A new transportation plan for the Brooklyn Marine Terminal proposes what would be the borough’s first “parking maximum.”
BY JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com
RED HOOK — City planners are aiming to eventually reduce car usage in Red Hook to only 16% of total trips through measures like a “parking maximum” and better bus service, according to a new proposal unveiled last week.
Since the redevelopment of a 122-acre chunk of Brooklyn’s waterfront was first floated in 2024, one of the surrounding community’s most vocal concerns has been transportation: In a neighborhood serviced by no subway lines and a single, notoriously-unreliable bus, how will the residents of thousands of new homes get around?
Two years later, the Economic Development Corporation (EDC) — the city entity in charge of the Brooklyn Marine Terminal (BMT) — finally has answers. But several prominent local leaders argue that they’re not the right ones, claiming that they’re unrealistic.
On Friday, July 31, the Brooklyn Marine Terminal Advisory Task Force convened online for its fifth meeting since a “vision plan” for the site was narrowly approved last fall, hearing updates from the Department of Transportation and transit consultants.
The session started off on rocky footing, with Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon criticizing the EDC’s decision to hold the meeting, which was open to the public, during the early afternoon in the summer — a time many constituents complained meant they could not attend. (The event was also recorded.)
“You may be doing work, that’s great. But for engagement, you need people to be around,” said Simon. “The level of frustration with this process is part and parcel with the fact that people feel like they’re being dismissed. That is not a good position from which to engage with the community going forward.”
Assemblymember Marcela Mitaynes agreed with Simon’s assessment, adding that it seemed as though the EDC was also discouraging feedback from the 32-member task force itself.
“You guys are reading off your whatever-it-is, and you’re barely giving us any time to follow along,” said Mitaynes.
The transit proposal looks to create a “car-lite, multimodal neighborhood” through several interventions: forced turns that discourage traffic on Columbia St to speed up buses, a biker-oriented greenway on Van Brundt St, and a cap — the first of its kind in Brooklyn — on the number of off-street parking spaces developers can build.
The lead planners behind the presentation, Jeff Smithline of TYLin and Sam Frommer of Buro Happold, explained that the system of forced turns would make Google Maps reroute cars heading for the nearby BQE elsewhere. Downplaying concerns about the impact on businesses along the strip, they stressed that drivers would still technically have full access to Columbia St and one-way southbound access to Van Brundt St.
Hank Gutman, a former commissioner of the DOT under Mayor Bill de Blasio and a current member of the task force, expressed skepticism about the scheme, which does restrict car traffic completely on Columbia St between Hamilton Ave and Woodhull St.
“I worked on a lot of bus priority projects — I’m not aware of any that had this Rube Goldberg aspect to it,” said Gutman, highlighting the potential burden placed on Congress St. “I don’t see this doing anything other than making an existing problem worse.”
Smithline was unfazed. “It is a unique street network, because of the limited crossings [over the BQE],” he replied. “But we were surprised at how few forced turns we needed in order to get traffic off of these streets.”
If completed, the $3.5 billion BMT redevelopment plan would add up to 6,000 housing units and rehabilitate the crumbling piers that sit largely underused along Red Hook’s rim. Unsurprisingly, this volume of apartments will generate “a lot of rides,” with a projected daily peak of 2,200 cars in circulation.
Yet the planners were explicit about their goal of ultimately phasing out cars. Mimicking an existing initiative in Manhattan, the proposed “parking maximum” draws from research suggesting that when spots are scarce, commuters are less likely to own cars. (The presentation did not specify what the cap will be, numerically.)
Additionally, the duo noted that they were in conversation with the DOT over upcoming changes to the BQE ditch — which divides the Columbia Street Waterfront portion of Red Hook from the inland brownstones of Carroll Gardens, rendering it an “island” — and promised to update their designs as that project moves forward.
But while Gutman and fellow task force member Carly Baker-Rice, who helms the Red Hook Business Alliance, blasted the proposal as impractical, others pushed the EDC to take action sooner rather than waiting until the apartment complexes are built.
“You guys need to make us feel comfortable by doing something now,” said Karen Blondel, a task force member and the tenant association president of Red Hook Houses West. “Don’t wait till the GPP. We want small wins out here, not just a big win. I shouldn’t have to be scared to sit down as a sixty-seven-year-old because nobody’s cleaning the bus stops.”
The task force held a public workshop on the transportation plan on August 5, and will be hosting open office hours on August 11 and August 20, from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. An EDC representative projected that the draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), the next stage of the land use process, will be completed by early next year.
