Deja vu: another truck violates truck route, drives through residential street

On Dean Street east of Sixth Avenue

This past Tuesday, 5/19/15, on the same day that an Empire State Development representative reported that the number of complaints regarding Atlantic Yards impactrs had been decreasing, a report on Atlantic Yards Watch documented a truck ignoring the required truck route.

The same thing happened yesterday, again documented on Atlantic Yards Watch.

The truck, which had delivered a module to the B2 modular tower on Dean Street just east of Flatbush Avenue, was supposed to turn left on Sixth Avenue.

Instead, it continued on Dean Street through the residential neighborhood, violating the requirement to use the truck route.



Potential violations

These seem to be clear violations.

According to the New York City Department of Transportation, the failure to use the local truck route leads to a violation, as designated in Section 4-13 of the New York City Tra ffic Rules.Here's advice from a trucker web site:

Very important that for all new truckers and for some occasionals, that you make sure you only use designated TRUCK ROUTES. You are to use these roads to get as close as possible to your destination, then you can get off and finish your trip.If you are caught being OFF TRUCK ROUTE, you will be fined $250 plus 2 points on your license. Second and third offenses $500 and $1000 with 2 more points each time.

Promises to avoid such violations

Such violations are not supposed to happen. According to the Second Amended Memorandum of Environmental Commitments (MEC), which documents an agreement between the developer (then Forest City Ratner, now Greenland Forest City Partners) and Empire State Development (ESD), the state agency overseeing/shepherding the project:

Truck deliveries shall be scheduled, and untimely deliveries shall, in general, be turned away or reassigned with different delivery times. Trucks shall be required to use NYCDOT-designated truck routes for traveling to and from the construction site, which include primarily Atlantic Avenue, Flatbush Avenue, 4th Avenue, and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway except as required for movement between staging and construction areas

The document says that Forest City is supposed to check regularly for non-compliance with the truck protocol requirements concerning idling and/or queuing, and to tell ESD about repeat violators, which can be warned, sanctioned or banned.

The document states:

Maps that identify acceptable routing of trucks to and from the Project site shall be provided to all contractors as part of the MEC training program. FCRC or its contractors shall take measures to ensure that the trucks follow such routes. Among other things, contractors shall be directed to provide those maps to their subcontractors, and require that the maps be distributed to drivers and kept available for reference in the cabs at all times. 

But there's no apparent sanction on the developer--or the companies/drivers--for these truck route violations. That seems to be a significant gap.