Parkside Traffic Pattern Change Creates Gridlock, Slows Emergency Response Considerably

by CrownHeights.info

Parkside Ave, the major artery running along the south side of Prospect Park, recently received a traffic pattern change, and it’s a complete disaster.

The two way street that runs between Ocean Ave and the Park Circle, connects central Brooklyn to a major section of South Brooklyn, primarily the areas of Boro Park and Sunset Park. It also is a pathway for access to Fort Hamilton Parkway and the Prospect Expressway.

The vital roadway used to have one lane running in each direction, parking along both sides of the road, and a central emergency lane, allowing for easy movement by police, fire, and ambulances making their way towards Maimonides Hospital in Boro Park and other areas.

In a complete change to the old traffic pattern, the city took away the central emergency lane, removed it completely in favor of moving the parked cars away from the north side of the street and creating a “protected bike lane”.

The change removed the only easy access for emergency vehicles, making them dependent on regular traffic flow, a daunting thought anywhere in Brooklyn, but made exponentially worse by disastrous changes to the circle as well.

Where the circle was previously open to traffic across all lanes, allowing for emergency vehicles to bypass lights and slide around waiting lines of cars, the new pattern locks down lanes separately based on destination with plastic dividers and poles. The result is simple. If cars are waiting at the light, nobody, not even an emergency vehicle can pass by them.

If that was not enough, the changes were synched improperly to the traffic light pattern, creating a situation where the circle enters complete gridlock during times of high traffic congestion, with cars unable to move at all.

The new traffic pattern created such chaos on the vital route that ambulances are rethinking transporting their patients to Maimonides Hospital from the Crown Heights area, electing to transport their patients to the further hospitals as a better alternative in some situations.

To compound matters entirely, there is presently no better alternative route available to cross the area south of Prospect Park, with nearly every other street in the area also highly congested and bottlenecked.

“These concerns have been brought to the Public Safety Committee and the Transportation Committee. Both our committee’s will be assessing these changes, and the proposed changes to Ocean Ave. We will bring our findings to the full community board for a vote on how to proceed,” said Rabbi Yaacov Behrman, public safety chair of community board 9. “But to be clear, this is a Department of Transportation issue. The board has no jurisdiction and can only relay our concerns, and hope the DOT will mitigate any problems.”