A local panel will form two new sub-committees – one focused on parking problems and another on traffic accidents – to combat noteworthy rises in each within the board’s catchment area, which includes Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights and Fort Hamilton.
The sub-committees will be a part of Community Board 10’s already overtaxed, agency-focused Traffic and Transportation Committee, board Chair Doris Cruz told members and local residents at the panels’ May monthly meeting.
“More voices, different voices can bring a better result,” Cruz said, urging board members to consider lending their hands to the new sub-groups, the first of which came out of concern mounting now that construction is set to start on the new elevator for the R station at 86th Street. “Committee members commented on valet parking in the area and how that might impact residents during construction.”
Seemingly hand-in-hand, she said, is the second. “In addition to an increase in parking problems, we have had an increase in vehicular accidents over the last five years,” Cruz said, citing demographics which claimed a total of 1,895 vehicular collisions within the board’s catchment area in 2013 and 2,243 in 2017. “That’s an 18 percent increase.
“During this time [District Manager Josephine] Beckmann has noticed a decrease in certain moving violations issued in our area,” she went on, stressing that all of this is in conflict with citywide statistics for the same period under Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Vision Zero initiative.
“We have all witnessed bad driving, bad cycling and bad walking,” Cruz said. “This sub-committee – which I’ve deemed ‘Safe Streets’ – will hopefully address that.”
Both sub-committees, she said, will look at data, street behavior and more, and both are open to all members of the board.