Windsor Terrace Street Should Become 1-Way Truck Route, DOT Says

WINDSOR TERRACE, BROOKLYN — The city decided a stretch of 20th Street should be a one-way truck route after eight years of looking for a better solution to dangerous traffic conditions, officials said.

“We’ve looked at many different options and they all suck,” said Department of Transportation project manager Michael Klatsky. “This is the option that sucks the least.”

The DOT rep presented plans — which call for making 20th Street a one-way street for westbound traffic between Third Avenue and Prospect Park West — at a Brooklyn Community Board 7 transportation committee meeting Monday night.

The proposal came in response to a 2010 request from Community Board 7 that the DOT address dangerous traffic conditions caused by narrow lanes, speeding vehicles and trucks. It's a problem complicated by 20th Street’s inclusion on the DOT’s grid of truck routes, where trucks are legally allowed to drive in New York City.

The two-way street allows trucks to deliver goods from the industrial areas in Red Hook and Sunset Park to communities in deeper Brooklyn, Klatsky explained.

“It’s a very critical truck route,” the DOT spokesman said. “There is no other way to get on the parkway.”

Which is why the DOT proposed routing trucks coming from Red Hook to the Prospect Expressway — which leads into central Brooklyn — via Ninth Street and Seventh Avenue in Park Slope, and back again via 20th Street.

Klatsky also presented two alternatives — making 20th Street one-way between Fourth and Seventh avenues or making it an eastbound one-way — but was quick to point out the flaws that made those options unfeasible.

The shorter stretch of one-way traffic would make expressway access impossible and an eastbound one-way street would create an imbalance of eastbound streets, he said.

But residents at the transportation committee meeting were quick to note several flaws in the option Klatsky presented as the one that "sucks the least.”

Twentieth Street residents worried that speeding trucks would continue to endanger pedestrians because police do not adequately enforce traffic laws on their blocks.

Several 18th and 19th Street residents pointed out that the plan would mean increased traffic on their blocks, which are also home to Hellenic Classic Charter School, New Voices Middle School and Middle School 88.

There was one point both the community members and Department of Transportation agreed on.

“This is a granddaddy of a problem,” a Caton Avenue resident said.

“You must look at this with a much wider scope,” Klatsky replied. “It’s a mess.”

Photo courtesy of GoogleMaps/June 2016