The Ferry Point community has dealt with traffic jams on Brush Avenue for years but now may finally get some relief.
Community Board 10 is in the process of putting together a public hearing on establishing no parking zones on both sides of Brush Avenue from Lafayette Avenue to Bruckner Boulevard during morning and evening rush hours, district manager Kenneth Kearns said.
The move would restrict parking in the area by creating no standing zones between the hours of 7 to 10 a.m. and 4 to 7 p.m., freeing up space for tractor trailer trucks and buses from commercial business, and local traffic to make their way in and out of the small community.
Residents in the area had expressed their concerns to CB 10 and Senator Jeff Klein’s office about waits of up to a half hour just to get out of Ferry Point during the morning rush.
“Right now, there is parking on one lane of the street and you have trucks from the commercial establishments using that lane for convenient parking,” Kearns said. “People in the community proposed signage to restrict this type of parking on the street during certain hours, but before we do that we wanted to have a full community meeting.”
This meeting would include residents of the community as well as representatives from various businesses, Kearns said.
The Ferry Point Civic Association and Senator Jeff Klein are both pushing hard for the changes, since Brush Avenue is Ferry Point’s main artery.
According to Klein, the Department of Transportation has agreed to go along with the changes so long as the community approves them, and the plan was the result of the DOT’s own findings.
“Last fall, I asked the Department of Transportation to take a look at Brush Avenue and see what could be done to this street to allow for a greater flow of traffic,” Klein said. “Their suggestion was to implement Rush Hour Regulations, which would create a secondary traffic lane on Brush Avenue between Lafayette and Bruckner Boulevard. Community Board 10 is expected to hold a hearing on this matter soon. It is my hope that the community board and DOT will move swiftly to approve and implement these changes to make conditions smoother for drivers.”
According to FPCA president JoAnn Sohmers, traffic also increases in the community even earlier as cars and buses begin to line up near Monsignor Scanlon High School at 3 p.m. on school days.
“I would have liked to see ‘no standing’ regulations in place on Brush Avenue at all times, but it might be easier to get these regulations put into place for the hours just during the morning and evening commute.”
Traffic has become so bad on some mornings that rather than drive out on Brush Avenue, Sohmers takes the long way, on a bumpy road underneath the Whitestone Bridge called the “ring road,” to avoid the standstill traffic.
