Brooklyn residents yesterday rallied against an ugly, two-way bicycle lane on majestic Prospect Park West — just the latest costly and increasingly destructive traffic-rerouting scheme imposed by city Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.
Sadik-Khan’s department dishonestly calls the bike lane “temporary” pending an analysis of its impact on traffic and safety, which won’t be done until January. Does she really expect anyone to believe her?
The Department of Transportation also promises to take into account Murray Hill residents’ concern over a “proposal” to install useless, concrete-barricaded bus lanes river-to-river on 34th Street. Sure. Although DOT has for now backed off an absurd scheme for a $30 million pedestrian mall, if history is a guide, count on the bus lanes to go forward.
DOT previously promised to heed local complaints about other disastrous, bike-centric schemes that it has imposed all over the five boroughs — and its ruinous Times Square traffic rerouting and pedestrian “plazas.” Just temporary, folks! You won’t be stuck with it until we find out how it’s working!
Every time, the DOT concluded that its brainstorms worked just fine — even though it’s failed to persuasively document any improvement in vehicular flow that was the nominal rationale.
The latest horror is on Columbus Avenue north of West 77th Street. The DOT dangerously narrowed auto lanes from 12 feet to 10 and replaced an entire parking lane with a little-used bike lane. Cars must now park in the middle of the avenue.
To push an agenda superficially plausible — urging people to leave their cars home for mass transit — Mayor Bloomberg tapped into Sadik-Khan’s zeal to put everyone on two wheels. But lots of people must drive through town, as mad as it strikes those of us who don’t. Many corners of the five boroughs, even Manhattan, are far from subways. The MTA is slashing train and bus service. Could there be a worse time to make driving harder?
Yet, in a city where the smallest actions are often subjected to withering public review, the DOT’s wholesale remaking of the streetscape escapes meaningful oversight.
The DOT’s street redesigns — like the closing of Broadway to vehicles in Times Square, shunting traffic and fumes onto overcrowded Ninth Avenue — have far more impact on those who live and work in a neighborhood than incidental Building Code variances requiring approval by the City Council.
The DOT’s cityscape-altering decrees, on the other hand, are subject to no meaningful oversight. Community boards — typically dominated by anti-auto activists out of touch with their own districts — rarely raise a peep.
Business leaders who hate the changes are mute. They fear retribution by myriad agencies — not only the DOT but also Sanitation, Buildings, Health and even the NYPD. The views they share privately often are very different from their public statements.
Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz is the rare elected official to call unambiguously for public oversight of the DOT’s do-as-it-pleases ways. “The City Council should be involved,” he says. “The council has not had an opportunity to vote on, or to let residents know whether they’re for or against re-engineering our streetscape to the vision or lack of vision of the leadership of the DOT.”
But until Bloomberg steps out of his limo long enough to see how much less hospitable our streets have become for ordinary pedestrians and drivers, count on only more misery. scuozzo@nypost.com