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AYW has received numerous incident reports about noise from nighttime work in the vicinity of Pacific Street, 4th and Atlantic Avenues beginning in late July.  Similar complaints have also been posted on Brownstoner and made to elected officials. The work involves infrastructure for the Barclays Center, and includes street construction with jackhammering.  

After following up with the residents who submitted incident reports, AYW has observed the following:

• Some affected residents live outside the zone identified in the 2006 Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) where significant noise impacts were anticipated.  Sensitive receptor locations in the 2006 analysis (locations like residences or open space where human activity may be affected by project generated noise) do not account for more recent conversions from commercial to residential in the vicinity of the project site.
• None of the residents complaining have received notice of the noise attenuation measures offered by Forest City Ratner Companies (FCRC).
• The specific noise attenuation measures offered as mitigation (double paned windows and air conditioners) are already in place and residents report they are still kept up at night.

A common complaint in the residents' reports is that their windows are not sufficient to stop the noise caused by the jackhammering, resulting in sleepless nights.  The homes of the residents commenting below are labeled on the map above showing the zone significant construction noise impacts were anticipated in the 2006 FEIS (modified from FEIS, figure 17c-2).  The anticipated affected area is shaded gray.  It is also the zone in which FCRC is required to make noise mitigation measures available to residents.

#1:  "I can't sleep. I had a guest leave my apartment at 3am a few weeks ago to stay in a hotel because of the jack hammering...If someone doesn't put a stop to this, I will either have to have my windows soundproofed or move." 

"I've been using a window air conditioner to cover the noise so I can get some sleep at night, but I'm concerned about the coming weeks when the weather will surely cool down...As for double paned windows, I believe my building has them already, though cheap and cracked, and they do very little (if nothing at all) to muffle the noise. For the record, no one ever contacted me personally to offer air conditioners or windows." (incident report 326)

The protocols for construction trucks described "as significantly improved" yesterday by FCRC's Adam Schwartz at the Atlantic Yards District Service Cabinet are documented being repeatedly violated earlier yesterday morning and today by multiple incident reports filed on this website.  

Only hours before Schwartz spoke at Brooklyn Borough Hall, project-related trucks were advancing before the receiving gate was ready, idling, standing in no-standing and no parking zones, ignoring a stop sign, driving the wrong way on a one-way street, and not obeying NYCDOT designated truck routes.  

At the District Service Cabinet FCRC's Schwartz stated, "the guard does not release trucks from our site until the gate is ready to receive them."  The guard is located at Pacific Street and Carlton Avenue.  In following this protocol the trucks enter the project site from Vanderbilt Avenue and line up inside the project footprint on the former Pacific Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt Avenues.  This is apparently done in the hope of lessening impacts on the residents who live along the stretch of Pacific Street between Carlton and 6th Avenues that would not ordinarily be a truck route.  

But this protocol was not followed.  Instead, the incident reports document trucks lining up on the public portion of Pacific Street at 6th Avenue as well as on 6th Avenue.  Trucks are also shown entering one-way Pacific Street the wrong way from 6th Avenue.  Although the camera did not pivot in time to capture it,  the filer reports 5 trucks enter from Carlton Avenue.  Carlton Avenue is not a truck route.  The videos also capture trucks driving north on South Portland Street.

The 2006 Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) assumed 6th Avenue would be widened between Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues in order to "facilitate traffic circulation at the project site and provide an alternative route for traffic diverted as a result of the closure of 5th Avenue between Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues."  (FEIS, 12-65)

However, it has emerged this summer that 6th Avenue from Flatbush to Atlantic will not be widened at the time of the arena opening as described in the FEIS.  Instead, not only will there be fewer north-south travel lanes at the time of the arena opening than analyzed in the FEIS, there will actually be fewer north/south travel lanes through the project footprint than existed before the street closures that created it in 2010.

The change will surely affect traffic circulation around the arena block, and congestion in the vicinity of the arena may be increased, because one fewer northbound and one fewer southbound travel lane east of the arena from Pacific Street to Flatbush Avenue will exist than was originally anticipated in the traffic analysis for the project.  The 6th Avenue Bridge will also have one less southbound lane.  The diagram on the left above shows the four lane version of 6th Avenue in the FEIS (Figure 12-5a).  To the right above is the two to three lane 6th Avenue as it is shown in the plans currently before NYC DOT.  

At the time the Sam Schwartz mitigation plan was detailed to the public in June, AYW reported that Barclays Center will have less in place at the time of the arena opening than anticipated in the 2006 FEIS:  "fewer travel lanes for traffic, fewer lay-by lanes, and narrower sidewalks for pedestrians."

Thanks to the bollard plans before NYCDOT, it is now possible to see more clearly how this is so in relation to the arena block.  In publishing the bollard plans several weeks ago, we wrote about the reduced effective widths of many of the sidewalks around the arena.  The state of the lay-by lanes at the time of the arena opening will be similar, with one permanently changed and others with no construction schedule.  

The function of lay-by lanes is to take traffic stopped for loading or unloading out of travel lanes.  Fewer lay-by lanes mean there is a higher degree of risk for vehicle/vehicle and vehicle/pedestrian conflicts.  It also potentially means increased congestion around the arena block.