Brooklyn Call For Safer Meeker Ave Renewed By City Bike Lane Plan

WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN — As the city's attention remains on the crisis of cyclist fatalities on New York City streets and what to do about it, advocates in North Brooklyn are hoping to make a final push for a bike lane on what they call one of the area's most dangerous thoroughfares.

Activists with North Brooklyn Transportation Alternatives will spend the next three Saturdays on Williamsburg's streets gathering signatures for their petition to turn Meeker Avenue, a busy street that runs under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, into a safe spot for pedestrians and cyclists.

The petition, which already has more than 3,000 signatures, has been in the works for a few years, even before the city announced its plans to redesign a 16-block stretch of the roadway in 2017.

And as the gathering feedback portion of that redesign wraps up — and as other street safety projects in the neighborhood come underway — advocates want to make sure the DOT hears them loud and clear.

"We want to demonstrate the wide support a safer Meeker has in the neighborhood so we get the strongest and safest planned route," said Philip Leff, chair of North Brooklyn Transportation Alternatives. "Our ongoing work is to transform Meeker from an inhospitable place that divides our neighborhood into a space that works for people instead of cars."

Leff said the petitioning push was prompted in part by Mayor Bill de Blasio's$58 million cycling safety plan, which he announced last week to address the 17 cycling fatalities so far in 2019. Since then, another cyclist lost her life in Sunset Park. She was hit by a tractor trailer on Third Avenue, which, like Meeker Avenue, runs under a highway overpass and has long been the focus of safety advocates calling for change.

In de Blasio's plan, Leff said, it appears that Meeker Avenue is one of the places slated to get a bike lane by 2021.

While the Department of Transportation told Patch that no exact streets have been defined in the plans yet, the map does show an "upcoming bike lane" line that comes off the Kosciuszko Bridge and slopes as Meeker Avenue does.

The Kosciuszko Bridge, which is undergoing its own transformation, was another reason behind the renewed push to redesign Meeker, Leff added.

The bridge redesign includes a bike and pedestrian path on the Kosciuszko, but Leff said that, so far, there doesn't seem to be a route for how cyclists and pedestrians would get there. Meeker, should it be transformed properly, could be that route, he said.

"We think Meeker is a direct route that could (be) a safe, protected way to travel between boroughs," Leff said.

DOT officials did not respond to questions about the timeline of the Meeker Avenue project before publication, but they said back in 2017 that the redesign will likely take place in 2020.

Back then, they said the 16 blocks between the Kosciuszko and Williamsburg bridges would be revamped to improve safety. There were 145 injuries and three fatalities reported on Meeker Avenue between 2011 and 2014, according to the DOT.

Transportation officials highlighted past overpass underbelly renovations that brought giant chess sets, climbing walls, concession stands and public plazas to their neighborhoods when they announced the plans.

The agency is still accepting comments on its website about ideas for the redesign.

North Brooklyn Transportation Alternatives' petitioning event will kick off at 8 a.m. at the base of the Williamsburg Bridge.