They have taken traffic safety into their own hands.
Residents of Rogue Prospect Heights, presumably tired of watching the unfinished bike boulevard project on Underhill Avenue, placed a pair of planters halfway down the block where the DOT had painted a spot for traffic detours, but didn’t have them never installed.
Last week, neighborhood residents said they noticed DOT-style planters filled with dirt in the road, fulfilling their fate as traffic distractions that prevent people from driving fast in a straight line.
“It looks like a day or two in Adams time finally passed,” said Matt Horan, who lives around the corner on Underhill Avenue, joking about the mayor’s recent chronological gaffe. “The planters help provide a much-needed traffic calming.”
On Underhill Avenue between Park and Sterling places, the DOT had painted street lines with a rounded area half the block where traffic diverters in the form of boulders or planters were to be installed. The same treatment was ended between Pacific and Bergen streets and between Sterling and St Johns places.
The lack of planting on the stretch between Park and Sterling was one of the most obvious examples of the work that was left unfinished after Mayor Adams. ordered the DOT to pause the road project at the end of September. Other missing pieces of the project include painting on the areas that are protected for bike lanes, signage or any other explanation that bike lanes are contraflow bike lanes (meaning they go against the flow of traffic in the driveway) and any signage possible explaining that the new layout is a bicycle boulevard.
Adams suggested that the project suffered from a lack of public outreach, despite two years of planning and outreach that included in-person surveys, community board meetings and online surveys. That outreach work showed overwhelming support for the bike boulevard project. Since the break from work on the bike boulevard, Adams has had his Community Affairs Unit conduct a door-to-door survey and another online survey, but did not publish the results of that new round of disclosure.
Meanwhile, supporters of the bike boulevard received 3,000 signatures on a petition asking the mayor to end the work — and 54 percent of the signers live in Prospect Heights and Crown Heights.
It seems that some of those residents were the ones who decided to finish the job. According to a resident of the neighborhood, the planters had been sitting on the sidewalk, empty, for some time before people put them to work entertaining traffic.
“As far as we know, this action was taken independently by DOT or any government agency, presumably by individuals who – like countless others in the neighborhood – want to see the project completed and enjoy the safety benefits and soothing traffic that entertainers provide.” said Alex Morano, a spokesman for the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Corporation, which supports the bike boulevard and the nearby Vanderbilt open road.
In addition to being popular, the changes focused on safety on the roads have had results. Since Underhill Avenue became an open road in 2020 and then a partial bicycle boulevard, the number of crashes fell from almost 40 a year in 2018 to no more than five each year from 2020 to 2023.
Driving home the need for the safety project that narrowed the road and added entertainers, there was a gnarly speed-aided crash over the weekend, when the driver of a BMW crashed into a Dumpster in Underhill between the places Prospect and Park, the first crash in the block all year.
The car involved in the crash had Pennsylvania license plates, though had managed to accumulate 24 speed camera violations since 2021. The BMW driver received 15 of these tickets between August 2022 and August 2023, which made the driver subject to the Dangerous Vehicle Reduction Program – but no one associated with that license plate was ever ordered by DOT to take the DVAP safety course, second. to a list of course participants obtained by Streetsblog under the Freedom of Information Act.
Underhill residents taking matters into their own hands also bring to mind the rebellious spirit of cycling advocates in 2009, who painted a section of the Bedford Avenue bike lane back on the street in Williamsburg after Mayor Bloomberg installed the bike lane in 2007 and then removed the piece two years later.
