There is no evidence of any serious collaboration between the New York City Dept. of City Planning and any transportation agency in the city’s drive to rezone and densify the northern Brooklyn neighborhoods of Greenpoint and Williamsburg.

The area’s L-train subway riders already understand the problems involved in using a transportation system that has been outpaced by development. The line’s jam-packed trains are one of the city’s most unpleasant rush hour experiences. The city’s rezoning plan calls for large scale residential development that could add tens of thousands of residents to a relatively small area.

The Tri-State Transportation Campaign recently wrote to the NYC DOT urging that it undertake a transportation capacity study similar in scope and purpose to the recently-launched "Downtown Brooklyn Transportation Blueprint." Its goal would be to understand what sort of transportation system — including mass transit, street design and parking — Greenpoint-Williamsburg will need under the re-zoning’s build-out potential.

Transportation considerations seem a particular blind spot for the Bloomberg administration in its strong efforts to drive development around New York City. Transportation is also a weak link in the city’s Far West Side development planning and in its attempts to site big-box stores around town.

Most of the 200 speakers at the recent New York City Council hearing on the Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezoning proposal last week protested the administration’s refusal to guarantee affordable housing in the plan. However, several also criticized City Planning’s lack of transportation planning in its environmental impact study. The Dept. claims to be a proponent of "transit-oriented development" but has not made transportation a strong aspect of its recent work. 

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