestrians and ease traffic congestion, but many argued the plan creates more problems than it solves.
“The bodies are going to be piling up,” said community board member Maurice Kolodin. “Any bright attorney who does negligence work should set up a bridge table on the corner and just give out cards.”
Kolodin said he wants the board to write a letter stating the city will be liable for any injuries that result from the traffic changes. He warned that the neighborhood is “not going to take this lying down.”
Many said that, despite DOT’s intentions, the plan makes the area more dangerous. Pedestrians are more likely to be hit by cars if they’re running across Sheepshead Bay road to catch the bus. And the lighter traffic around the subway station is just going to clog up the surrounding streets.
These problems could have been avoided, they argued, if DOT had done more outreach. There was only one presentation given last year to the community board, which voted against the proposal, before the city overhauled one of the neighborhood’s main thoroughfares. Many community leaders said DOT failed to notify them the project was about to be implemented and were surprised when the orange traffic cones appeared in the streets.
“The DOT wouldn’t even come down to our meeting last month and that was sort of an insult to us,” said Manhattan Beach Community Group President Judy Baron. “We should have some kind of a moratorium, six month to a year, to take a look at these problems.”
Residents repeatedly pressed the representatives for a definite answer about whether they will put a stop to the project.
DOT Borough Commissioner Keith Bray said the agency is willing to respond to community input, but the changes are here to stay.
“We sometimes look at community interests, but we also look at interests of the whole city and safety in general. At times, if DOT feels that for safety purposes, something needs to be done, we’ll do so,” he said.
That answer outraged many residents.
“Why didn’t you study these things before you did the project?” asked one woman, who was furious the bus stop had moved to a dimly-lit area that felt unsafe.”You’re up in your high building, not giving a wit about the people whose lives your changing.”
City Councilman Chain Deutsch, who invited the DOT and MTA officials to the meeting, had to step in to calm the room. He said the project “was not done correctly” and the community should have had more input. However, he said something had to be done about traffic safety on Sheepshead Bay Road.
“We can’t make-believe that we don’t have issues,” he said. “But there has to be a partnership with the people sitting in this room. We need to work together.”
Shari Kaplan, a member of the community board and the Manhattan Beach Community Group, emphasized that residents wanted to see improvements to the area, but DOT bungled the project by ignoring residents’ concerns.
“It’s not that we don’t want it. We want something that’s going to work right,” she said.