MTA Under Fire by Drivers,
Residents for Relief Now
By Harold Egeln
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BAY RIDGE -- Bay Ridge drivers, residents and businesses are very angry about the often nightmarish traffic congestion, delays and inconvenience due to the $58 million reconstruction project on the Verrazano Bridge, which closes the lower level.
Several vented their complaints to MTA Bridges and Tunnels officials at a town hall meeting on Tuesday evening. The tone of those speaking at meeting can be summed up this way: “We're not going to take it anymore! We want solutions and relief right now.”
Faced with nine more months of continuing traffic jams where a trip through Bay Ridge to the bridge can take up to an hour with snarled traffic on the major avenues and side streets, state Sen. Marty Golden called the town hall meeting, held at the Fort Hamilton Center.
The meeting was yet another chance to find solutions, just days after state Supreme Court Justice Phil Minardo ordered the MTA to discuss traffic mitigation measures in court on Dec. 18. That is the result of a lawsuit filed by Congressman Vito Fossella, which Golden has not yet joined.
“Some of our small businesses may have to close because they’re losing business. It’s just inconceivable the way people in our community are impacted,” said Golden. “The congestion on 86th Street is unbelievable. Fort Hamilton Parkway residents, still reeling from the impact of recent road construction, are suffering. It’s just unfair to the people of this community, who are going out of their minds with this.”
The top official getting the message loud and clear was Jim Ferrera, the general manager of the Verrazano Bridge, who was accompanied by other officials, including engineer Dave Riggs. When he started the meeting with a slide show of the work being down on the lower ramps in Bay Ridge, it was cut short by a local resident.
“We’re interested in the traffic! We’re not engineers and we don't care about this,” she said as people applauded and the meeting got down to business. One resident of Dahlgren Place, near the 86th Street bridge ramps, told Ferrera it took 90 minutes to travel from Fontbonne Hall Academy to pick up and bring her daughter home to Dahlgren.
A major complaint was the lack of enough traffic control agents. Also, according to those at the meeting, some of the agents who are there do not seem to do a very good job in directing traffic. “They stand there with their hands in their pockets,” said Tom Casatelli. “The DOT is not doing their job.”
Ferrera responded that the Department of Transportation is no longer in charge of the agents, but the MTA is proposing more traffic agents.
“Traffic agents are no longer under the jurisdiction of the DOT,” said Claudette Workman, community coordinator for Brooklyn at the DOT. When residents asked for more DOT representation, Golden pledged to have another meeting, a roundtable with DOT, MTA and related officials, at the beginning of January, when the MTA should also be ready with solutions. Those studies are now in progress on solutions to the problems, said Ferrera, and those conclusions should “be ready in a few weeks.”
“The traffic problems happen at the bottom of the bridge. Traffic merges into one lane, causing backups,” said Capt. Eric Rodriguez, commanding officer of the 68th Precinct, accompanied by his community affairs officers. Drivers going south on the Gowanus Expressway, hoping to avoid a jam on the expressway going onto the bridge, often exit onto Third Avenue, he said, and that causes delays.
“A lot of businesses are suffering. People are frustrated,” he noted.
Steven Conti, a Staten Island resident with a Third Avenue business, the children’s store Kaleidoscope, said in a prepared statement, “It took me an hour one time to go from my store on Third Avenue at 88th Street to the bridge.” Conti was unable to attend the meeting in person. “They should at least bring back the Brooklyn-Staten Island ferry during this time, and run shuttle buses in Bay Ridge to and from the ferry.”
40 Minutes To Drive 8 Blocks
“It took me 40 minutes to drive eight blocks to Key Food on Third Avenue,” a resident said. Other residents on Dahlgren Place complained that they cannot get out of their driveways because of traffic congestion, which often extends beyond the rush hours.
“My driveway is blocked. Construction vehicles are parked under the bridge,” said Patricia Iverson Ryan, a Fort Hamilton Parkway resident.
High-speed EZ Pass tolls, such as used on the Goethals Bridge, were urged by community and business leader Greg Ahl, of Ahl Tone Communications on Fifth Avenue, for the Staten Island side of the bridge to help move traffic along, along with additional highway lanes on the Staten Island side. “My time sheets at work tell the story,” he said.
Golden bluntly told Ferrera that his agency must come up with solutions for relief by the time of the roundtable meeting in early January. He asked that a command center be set up on 92nd Street by the bridge ramps. “We just can't wait until the September 2008 deadline for the construction work to end,” he said.
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
All materials posted on BrooklynEagle.com are protected by United States copyright law.
Just a reminder, though -- It’s not considered polite to paste the entire story on your blog. Most blogs post a summary or the first paragraph,( 40 words) then post a link to the rest of the story. That helps increase click-throughs for everyone, and minimizes copyright issues.
So please keep posting, but not the entire article. arturc at att.net
Main Office 718 422 7400
