Use BQE rehab to get cars off DUMBO streets, groups say
Civic and business groups in DUMBO and Fulton Ferry Landing have a message for Mayor Bill de Blasio’s new BQE expert panel: As long as the city is rebuilding the BQE from Sands Street to Atlantic Avenue anyway, use this opportunity to build direct connections from the BQE to the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.
This will get thousands of vehicles per hour off DUMBO streets like Old Fulton, Prospect and Jay streets. These thoroughfares were once surrounded by stark industry, but are now lined with residences, artisanal businesses and restaurants filled with workers and tourists flooding DUMBO and Fulton Ferry Landing.
In an April 23 letter to BQE panel chair Carlo Scissura, area leaders Alexandria Sica, executive director of the DUMBO Improvement District; William Stein, board member of the Fulton Ferry Landing Association; and Melissa Prober, co-chairperson of the DUMBO Action Committee, make their case that the BQE plan selected by the city “should eliminate the use of our streets … as the route for connecting the bridges to the BQE.”
“Currently, every hour thousands of vehicles pour off of the bridges and onto DUMBO and Fulton Ferry’s streets, not to visit our residents or shop in our stores, but simply to go from bridge to BQE or vice versa, negatively impacting the quality of life and experiences of our residents, workers, and visitors,” the group writes.