Park Slope

Hundreds of Brooklynites gathered this morning at Grand Army Plaza to show their support for the redesigned Prospect Park West. They made a statement that should be hard for elected officials and the press to miss: Most people who live in the neighborhoods near PPW like biking and walking on the new, traffic-calmed street and don't want to see those changes taken away.

By now you've probably heard about the big rally to defend the Prospect Park West bike lane tomorrow morning. Everyone who can attend should make every effort to get to Grand Army Plaza at 8:00 a.m. and show how deep the support for the PPW re-design runs.

Mark next Thursday on your calendars. It's a critical day for one of the city's most innovative livable streets projects. If you care about safer streets, it's going to be an excellent time to respectfully show your support in public.

The entrance to Prospect Park at Third Street in Park Slope was closed off to car traffic in April 2009. Since then it's been graced by these barricades. With the completion of the Prospect Park West re-design, there's even more reason to make this a welcoming entrance for people walking and biking to Brooklyn's flagship park.

They call it No-Park Slope for a reason: At many times of day, motorists looking for a legit spot in this Brooklyn neighborhood wind up cruising the streets endlessly in frustration. Because on-street parking spaces are some of the cheapest real estate in the city, drivers snap up the bargain and create parking shortages, leading to excess traffic and double-parking. In the end, everyone pays for the cheap price of parking: motorists who lose time, pedestrians and cyclists endangered by excessive traffic and double-parking, and bus riders delayed by congestion. Now it looks like there's some relief in sight.

The Prospect Park West bike lane has bestowed order and virtually eliminated the raceway conditions on a street where speeding used to be the norm.

A lot of neighborhood activists swear by the maxim that it's easier to organize against something than to drum up support for something new. But apparently this rule of thumb doesn't apply to the Prospect Park West bike lane.