Weird stuff is happening with the Department of Transportation. First, the head of the bike program, Andrew Vesselovitch, left the DOT last Friday, and his farewell email pointed some serious criticism of the DOT. From Streetsblog:
There is much more that the bicycle program could have done than it was allowed to do. The bicycle program, for example, could have produced plans for 40-50 miles of workable bicycle lanes each year. Instead, DOT installed little more than 15 miles, total, in the last two years. We could have saved the city settlements for lawsuits (and residents injuries) resulting from the puzzling addition of unusually high expansion joint covers on the Williamsburg Bridge. I brought this to bridge's attention in 2003 and was told by Michael Primeggia butt out.
Michael Primeggia is the Deputy Commissioner of the DOT.
Second, last week, a woman was hit by a minivan in Red Hook - and the minivan was coming from the Red Hook Fairway. Though the community asked for more traffic lights to accompany the new grocery store as well as the new cruise terminal, the DOT decided not to install anything near the new Fairway. The Real Estate says that the DOT is waiting to conduct a study to see what the traffic pattern is. [Streetsblog has a clip of DOT officials explaining and backtracking on what it takes to get traffic lights installed at certain areas.]
Question: Are these signs that the city needs to take another look at how the DOT is working? [Last year, the Administration for Children's Services was overhauled after the death of Nixzmary Brown and other children who were being monitored by the ACS.]
Photograph of a foggy Park Slope stoplight from Joe's NYC
