Air quality

For the night of the Heat vs. the Nets, a small team of AYW volunteers surveyed the state of illegal parking and idling in the vicinity of Barclays Center.  Above is a photo of a TLC driver sleeping in his car while parked in a crosswalk on the north side of Atlantic Avenue near South Oxford Street.

The study began at 8:30 and concluded at 10:30 PM.  The streets were each only surveyed once.  They are listed in the order they were surveyed.  The survey preceded the end of the game which is by far the most impactful period of arena operation.

Based on our experience and AYW incident reports, the same locations are used over and over by drivers parking and idling illegally.  We used a slightly larger set of boundaries for this survey than our previous survey on December 5th.  Our western boundary was 4th Avenue in Park Slope and Fort Greene Place in Fort Greene; the southern boundary was St. Mark's Avenue in Park Slope and Prospect Heights.  The eastern boundary in Prospect Heights was Vanderbilt Avenue;  in Fort Greene it was South Portland Avenue.  The northern boundary was Hanson Place and Atlantic Avenue.

In total, we witnessed 77 parking and/or idling violations.  65 were parking and 12 were idling violations.  In December we found 83 violations.  64 of those were for parking and 19 were for idling.  Vehicles cited below as idling were not timed to see if they were idling for longer than the 3 minutes allowed in NYC, although in many cases the drivers appeared to sleeping, on the phone, or watching television.  We did not file complaints with 311.  Many of the illegally parked cars had out of state licenses.  

I spoke to a bus driver in a bus driving down Dean Street between 6th and Vanderbilt.  He confirmed he had dropped off VIPs at Barclays Center.  He told me he had received no instructions about where to go.  He was just driving around looking for a resting place.
 

Had gotten used to the quiet over the past few days. Oh well.....

72 5th Ave: SUV parked at hydrant
70 5th Ave: 2 cars parked in no parking zone
Black car idling at hydrant on corner of St. Marks Ave

Nothing new here....cars parked illegally in all the usual spots along 5th Ave. Private cars (some of which are residents trying to park) idling on side streets waiting for spots to open up....all combining to create the usual 2 hour pre and post-event horn-blaring show. It occurs to me that this problem could be largely solved by implementing resident permit parking like other cities have successfully done (Boston near Fenway park is good example).

There's a black Nissan Murano lic# GCK-3496 parked in the no-parking zone in front of 70 5th Ave (corner St. Marks). Car has a "DOT Agency Business Parking Permit" displaying on the dashboard. Is parked right in front of an illegally parked Subaru that was already there. Neither vehicle has a ticket.

http://youtu.be/vvNYL7Oi_KY
http://youtu.be/HeeDhd3auaU
 
 

Attached is a photo forwarded me from a neighbor of a Wrestlemania truck at the Dean Street and Vanderbilt Avenue intersection.  It had passed across 6th Avenue and headed east on Dean passed Dean Playground to Vanderbilt.  That is an illegal route.  The photo forwarded me is attached.

On my way to shopping on Flatbush I spent 15 minutes documenting problems with trucks at the arena this morning.  In that time-frame I observed at least 5 violations of NYC and Atlantic Yards truck/traffic rules and regulations.  This does not include the staging of probable performance-related trucks on Pacific Street this morning which appears to be another violation since it is now pretty clear they were performance related.  
 

http://youtu.be/uW6ZtEqMSdY