Open Thread Wednesday

Happy Alternate-Side-Parking-Is-Suspended day! I mean, Lincoln’s Birthday.

Can anyone give a definitive explanation for why some of our Heights streets have true street-cleaning parking (can’t park on one side for a few hours on day X; the sign has a P with a broom through it) vs pseudo-street-cleaning parking (can’t park all day long on day X on one side but you can park on the other side during that time; the sign has no broom)?

Incidentally even though the latter is not technically a “street cleaning” rule, the city’s regulations are clear that holiday parking rule suspensions apply there too. Tell that to the cops who like to give out extra tickets on days like today!

I see no difference in street width or any other functional reason why some streets are set up one way and some the other. Does the sanitation department really need all day to clean Hicks Street when they can get the job done on Henry Street in 1.5 hours? Or, if as the city says, the all-day zones are not street-cleaning rules, why bother having them? Makes no sense to me.

Yes yes, I know the REAL reason is ticket $$$ for the city, but is there at least a purported rationale?

I wonder how many people remember when Alternate Side Parking here was on both Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10am-3pm?

Nobody has discussed the results of the BQX workshop last Thursday. The planned route in the area would be Columbia – Atlantic – Court – Joralemon. The conceptual design for Atlantic is: two exclusive streetcar lanes, two traffic lanes in each direction, no parking. The design for Court is: one exclusive streetcar lane (NB), one shared streetcar/traffic lane (SB), one lane for parking/deliveries. Stop on Court btwn State and Atlantic, stop on Joralemon in front of Borough Hall.

i can’t believe we’re still talking about the BQX. the cost to install the infrastructure for this project would be astronomical compared to the cost of improving, increasing, and relocating bus service to serve underserved areas.

Yes but that has nothing to do with switching cars on Wednesdays.

Like clockwork, NYPD has ticketed an entire line of 10+ cars on the north side of Clark between Henry & Hicks in a “No Parking Wednesdays 8am-6pm” zone. Those cars are all parked legally today when it’s a parking holiday.

This is the same department who lets their own officers park with impunity on sidewalks, in bike lanes, etc. whenever/wherever they feel like.

You’ll learn, for example, such pivotal facts as what CVS stands for….

Just answering your question: “Does the sanitation department really need all day to clean Hicks Street when they can get the job done on Henry Street in 1.5 hours?”

I believe all of the above were rejected before the final name was chosen. Unfortunately.

Andrew, can you do a book of the pictures you have been posting over the years? If not, what about posting them as a group online?

The MTA is considering reducing bus service in Downtown Brooklyn:
https://www.brooklynpaper.com/mta-questions-need-for-so-many-buses-downtown-report/

BQX ridership is estimated at 50,000 riders per weekday. The B6 and the B46/SBS would regularly get 40,000 riders per weekday before ridership declined due to poor service: http://web.mta.info/nyct/facts/ridership/ridership_bus.htm

Here’s a paper by the St. Louis Fed on the myths of light rail: https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/bridges/winter-20032004/lightrail-transit-myths-and-realities

yeah… reduce bus service… that’s the answer. here’s a very interesting podcast about the benefits of buses: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/missing-the-bus/

Claude Scales runs the BHB, and what gets posted here is up to him.

Also, I don’t own the photos from the Municipal Archives, only my own photos, which I am not inclined to share for free.

The postcards, some of them, anyway, are here:

https://tinyurl.com/y6fy2o4t

I’ve heard that one key fact that eludes most knee-jerk “down with cars, down with construction, up with mass transit” partisans is that there’s some serious Federal money that Mayor Bill hopes/d to tap into.

New York’s economy is not nearly as healthy as some think it is – and it’s very highly dependent on 2 industries, both of which are very cyclical. So, I think we do well to avoid “volitional” big projects, esp. ones likely to take 10 years or more.

Yes, the subways have problems, and ferries seem to be pretty marginal (in part, probably, because they still don’t accept metrocards – how ridiculous is that?!), but both are FAR less maxed out than our streets. “More buses” makes no sense – Red Hook and many other non-BH nabes are served OK by buses, but getting to and from them takes too long on vehicles averaging 5 MPH. The BQX is a pipe dream, but it WAS out-of-the-box thinking for otherwise insoluble access problems. It’s also why towers keep going up in 11201.

Atlantic Avenue and Jay St. and Boerum Pl/Adams are heading for 10 years of vastly increased traffic as work on the BQE takes off, so you can forget about them as “bus ways” at least until 2030. And anybody who thinks s/he knows what NYC will look like at that point is delusional.

Is there a sanitation slowdown?
Recycling and garbage seems to be accumulating and I don’t think I’ve seen a garbage truck anywhere in the neighborhood in
the past 2 or 3 days.