Underhill Avenue
Before COVID, Underhill Avenue was a quiet, green street, safer than most for drivers, bikers, and pedestrians. After a generalized survey about more access to greener spaces, bike lanes and more, the DOT (supported by PHNDC) decided to completely overhaul Underhill Ave. A small group of people led by PHNDC were about to have an outsized impact on our neighborhood. After DOT conducted a few limited outreach efforts on Underhill and Vanderbilt (there was no extensive door to door surveying of the residents) word began to spread- neighbor to neighbor- about what was afoot. Our Assemblyman, Robert Carroll wrote the DOT asking them to pause the redesign until the larger community could be heard from. Despite the growing opposition that began building this Spring (1,000 petitioners as of mid August) at 5:45AM on Saturday July 29, DOT started the project anyway. They began work with no posted notices to the community or our elected officials asking them to first meet with the community, hear our concerns and communicate a timeline for the project.
The DOT and the PHNDC told the community the redesign was necessary due to safety concerns. We did a little digging into the vehicle collision data for Underhill Avenue using NYC Open Data Motor Vehicles Collisions- Crashes database and Crashmapper focused on data points for Underhill Avenue. The chart below gives some historical context. Our research showing the PHNDC and DOT’s assertions that Underhill was a dangerous street in need of traffic slowing measures were not accurate was confirmed during a community meeting organized by our City Councilperson Crystal Hudson, on September 19th, 2023, with Brooklyn DOT Commissioner, Keith Bray. Commissioner Bray told the community that Underhill Avenue is not a dangerous street and safety was not the reason for the redesign, as we had been told for months by the PHNDC and the DOT. Commissioner Bray told us the redesign is part of a pilot program to look at ways to get rid of barriers on existing Open Streets. Underhill was chosen to be redesigned simply because it was an existing Open Street and because the DOT has a mandate to convert a certain number of streets, not to address any local, community needs.
The Redesign Impact
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In an effort to make the Open Streets Limited Access permanent, the DOT designed a series of features to the length of Underhill Avenue shifting the traffic patterns.
The design has:
- Entirely closed off Underhill between Atlantic and Pacific Streets to emergency vehicles, taxis and deliveries to create an underutilized plaza mainly used as a seating space for employees tasked with putting up and removing tables and chairs daily.
- Created a confusing and dangerous combination of two way and one way street directions through the length of Underhill Avenue.
- Created a one way protected bike path on only two of the eight blocks of the “bike boulevard” .
- Added dangerous island obstruction in the center of three blocks by placing large planters, cones, and boulders in the middle of the street.
These changes have had a significant impact on the neighbors living on Underhill Ave and surrounding streets as well as the public school and our first responders. When we raise these significant quality of life and safety issues, they are summarily dismissed by a handful of advocates as merely a few disgruntled people complaining about losing a few parking spots.
The Lowry Triangle
The block of Underhill between Atlantic and Pacific Street is now fully closed off to all vehicles after being barricaded by planters and heavy boulders, which cannot be moved.
This presents a significant safety issue to residents on this block.
In addition, the closing off of this block forces all traffic traveling south from Atlantic needing to utilize Washington Avenue instead, leading to additional congestion and pollution and slower bus service for the B45 line.
Island Features
Multiple island features were installed throughout the length of Underhill Avenue containing a combination of planters and heavy boulders. Although designed to calm the speed of traffic, in practice these islands have not slowed the speed of cars but have instead slowed speed for FDNY trucks and ambulances The islands prevent delivery trucks from double parking, pushing them to the cross streets or forcing them to block the entire street, causing additional labor for these delivery workers.
Each island installed also removes 8 street parking spaces. Many residents need their cars for work, travel to locations inaccessible by public transportation, are caregivers, seniors, differently abled, or need to transport people and materials, to just name a few reasons. Until we understand how transportation is utilized in our neighborhood, it is our position that it is short sighted, unethical and cruel to summarily remove it, placing an undue burden on people already dealing with difficulties. We are asking for a significant study on why PH/CH residents utilize vehicular transportation, then address these issues with a compassionate and comprehensive plan.
We urge our officials to facilitate a more robust and comprehensive discussion around transportation.
PS 9
The redesign has most significantly impacted the PS 9 community. Our public school is not only a large community school, it is also the district's Barrier Free elementary school and hosts both Gifted and Talented and Dual Language programs. This means families throughout Brooklyn travel to this school and many drive to drop off and pick up. The public school also has significant bussing needs for their students with physical disabilities.
In addition to erasing much of the neighborhood parking for our hard working public school teachers, making this block of Underhill one way with a one way protected bike lane creates additional congestion and safety concerns. Due to the newly narrowed street, the school has been forced to close the block entirely in the mornings and afternoons, pushing drop off and pick up to Bergen Street. Bergen street is a major biking throughway that now needs to contend with additional cars navigating in and out of their bike lanes during these times of the day decreasing, not increasing the safety for parents, children, and cyclists alike.
The redesign has also narrowed the crosswalk significantly. This makes it difficult for buses and large trucks to make the left turn into this block if they are coming down Bergen Street.
The protected bike lane only exists for one block (then again on Prospect and Park) and connects with two way streets. This creates poor visibility for bikes who need to re- merge with two way traffic after this one block. It is confusing and also makes pedestrian crossing difficult as the crosswalk lowers visibility and requires the pedestrian to look for cars and bikes in the car lane and bike lanes.
In addition, the DOT’s redesign did not factor into account PS9’s garbage collection. DSNY has been unable to maneuver their truck to empty the school’s dumpsters. This means there has been a growing mountain of garbage on school grounds since the street was changed, causing a health and rat problem for both the school and the community. We are told the school was advised to move their dumpsters to the children's play area to address the problem or to use their already limited budget to buy smaller dumpsters.
Update: The school now has 8 smaller dumpsters that need to be individually rolled out by the school custodian to the curb in order for DSNY to pick them up. When full, each dumpster weighs about 300 lbs causing additional hardship for school staff. In addition, the sanitation truck continues to struggle with accessing the pick up area on the street.
Correct This Now!
We want DOT to stop and listen to the concerns of the majority of the neighborhood.
- Seniors have greater difficulty accessing transportation
- Persons with disabilities have greater difficulty accessing transportation
- Emergency workers ability to respond to emergencies is hampered
- The loss of 30 % of parking spots unfairly burdens our working class residents, our public school teachers and removes access to seniors and disabled customers of our local businesses.
- Washington, Eastern Parkway, Bergen, and Vanderbilt all already have high use bike lanes.
The redesign is hurting our community.
Return Underhill to how it was pre-COVID- a quiet, green street.
Hear from your neighbors:
"DOT converted Underhill Ave into a bike lane, against the wishes of 1,000 locally impacted persons, including myself, who signed a petition. DOT has been totally unaccountable in this process. A general survey years ago (in English only) asked locals if they wanted greener streets. DOT cites that general survey to counter and ignore the very specific wishes of local residents who don't want the bike lane."
"With the new lines drawn for parking, which has taken away more car parking space, the taking of space to plant large pots of foliage, again taking space where cars used to be able to pull toward the curb so that cars could allow passengers to exit vehicles, now there's a lot of double parking, causing congestion on an already narrow street. Garbage truck and delivery trucks have no shoulder to pull to and all of this effect even emergency vehicles trying to make impossible turns, I am concerned that in the event of any incident that we will not get the help in a timely fashion and this could prove disastrous for my end of Underhill, not to mention when it snows this winter, we will end up being a one lane road."
