That sinking feeling on Columbia Street

The Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill Courier this week has a story about the big road construction project in my neighborhood, though it focuses on the noise and fails to notice that Columbia Street was made one-way. (It's phased-in one-wayedness, you may recall, was the subject of my rant a few months ago. And another post when construction started in 2005.)

The paper does have two interesting new facts.

The construction project "will now stretch into the spring of 2008" instead of fall 2007.

And this:

John Spavins, a DDC spokesperson, noted certain homes on Columbia Street have been "sinking over time."

"That soil just isn't as firm as the rest of the city," he said. "As we work by those homes we are looking to see if there is settlement of the soil."

As for the one-way problems, you may recall that the one-way signs initially went up at only some intersections along Columbia, so drivers entering at other spots had no way of knowing they were about to cause a head-on crash. A couple days after my December rant, (which Curbed linked to and the construction manager responded to,) there were NYPD cops placed along the route every weekday during the day. And the cops are still out there, though only at the two ends of the one-way mess: at Alma (DeGraw and Columbia, map) and by the entrance to the container port (Hamilton and Van Brunt, map.) Your tax dollars at work.

Labels: brooklyn, red hook

- posted by Amy @ 2/21/2007 11:53:00 AM