Times: ride to Barclays Center over Manhattan Bridge took 2.5 times as long (but results from opening days support both "skeptics and believers")

A New York Times blog post and video, Brooklyn Transformed, for Better or Worse?, offers a preliminary assessment of the neighborhood impact of the Barclays Center, in terms of traffic, street activity, local business uptick (or not), and the public mood.

The conclusion: "Skeptics and believers could all find support in Friday’s early returns."

That wasn't surprising, but this statistic was interesting. The one-mile drive from the Manhattan Bridge to the Barclays Center on opening night, Sept. 28, took more than 2.5 times longer than the week before: 11:50 vs. 4:53.

Then again, as I reported, traffic managers are overriding red lights to ensure that the traffic keeps flowing.

There was also a threefold rise in noise complaints in the Park Slope zip code of 11217, though the arena impact zone is far more extensive.

In closing

"The Barclays Center may be an unwelcome neighbor to some," the narrator intones, "but like it or not, it's here." 

So the final quote comes from an enthusiast from Washington Heights: "The stadium is awesome, it looks crazy inside, the food tastes delicious, I don't think I'm ever going back to the Garden, unless the Knicks make it to the playoffs."

There you go.