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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2019 14 pages • Vol.Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint 42, No. 32 • August 9–15, 2019
RATS! DRIVEN TO THE EDGE
Brooklyn ranks
#1 in the city Navy Yard pushes boundaries with state’s fi rst driverless cars
By Rose Adams
Brooklyn Paper
Rats!
Brooklyn remains infested by
more beady-eyed rodents than any
other borough in the city — a dubious
distinction the borough’s held for the
second year running, according to a
newly released study .
Brooklynites logged more than 6,500
rat complaints to the city’s 311 complaint
hotline in 2018, dwarfing runner
up Manhattan’s 4,300 complaints,
according to the report by the apartment
listing website, RentHop .
Prospect Heights remains the worst
neighborhood for rat sightings anywhere
in the city, with a yearly average of 530
calls per square mile. Residents in several
north Brooklyn neighborhoods —
including Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown
Heights, Clinton Hill, and Bushwick —
also topped the charts for rodent complaints
with hundreds of reports.
Southern Brooklyn has proven less
popular among Kings County cheese
eaters compared to northern Brooklyn
neighborhoods, although complaints in
Bay Ridge doubled from 2017 to 2018,
the study revealed.
And for every rodent you see, there
are thousands you don’t, according to
RentHop, which claimed the high number
of rodent sightings in New York
City point to the existence of an unseen
vermin kingdom.
“An estimate of about 250,000 to millions
of rats lived in the city in 2017,”
the report said. “To put these numbers
into perspective, New York City’s rats
are equal to approximately 20 percent
of the human population.”
Kings County’s rat population did
WORRIED: Brooklyn Paper reporter Kevin Duggan put his life in the hands of the machine by riding New
York’s first driverless cars in the Navy Yard on Aug. 6.
Residents furious over surprise loss of parking spots
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dential thoroughfares throughout
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Politics was first to report.
Locals weren’t thrilled with the
loss of parking, but they were furious
with the underhanded way the
Department of Transportation deployed
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A new study revealed that
Brooklynites reported more rat
sightings than any other borough,
despite an overall drop in
complaints.
diminish between 2017 and 2018, with
residents reporting less rat sightings
year-over-year. In Prospect Heights, locals
made half as many 311 complaints
compared to 2017, and many southern
Brooklyn neighborhoods boasted fewer
than 100 sightings, with only 12 complaints
filed in Gravesend last year, and
30 filed in Midwood.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s $32 million
assault on rats in 2017, which implemented
rat-proof garbage cans and
filled rat burrows with dry ice, may
account for last year’s dwindling rodent
stats.
But 2019 has already seen a spike in
the number of rat sightings, the New
York Times reported in May. Gentrification,
tourism, and milder winters
have helped bolster the rat population,
the article claimed.
While 311 complaints are a useful
way to gauge the rat problem, they are
not a foolproof way to measure the rodent
population.
According to a 2016 study of 311
calls in New York City, neighborhoods
with high numbers of renters, buildings
with more than 10 units, and unmarried
heads of household tend to call
the hotline less frequently, Governing
Magazine reported .
Photo by Kevin Duggan
Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo (D–Clinton Hill) told residents
she would try to schedule a hearing with DOT Commissioner
Polly Trottenberg and the Council’s transportation committee
chair Ydanis Rodriguez (D–Manhattan).
GET YOUR
VOTE
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Get a load of this!
City transit officials pulled a fast
one on Clinton Hill motorists last
month, turning parking spots on
their residential block into loading
zones — and the only notice
they got was the tow truck speeding
off with their car, angry locals
claim.
“They should have notified the
residents on the block, I’ve been
here for 70 years, the sign just went
up and it’s just unconscionable,”
said Linda Vital.
The new parking regulations,
which took affect on Greene Avenue
near Cambridge Place on July 15,
is part of a new citywide pilot program
to transform on-street parking
into loading zones Mondays to
Fridays, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on resi-
2020 IN TODAY!
their new parking regulations,
and nearby residents to the
streets and rallied in opposition to
the scheme Thursday night.
“This is a total surprise,” said
Gloria Patton. “They don’t really
communicate much.”
Transit officials provided local
community boards 1, 2, and 8 —
which represent Brooklyn neighborhoods
subject to the city’s loading
zone scheme, but are currently
on break for summer recess — with
notice regarding the new parking
regulations on July 10, just five days
before workers switched out signs
outlawing the old spots, according
to Department of Transportation
spokeswoman Alana Morales.
And police started towing cars
just three days after that, ignoring
city rules that allow drivers a five
day grace period before enforcing
new parking rules, and many Clinton
Hill drivers became aware of the
loading zones only after their cars
had been seized by police.
“I parked the car on Monday
evening and Tuesday morning at 8
a.m., my son-in-law was out there
and the traffic agents came and he
said, ‘No don’t ticket or move her,
she’s in the block, she’ll come and
move the car. Maybe she didn’t see
the sign because that sign just went
up,’” said Vital, who admitted her
car wasn’t towed until July 30, well
after the grace period.
Vital had to fork over $185 to get
her car back from the impound lot
at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, plus
$60 for the parking ticket. That’s
on top of the cost to repair the flat
tire her car suffered during the tow,
she claims.
Brooklyn Transit Commissioner
Keith Bray issued a mea culpa to
placate the outraged drivers, and
promised to personally vouch for
motorists willing to fight their tickets
with the city.
“You are right that we need to get
the word out more to help make this
program a success,” Bray wrote in
an email response to CB8’s Transportation
Committee chair Robert
Witherwax. “Due to the constructive
feedback we have received
from CB8 and others we are going
to develop a palm card to more
widely distribute information on
this program and flyer all of the
blocks that have been impacted by
this change.”
The agency’s citywide plan will
transform three streets in the borough
into the new loading zones, including
the Fort Greene and Clinton
Hill thoroughfare between Cumberland
Street and Classon Avenue;
Bergen Street, from Sixth Avenue
in Prospect Heights to New
York Avenue in Crown Heights;
and Greenpoint’s Manhattan Avenue
from Ainslie Street to Bayard
Street, according to Morales.
The revamp is aimed at freeing
up space during the day and evening,
to allow drivers to drop off
and pick up people or deliver goods,
while also reducing double parking
to speed up traffic and buses,
the spokeswoman said.
Drivers that have been ticketed
within the first five days after signs
went up can contact Bray online to
obtain a letter admissible as evidence
when contesting parking
tickets with the city.
Carbon monoxide shocker
One dead, four hospitalized after high readings in Williamsburg
By Zach Gewelb
Brooklyn Paper
FDNY fire marshals were investigating
elevated carbon monoxide
readings recorded inside a Williamsburg
building where a man
was found dead Saturday morning,
according to authorities.
Police responded to a report of
an unconscious person inside 211
Jackson St. near Woodpoint Road
at 6:11 a.m. on Aug. 3 and discovered
a man lying on the ground in
a second floor hallway.
EMS arrived and pronounced
the man dead at the scene, police
said.
Cops had not identified the victim
as of Sunday morning, according
to a police spokesman.
EMS also removed four adults
—two males, and two females —
from the scene and transported
them to Cornell Medical Center
in stable condition, according to
authorities. The police spokesman
could not provide any additional
information regarding the
four adults.
FDNY reports that the building
had elevated carbon monoxide
readings of 250 PPM (parts
per minute) coming from a generator.
The maximum recommended
carbon monoxide level indoors is
about 9 PPM . Normal, fresh air
has zero PPM.
New York’s Bravest disconnected
the generator and reported
that the situation was under
control as of 7:39 a.m. Saturday
morning.
A police spokesman said FDNY
fire marshals were investigating
the incident. A spokesman for the
Fire Department did not immediately
respond to a request for
comment.
One person was found dead
inside of 211 Jackson St.
Google Maps
Photo by Caroline Ourso
A paw-sitive experience
Volunteers scrubbed lots of happy pups at the Great Dog Wash on Aug. 3 in order to
raise money to fix Sean Casey Animal Rescue’s adoption van. Read more on page 11.
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Call it a pilot-less program.
The state’s first self-driving cars rolled
out at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Tuesday,
offering workers and the general public
free rides around the sprawling Flushing
Avenue industrial space, according to the
company behind the automatons.
“We’re actually solving a real problem,”
said Ryan Chin, the chief and cofounder
of Boston-based company Optimus
Ride. “It’s 300 acres and it’s really
hard to get from this side of the yard to
the other side of the yard.”
The six-seater cars run on a continuous
loop from the Navy Yard’s recently
opened ferry stop to its Cumberland Street
gate on weekdays and to Building 77 at
Vanderbilt Avenue on weekends from 7
a.m. to 10:30 p.m.
The half-dozen driverless shuttles
travel up to 25 miles per hour, but will
stick within the yard’s 15 miles per hour
speed limit, according to Chin.
Each car comes equipped with a whizbang
array of different sensors, including
laser beams and satellite navigation
to register its surroundings.
Ironically, each car will also come
standard with two human engineers —
twice as many as a normal car — who
will sit in the driver and passenger seat
to intervene in case the machine malfunctions,
the techie said.
“Of course safety is the first priority,”
said Chin. “We haven’t had any incidents
at all since we started the company
and we try to be very rigorous in
our engineering practices and operation
practices.”
The sensors also pick up any moving
objects, from other cars to pedestrians,
cyclists, and even animals, according
to Chin.
The company spent two weeks mapping
out the entire Navy Yard and plans
to collect data from the thousands of
trips its cars will make there and at
a handful of other sites in three other
states across the country, before eventually
moving the two staff members
out of the car to monitor their fleet of
robo-shuttles from a command center,
according to Chin.
For cyclists, the vehicles also feature
a bike rack and the company plans to
make them wheelchair accessible sometime
soon, according to Chin.
“There are wheelchair accessible kits
already that we will be implementing,”
he said.
This reporter lives in abject fear of
the robots’ inevitable revolt against humanity,
but nonetheless chose to put my
life in the hands of a cold, unfeeling machine
in the name of journalism.
The car’s glacial speed makes for a
fairly unexciting trip through the Kings
County tech hub — right up until a phantom
hand guides the driver’s wheel into
an eerie right-hand turn, and I begin to
suspect the robot revolution is nearer than
I first anticipated.
But Chin claims it will take about a
decade before cars are intelligent enough
to safely expand beyond the gates of the
Navy Yard and onto the streets of Brooklyn,
and even longer before they start
feeling emotions.
“Just imagine if you had to drive
through Times Square in a blizzard
and someone says to you, “I want to go
to Boston,” it’s very difficult to do that,
there’s no company that can do that today,”
Chin said. “If you’re talking about
the ability to drive in every location in
New York under every weather condition,
our view is that that’s probably a
decade away from now.”
Photo by Trey Pentecost
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