CityLab: advocates suggest changes on Atlantic Avenue at Flatbush intersection and at Vanderbilt (but can bottleneck near arena be avoided?)

CityLab on 12/8/21 published Anatomy of a Bad Road, analyzing problems with, and attempts to fix ten-mile long Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a "deadly poster child" for traffic violence, where speed limits are widely ignored.

Writes John Surico:

It’s not unlike the much-hated “stroads” that course through so many U.S. suburbs: neither street nor road but an uneasy mix of the two, with high-speed traffic lanes and frequent intersections where pedestrians confront a countdown clock and lines of cars eager to turn right into them.

So the-based advocacy group Transportation Alternatives and the transit technology company Via are trying to reimagine the avenue, focusing on the area near the Barclays Center:

We convened on a brisk November afternoon at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic, a central borough crossroads where two major roads converge with Fourth Avenue, creating a triangular tangle of lanes and crosswalks that’s long been the focus of pedestrian safety concerns. The team’s streetscape revamp is slated to cover from here to Nostrand, where Brown was killed, about a mile and a half east of here.

The article notes:

Our tour of Atlantic Avenue began, appropriately, with bollards: Large steel stems ring Atlantic Terminal, a shopping and transit hub, to protect visitors from wayward vehicles. In front of the Barclays Center sports arena, the rest isn’t much better. Large turn lanes leave pedestrians regularly racing to cross six lanes of traffic against a waiting car, even with the light. Buses lack a protected lane, so stops are often blocked. Non-existent cycling infrastructure leaves a Citi Bike dock barely used. The plastic “flexpost” for a small curb extension was seen repeatedly run over.

So Council Member-elect Crystal Hudson tells Surico she'd like to change everything. That's an indictment, in part, of the various plans to make the arena parcel more pedestrian-friendly.

About Pacific Park

Writes Surico:

As we headed east down Atlantic, the sidewalk noticeably narrowed. At one point, our group had to walk single-file to squeeze past a bus shelter; later, used cars from an auto body shop would block our path. We also weaved around scaffolding from the dizzying number of high-rises emerging on the avenue, like Pacific Park, a planned 17-building development coming to the area. No street trees or greenery offered any visual buffering from the punishing parade of traffic.

Astoundingly, the problem is likely to be intensified (and fractionally ameliorated), because the six future Pacific Park towers, unmentioned in the article, are supposed to come along Atlantic Avenue--despite the erroneous labeling of current towers, which are instead bordered to the north by (demapped) Pacific Street.

And photo does not show block between Sixth & Carlton Avenues, where three more towers (B5-B7) are planned, again assuming $ to build platform.

Informational graphic by @bennkeel is v. helpful, regularly updated on my #AtlanticYards/Pacific Park Report website

— Norman Oder (@AYReport) December 9, 2021

UNITY Plan, 2007

Those towers will have open space, though mostly "inside"--away from Atlantic and closer to Pacific Street.

Remember, the UNITY plan sponsored by Atlantic Yards opponents/critics proposed adding streets to make those parcels more pedestrian-friendly, and that could have encouraged more crossings at Atlantic.

What next?

From the article:

After our tour, the Transportation Alternatives team came back with a series of renderings. They focus on two notorious intersections — the one where we started, at Atlantic, Flatbush and Fourth, and right before we came to end, at Vanderbilt. Both are dramatically revisioned. At Fourth Avenue, traffic lanes are clipped by pedestrianizing a diagonal portion of Flatbush; cyclists are given a two-way lane that goes through Atlantic’s median — which helps cut the long crossings — and then hugs the curb, next to a protected bus lane.

It's an interesting solution, but, as I tweeted, there sure seems to be a potential bottleneck in that short stretch of Atlantic Avenue between Flatbush and Fourth, especially when rush-hour meets event night.

That deserves a response.

And at Vanderbilt

From the article:

At Vanderbilt, traffic lanes go from four to two in each direction, with space made for a central two-way bike lane and expanded sidewalks. Traffic islands linking the different bike lanes also give pedestrians a means of negotiating the wide crossing.

That's an interesting, and not unreasonable, solution. But what isn't factored in, yet, is the presence of new towers--one finished but not yet open, plus two more planned--at three corners. I'm not sure how much they help/hurt, but they should be considered.