Hicks Street Pain in the Neck-down

By on November 14, 2009 12:20 pm in Brooklyn Heights

The Brooklyn Paper reports that the sidewalk widening project underway on Hicks Street in Brooklyn Heights may pose a problem for firetrucks attempting to turn into or out of Engine Company 224. B’Paper newshound Stephen Brown found a city inspector who agreed that the new wider sidewalk would be a problem:

Brooklyn Paper: “Firetrucks are definitely going to be a problem,” Ishwar Patel, an on-site inspector with the Department of Design and Construction told The Brooklyn Paper.
But he quickly backtracked — a bit.
“I’m just the inspector,” he added. “This is not my issue. The DOT [Department of Transportation] sends the designs, we implement them.”
But Patel did say that firetrucks would almost certainly have to go up onto the sidewalk to make a left turn from Hicks Street onto Joralemon Street.

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  • the banned

    this project must have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars at this corner alone. First to relocate the storm sewers and catch basins and then to build new granite curbs and deformed sidewalk. Holy smokes! Now we hear that fire trucks will have trouble negotiating the turn. Who do we have to thank for this boondoggle?

  • bklyn20

    While I worry about the cars speeding up Hicks in the morning — especially considering the number of children crossing at that intersection — I don’t think many people in the South Heights knew about this until it started happening. Good to slow the cars, but bad to slow the fire trucks.

  • JM

    This DOT commissioner has been implementing these poorly thought out “innovations” for years now under Bloomberg. I was almost hit head on by a box truck simply trying to turn a corner where one of these ill conceived neck downs was just installed because there’s not enough room for them to turn!
    This is part of a systemic ‘stealing” of traffic lanes through out the city (look at BWY south of Houston is now ONE lane for cars during biz hours!) Funny how Bloomy keeps saying we need congestion pricing to ease the congestion he’s engineering with his DOT Queen. Ditto some of the more dangerous bike lanes she just sends crews out to paint in at will. When will people say enough already? How many cyclists, pedestrians and drivers must be injured or worse?

  • cat

    Maybe Bloomberg wants to increase congestion so he can resell his congestion- pricing scheme.