BY BEN VERDE
Red Hookers are pushing
the Department of Transportation
to remove Van Brunt
Street from the city’s truck
route map, contending that the
massive vehicles that barrel
down the corridor are out of
touch with the street’s presentday
use as the neighborhood’s
Main Street.
Alex Washburn, a former
planner with the Department
of City Planning and member
of the neighborhood group
Resilient Red Hook, says the
18-wheelers that treat Van
Brunt Street as a shortcut to
avoid congested Hamilton Avenue
create noise pollution and
pose a serious threat to residents’
well-being.
“We can’t sleep at night and
our houses are coming apart,”
Washburn said at an Oct. 29
meeting of Community Board
6’s Transportation Committee.
Brooklyn
Heights
Gowanus
Red Hook
COURIER L 6 IFE, NOV. 6-12, 2020
“It’s just an incompatible
scale.”
Washburn has documented
trucks in the neighborhood
creating sounds that near 100
decibels, comparable to an airplane
taking fl ight.
The large trucks can also
have adverse impacts on aging
infrastructure in the neighborhood,
another resident said.
“It’s not only the noise,”
said local marine equipment
manufacturer Jim Tampakis.
“I’m over on Richards Street,
one block over from Van Brunt,
and when I have tractor-trailers
coming by my place, my
building is an old building,
it’s over 100 years old, and the
whole building shakes.”
In recent years, Red Hook
has transformed from a mainly
industrial neighborhood into
a more mixed-use area with
residences and small businesses
that attract weekend
crowds, making the trucks
that cut through the heart of
the commercial strip out of
place, Washburn contended at
the meeting.
“It is our main civic thoroughfare
in the neighborhood,”
Washburn said. “The
existing truck route is incompatible
with the necessary
community uses on Van Brunt
Street.”
The waterfront neighborhood’s
current traffi c conditions
will likely only worsen
thanks to a series of last mile
distribution centers where online
goods will stop on their
way to their fi nal destinations
in the works on its shores. The
warehouses, one of which is in
the works at 640 Columbia St.,
and another at 537-555 Columbia
St., will bring with them
a dramatic increase in truck
traffi c.
The board voted unanimously
Van Brunt Street in Red Hook. Photo by Ben Verde
on Oct. 29 to support
Resilient Red Hook’s resolution
to ask the Department
of Transportation to route
trucks away from Van Brunt
Street, but board members
cautioned that an alternative
route must be presented in order
for the resolution to carry
any weight.
“I don’t see us being able to
just automatically take it off
the truck route without having
an alternative place to put
it,” said board member and Department
of Transportation
staffer Leroy Branch.
Washburn said she favors
a new route that would take
trucks off public roads and
through the Port Authorityowned
Red Hook Container
Terminal, similar to a plan
that was backed years ago by
the board.
The resolution will go before
the full board for a vote
later this month. The Port Authority
declined to comment
on the plan.
Get off the road!
Red Hook residents push to reroute big
trucks away from Van Brunt Street
Prospect Park
Prospect Heights
Crown Heights
East Flatbush
Marine
Park
Park Slope
Sunset Park
Bay Ridge
Dyker Heights
Bensonhurst
Gravesend
Sheepshead Bay
Bergen
Beach
Mill
Basin
Flatlands
Flatbush
Borough Park
Williamsburg
Midwood
H
Expert doctors close
to home. Don’t delay
your health needs.
Find expert doctors here for you right now, ready to
provide safe, in-person appointments and video visits.
Primary care and specialists, including Weill Cornell
Medicine doctors. There are 35 doctors’ offices with
same-day, early, late and weekend hours available.
To find a doctor today, visit nyp.org/medgroupbrooklyn
or call 718-780-7300 now.
H
/medgroupbrooklyn