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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2019 14 pages • Vol.Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint 42, No. 38 • September 20–26, 2019
‘WE’RE ALL AT GREAT RISK’ Cyclists blast new Grand Street bike lane
Off the hook!
‘Sopranos’ star calls on park
to halt fi shing workshops
Photo by Joe Hiti
MEAN
Streets
F
Big ‘ing change
MTA debuts express service, dividing boro
Actress Edie Falco penned a letter on behalf of PETA demanding
that Brooklyn Bridge Park halt “Fishing Clinics.”
File photo by Tom Callan
By Kevin Duggan
and Joe Hiti
Brooklyn Paper
Call it a Grand failure.
Cyclists are calling a more than
mile-long stretch of protected bike
lanes spanning Grand Street in Williamsburg
an unmitigated disaster,
slamming transit officials for
using plastic flaps in lieu of solid
concrete barriers, which permit illegally
parked cars to force riders
into traffic.
“If this is their response to mounting
cyclist and pedestrian fatalities
in the city then we’re all at great
risk,” said cyclist Philip Leff. “I’m
incredibly disappointed by DOT’s
execution of that bike lane.”
The bike lanes — which will
stretch between Rodney Street
and the Grand Street Bridge when
they’re completed later this month
— eschew permanent concrete
barriers, or medians, and instead
employ a combination of cheaper
safety devices, including using
a row of parked cars to separate
drivers from cyclists, and installing
painted buffers and plastic
floppy bollards the agency calls
“delineators.”
These light, plastic flaps are designed
to bend when struck by a vehicle,
and provide no barrier to the
scofflaw motorists who routinely
park their cars in the bike lanes, according
to one frequent rider.
“People that have experience
riding are used to it, but people
that don’t are getting hurt,” said Israel,
a Bushwick resident and bike
messenger, who declined to provide
his last name.
During a recent mid-morning
survey, dogged Brooklyn Paper intern
Joe Hiti encountered rampant
obstructions on both eastbound and
westbound bike lanes, including
eight illegally-parked cars, several
delivery and box trucks, welders
sawing off the back of a pickup
truck, mechanics changing tires,
and delivery men unloading refrigerators.
A trailer serving as a temporary
construction office was placed
smack in the bike lane opposite
Catherine Street, where the green
paint comes to a sudden halt and
spray-painted arrows and orange
traffic barriers divert cyclists
around the structure — and right
into a row of vans at the entrance
of a nearby auto shop.
A delivery man for FedEx said
he was forced to park his truck
in the bike lane during stops, because
the new loading zones were
taken up by illegally parked private
vehicles.
“Even though we have commercial
spots to park in, residents are
still parking there,” said the delivery
guy. “It takes no more than three
minutes for me to make deliveries
— but I can’t park anywhere.”
Hiti also discovered several
floppy bollards lying broken on
the road, demonstrating just how
well they stand up to a two-and-
reinstalling delineators where necessary,
and expect this work to wrap
up by the end of this month,” said
Lolita Avila. “We are also looking
for locations where we can add additional
protection to prevent vehicles
from parking in the bike lane,
this work will continue through
the fall.”
But fixing a few sheets of flimsy
plastic remains a poor excuse for a
protected bike lane, according to
Leff, who said if the agency really
wanted to protect cyclists, it
would start over and use materials
that work.
“The worldwide gold standard
is some kind of concrete curb that’s
impossible to drive over,” Leff said.
“Any strategy that relies only on tickets
and enforcement won’t work —
there should be physical structure to
discourage that behavior.”
The soon-to-be-completed Grand Street bike lane in Williamburg still poses a hazard to
cyclists due to illegally parked cars, local pedalers claim.
Brooklyn’s
boulevard
battle lines
a-half-ton vehicle.
In response to the complaints, a
spokeswoman for the Department
of Transportation said the agency
will continue to augment the bike
lanes with additional safety measures
in the coming months.
“We are currently in the process
of finishing all touch ups, including
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Now the F train will skip your
stop — for a reason!
The Metropolitan Transportation
Authority debuted a controversial
express version of the F train Monday
morning, which promises to
shorten commutes for long-suffering
Coney Island straphangers, while
leaving their brownstone Brooklyn
counterparts in the lurch.
Two Manhattan-bound express
F trains are now scheduled to depart
from Coney Island on weekdays
at 7:07 a.m. and 7:29 a.m., while
Coney-bound express F trains will
depart the Big Apple’s Lexington
Avenue-63rd Street station at 4:57
p.m. and 5:28 p.m. throughout the
work week.
Those trains will skip six stations
between Jay Street-MetroTech and
Church avenue, including:
• Fort Hamilton Parkway
• 15 Street-Prospect Park
• Fourth Avenue-Ninth Street
• Smith-Ninth Streets
• Carroll Street
• Bergen Street
The express service was enacted
to shorten commute times for southern
Brooklyn straphangers who rely
on the F, but suffer the longest stretch
of purely local service in the city
— 26 uninterrupted stops between
Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue and
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
You try to get out, but they reel
you back in!
An actor from the iconic HBO
mob drama “Sopranos” demanded
Brooklyn Bridge Park stop holding
all-ages fishing workshops, saying
they’re teaching kids to torture animals
— for fun!
“Most children have a natural
empathy for animals, and that kindness
should be nurtured, not undermined
by teaching kids that it’s
okay to hook fish and yank them
out of their natural environment for
‘fun,’” Edie Falco — a Brooklyn native
who played Carmela, the wife
of fictional New Jersey mob boss
Tony Soprano — wrote in a letter
on behalf of the animal rights
group People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals to the semi-private
corporation in charge of the waterfront
green space. “May I hear
that you’ll make this year’s clinics
the last?”
The park organization’s partner
group in charge of programming,
the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy,
debuted the six workshops
in May, where experts and
marine biologists teach budding
anglers young and old the basics
of line fishing from Pier 5.
But the thespian said that the
fish can suffer permanent damage
or even die from being pulled out
of their natural habitat by a hook
through their mouths.
“Fish who are handled by humans
can suffer from the loss of
their protective scale coating, making
them vulnerable to disease,
and one study found that the injuries
caused to their mouths after
they’re hooked can impair their
ability to eat,” Falco said.
Instead, Brooklyn Bridge Park
should teach kids about caring for
the environment by “trash fishing,”
a practice of fishing garbage
out of the water that a father and
son devised in Detroit, Michigan,
which the animal rights activist
group honored.
“PETA’s youth division gave
a Hero to Animals Award to an
11-year-old boy and his father who
fish for trash, not sea animals, out of
the Detroit River,” she said. “‘Trash
fishing’ could be an educational and
helpful alternative.”
The corporation’s chief shot back
at the actor-activist saying that the
program’s expert fishers handle the
marine life with care by using barbless
hooks, which cause less damage
to the animals before they are released
back into the East River.
“I do not believe we teach kids
to harm fish, we teach them to fish
respectfully and responsibly,” said
Brooklyn Bridge Park President
Eric Landau.
Landau said that the animal
rights activists had reached out
to him last month with a letter,
which he responded to, before they
got the high-profile performer on
board to vouch for their cause.
The honcho noted that catchand
release fishing was a common
practice in parks across the Five
Boroughs, adding that the Conservancy’s
program has been a
success and that he would green
light it if they ask to run it again
next year.
“Over 500 kids have attended
the workshop,” Landau said. “I
can’t speak to whether the Conservancy
is going to do it again, but
we felt it was a positive and successful
program and if the Conservancy
did want to do it again,
I would not deny them from doing
that.”
Taylor Jewell/AP
Broadway-Lafayette Street, where
straphangers can transfer to express
B and D trains.
A 2016 analysis of the F express
conducted by the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority found
that express riders would shave between
six to seven minutes off their
commutes, while riders along the
skipped stops would suffer an average
five-minute delay.
That’s because the Transit Authority
isn’t adding trains to the line,
but rather repurposing four local
trains to benefit some riders at the
expense of others, according to Park
Slope Councilman Brad Lander.
“The MTA chose to pit riders
against each other rather than improve
service, add capacity, and
modernize the signal system,”
Lander said.
The study also found that evening
peak-hour express service could lead
to “significant congestion” at Bergen
Street and Carroll Street stops,
which should come as no surprise to
local commuters, according to Cobble
Hill Assemblywoman Jo Anne
Simon, who said service there is already
lousy.
“We’re already having to wait two
or three trains to get on the train,
because they’re crowded,” said Assemblywoman
Jo Anne Simon (D–
Cobble Hill).
Naturally, southern Brooklyn
pols celebrated the new express service,
and argued that the four speedier
trains should be a first step to a
larger plan to increase public transit
to the far side of Kings County.
“This was a long time coming,”
said Councilman Mark Treyger (D–
Coney Island), who rode the first
official express F train on Monday
morning. “This is a first step, but by
no means is the work over.”
And city subway tzar Andy Byford
stood by the Transit Authority’s
F-express scheme, saying Coney
Island commuters have suffered
enough.
“It will benefit thousands of commuters
by getting them to their destinations
faster instead of sitting waiting
as their train makes all local
stops,” said Byford.
Additional reporting by
Rose Adams
By Aidan Graham
Brooklyn Paper
Eighty-seven victims of childhood
sexual abuse filed lawsuits in
Brooklyn Supreme Court within
the first month following the enactment
of the Child Victims Act,
a new law that gives abuse survivors
a renewed chance to seek
justice against predators and the
organizations that aided their assaults.
Last week, 10 victims — using
pseudonyms to shield their
identities — filed separate lawsuits
against the Catholic Church’s
Brooklyn Diocese and multiple
Brooklyn-based clergymen,
claiming they were abused between
1950 and 1980.
One victim accused now-deceased
Father Patrick Fursey
O’Toole of sexually abusing him
at St. Ann’s Church in Dumbo,
which has since been demolished,
when the plaintiff worked at an
Altar boy between the ages of
nine and 18, according to court
documents .
The new allegations against
O’Toole are the first ones leveled
against the priest, according
to Diocese spokeswoman Adriana
Rodriguez, who declined to
speak further on the specifics of
that case because of the ongoing
litigations.
Another victim claims that he
was abused in 1962 by Brother
Julio Ortiz when he was an 11-
year-old student at the now-defunct
Saint Peter’s-Our Lady of
Pilar Church in Cobble Hill in
1976, according to court documents.
The accusers, who are identified
in court documents as ‘John
Doe,’ claim that Diocese leaders
failed to take basic precautions
to prevent the alleged actions —
claiming that they either knew
or should have known about the
abuse, the lawsuits allege.
But Rodriguez fired back,
claiming they have a “zero tolerance”
policy in place that mandates
the removal of any clergy
member credibly accused of sexually
abusing a minor.
The Diocese spokeswoman
also highlighted the restorative
steps that they have taken to rectify
any past wrongs, including
voluntarily publishing a list of
credibly accused clergy earlier
this year and financially compensating
hundreds of victims.
“To date, the diocese has
worked with nearly 500 victims
and paid over $90 million in settlements
through its Independent
Reconciliation and Compensation
Program,” said Rodriguez.
“The Diocese of Brooklyn has
The new express will slow
down some commutes.
Child sex abuse lawsuits pile up in Bklyn
A new lawsuit accuses a clergyman at Saint Peter’s-Our
Lady of Pilar Church in Cobble Hill of childhood sexual
abuse in 1976.
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