BY BEN VERDE
Amid a particularly deadly
year for pedestrians, Kensingtonians
are demanding the
city redesign the local streets
to improve safety.
“We want the fi rst priority
to be safety for pedestrians —
then we can worry about the
trucks and deliveries,” said
Jerry Wein.
At a Nov. 18 town hall meeting
in the neighborhood, Department
of Transportation
reps assured the community
that they would study the area’s
roadways, which have
seen a number of deaths in
recent months — including
10-year-old bicyclist Dalerjon
Shahobiddinov who was fatally
struck by a car on Foster
Avenue, and 60-year-old Olga
Feldman, who was killed in a
Church Avenue crosswalk.
But locals fi red back, arguing
that studies weren’t
enough to stop the onslaught
of motor vehicles.
“We’re appreciative of
studies, we’re appreciative of
the work being done, but what
we want is for the priorities
to change with the data,” said
Wein.
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COURIER L 18 IFE, NOV. 22-28, 2019
Locals gathered last week
for a walking tour of the neighborhood’s
most deadly intersections.
Photo by Ben Verde
Transit offi cials did make
some promises — such as installing
pedestrian islands on
Coney Island Avenue — but
made no other commitments,
like outlawing left turns off of
the north-south parkway onto
Church Avenue, which they
said would require rerouting
one of the boroughs busiest
truck routes through local
streets.
“The changes that have
been made are minimal,” said
Lisa Bocchini, who lives at the
corner of Church and Ocean.
Bocchini said she felt the
transportation department
was more focused on pedestrian
traffi c control instead
of attempting to slow the massive
volume of car traffi c that
passes through the area each
day.
“Who cares about traffi c?
I care about the pedestrians,”
she said. “Pedestrians are not
the problem.”
Making matters worse,
residents claim the local police
precinct fails to properly
enforce traffi c violations, including
at the numerous carcentric
businesses on Coney
Island Avenue, who they say
illegally park with impunity.
“The 66th precinct has no
enforcement there,” said Patrick
Russell. “They don’t do
anything.”
Rusell said he made numerous
311 reports about
abandoned cars and illegally
parked cars on Coney Island
Avenue — to no avail.
“If you’re going to
straighten out Coney Island,
you can’t have abandoned
cars, you can’t have cars repaired
on the sidewalk,”
he said. “Sometimes you’re
forced to walk in the street because
they’re repairing cars!”
An offi cer from the precinct
disagreed — saying he
enforced traffi c violations so
aggressively he received complaints
with the Civilian Complaint
Review Board.
“I even got a CCRB because
A ghost bike marks the spot where a cyclist was killed on Beverley Road
in 2017. Photo by Ben Verde
I was there enforcing the vehicles
on the sidewalk,” the
offi cer said, referring to the
board that reviews cases of police
misconduct.
The offi cer urged residents
to bring their complaints to
the Department of Consumer
Affairs and have the businesses
shuttered — but locals
quickly shot that down, saying
it was the Police Department’s
job to enforce traffi c laws, not
push for small businesses to
close down.
“It is ridiculous that the
66th Precinct can’t go in and
say ‘you know what, we’re going
to give tickets to business
owners that are breaking the
traffi c laws,'” said Assemblyman
Robert Carroll.
Kensington locals demands street
safety changes amid traffi c deaths
172 5th Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11217
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