Southern Brooklyn pols blast de Blasio street car plan
A group of Southern Brooklyn lawmakers issued a joint statement to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s much-talked-about plan to establish a Brooklyn-Queens streetcar service and their statement could be summed up in three words: What about us?
The elected officials, including Councilmembers Mark Treyger, Chaim Deutsch and Vincent Gentile, as well as state Sen. Diane J. Savino and Assemblymembers William Colton and Pamela Harris, argued that instead of planning a streetcar in Sunset Park and North Brooklyn, the mayor should be paying closer attention to transportation needs in Southern Brooklyn.
“How does the mayor’s new $2.5 billion transportation plan address the needs of underserved Southern Brooklyn residents? We will not tolerate city administration transportation proposals that leave out Southern Brooklyn and other areas of the city that are in dire need of transit upgrades. These are areas dealing with a lack of transportation options, lengthy, delay-ridden commutes and overcrowding,” the statement reads in part.
Residents in several Southern Brooklyn neighborhoods suffer from inadequate transit options, according to the group of elected officials, who pointed to the fact that riders have been clamoring for the return of the F express for more than 30 years, are eager to see better service on the R train, and have felt stranded by cuts in service on X28 and X29 express buses.