Living one-way on the wrong side of the BQE

So while the readers over at Brownstoner.com debate whether my neighborhood is indeed on the wrong side of the BQE, here's more lovely proof that we're treated like a dirty stepchild neighborhood.

Just a few weeks shy of a year now we've been dealing with a massive construction project all along Columbia Street from DeGraw (where Alma restaurant's located,) almost all the way out to the toll plaza for the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. For now, let's disregard the repeated street tearing up, paving, tearing up, repaving, water shut offs, loss of parking, 7 a.m. pile-driving sessions that make you want to throw up. Oh, and the random rerouting of the B61 and B71 buses with no notice, and sometimes different stops from driver to driver (still happening this week.)

The new situation this week is that Columbia Street has just been made (permanently, I think,) into a one-way steet. Suddenly isn't the right word, as some rocket scientist has decided the one-wayedness should be ... phased in.


The one-way signs started going up a week ago. And when I say started, I mean at some intersections, but not others. And there was nothing to warn us that hey, there's a fundamentally new traffic law in place. And in the past year, we've come to learn that the construction crews don't always really mean for you to follow the signs they throw up. They're literally done with duct tape sometimes. Othertimes it says "no parking' -- for an entire block, a good week or two after construction obviously moved along to the next block. Sure, they forget sometimes, or maybe they just want the parking for themselves. Othertimes it's maybe because they were drinking too much at work. (Hey, we live here. It's not like we didn't see them.)

So yeah, we've been fighting (and losing) all these extra parking tickets, wondering if we're ever going to get back to normal. (The latest I heard is that they won't finish repaving our section of Columbia Street for another year until after the (still unstarted) stretch from DeGraw to Atlantic is done.)

OK, so back to the "sudden" one-wayedness of Columbia. I walk out at lunch today and there are two police cars out ticketing all the cars on Columbia still parking the "old" way. So I ask one of the cops if any of those cars got any sort of notice that the street would be changing. No, he says, except that there are giant billboards down at Atlantic and Hamilton. Great, I say, but for all of us who live right here, who haven't been down to Hamilton or Atlantic in the last few days, there's nothing. Nothing on the cars, nothing on the treets or posts. Um, the construction crews should have done that he says while he's writing a ticket. (Not for me, mind you.)

The NYPD was told TODAY to start enforcing the new one-wayedness, he said , ready? because there were several head-on crashes this week.

Hmmm, I wonder why?

He told me to call the community policing officer, because he might forget to do it himself. Walking back home after lunch, the cops were gone, but the tow trucks were hauling off the ticketed cars one by one.

Oh and one other thing, Van Brunt is also now one-way between Hamilton and DeGraw. So you're fine if you're heading out to Red Hook or the cruise ship terminal. But I think what it means is that all the Fung Wah buses, Snapple trucks, school buses, and other big commerical trucks that formerly were prohibited from going through our little commerical/residential strip on Columbia, are now required to do so.

Look, I love this little pocket of a neighborhood, but we are indeed on the wrong side of the BQE when it comes to stuff like this.



Update: This saga continues here, with a call from the construction guy.
- posted by Amy @ 12/08/2006 02:06:00 PM