This week's journey. Is there any way to stop the incessant honking? Plus: A cruising crackdown at the Penn Station bathrooms; e-bike speed limits going into effect; a tree that keeps growing back, and more.
NYC to build heaps of new housing in Red Hook — but not a subway
Roughly 6,000 new apartments are coming to the the banks of Red Hook and the Columbia Street Waterfront District in Brooklyn through a rezoning fast-tracked by city officials earlier this week. But that flood of new residents won’t be met with a flood of new mass transit options, much less a subway extension long sought by locals.
The area is one of Western Brooklyn’s most glaring transit deserts. There are no subway stops nearby, and the buses there slog along its cramped streets. The neighborhood’s NYC Ferry stop is only capable of serving a couple hundred riders per hour.
“ That is actually one of my number one complaints is that this area is like slightly more affordable than other places, but it's really far away from transportation,” said Columbia Heights resident Karen Fuller, 35. “I know that people are concerned about the traffic issues and how busy it is on Columbia Street already.”
“It’s just going to be a nightmare,” she said of the incoming housing developments.
The rezoning bypassed the usual land-use review process and clears the way for the city’s Economic Development Corporation to move forward with a redesign of 122 acres of land in the Brooklyn Marine Terminal. In addition to the new housing, officials proposed spending $50 million on an “electric shuttle” bus service to bring people to subway stops, adding new bus service to Lower Manhattan through the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and boosting ferry service in Red Hook.
They’re the kinds of improvements that lawmakers and the neighborhoods’ residents have sought for decades. And locals were upset the improvements are only now coming alongside a historic investment by private developers.
But even now, many feel they’re insufficient.
“We'll never get our services the way we should,” said Red Hook resident Suliman Stevens, 59. He believes if more residents voted and were politically engaged, Red Hook might get better services. “ There's a lot of young people around here, they don't vote. A lot of them don't vote. So no matter what, we still won't get the services.”
The MTA has considered Red Hook’s isolation time and again. It even pondered extending the W line to the neighborhood, running along Columbia Street. The agency’s 20-year needs assessment published two years ago estimated the work would cost $11.7 billion, which transit officials said was too expensive because it would only serve 7,600 daily riders.
Now that the project is moving forward, a subway extension would likely serve thousands more people every day. MTA spokesperson Eugene Resnick declined to answer questions about the idea, and only pointed to the old assessment, which is now outdated.
When the city expanded a century ago, transit led the way. Take what is now the 7 train. When it was built into Flushing, Queens in the 1920s, the area was mostly farmland. Once the subway arrived, dense housing followed.
These days, private developers have a much easier time building swaths of new housing than the state-run MTA has building new subways. The transit agency hasn’t built a major new subway line since it was formed in 1968.
“I don't think the infrastructure is ready for it,” said Columbia Heights resident Judith Wang, 43. ”I can't imagine bringing more people here, adding more cars, more pedestrians. It's a recipe for disaster.”
“ I think we're kind of just building things and hope for the best, which I don't think is a great idea,” she added.
Curious Commuter
Have a question for us? Use this form to submit yours and we may answer it in a future newsletter!
“Can anything be done about the nonstop aggressive honking? It's gotten much worse in the congestion zone over the past few months.”
- Helen from Manhattan
It may come as a shock, but it's technically illegal to honk a car horn in the five boroughs unless there’s an “imminent danger.” Drivers don’t abide by that law, obviously. Street noise is among the top complaints to 311. Although car traffic has reduced since congestion pricing went into effect earlier this year, the number of complaints about car honking has actually increased. As of August this year, street and residential noise complaints citywide have gone up 22% compared to the previous year, according to the state comptroller’s office.
That said, I’d hesitate attributing it solely to congestion pricing. Each month since February has seen a 10% to 14% reduction in vehicles in the city, indicating there are fewer horns to honk. You could also lobby for a noise camera — which automatically issues tickets to owners of loud vehicles. There are currently just 11 of them in the city.
Curious Commuter questions are exclusive for On The Way newsletter subscribers. Did a friend forward this to you? Sign up for free here to start asking questions.
We're also talking about...
The cruising crackdown at Penn Station. Federal law enforcement officials said at least 20 immigrants have been taken into ICE custody since June as part of an aggressive crackdown by Amtrak on anonymous sex at the transit hub's bathrooms.
“We continue to patrol the restrooms and if and when we find any criminal activity, we do make arrests.”
E-bike speed limit going into effect. The city’s new 15 mph speed limit for e-bikes and scooters will go into effect Oct. 24, the day before early voting begins for the mayoral election.
