We’ve been covering the Avenue U and Gerritsen Avenue Intersection for while now. Highlighting the changes as they happen. In turn many of our commenters have been discussing major concerns over safety and the overall flow (or lack thereof) of traffic. For example Steve G. said “at the corner of Gerritsen and Ave. U it will, I mean already is, a nightmare. The pedestrian island, the one lane lines, the no left turns, along with Key Food, and rush hour traffic that bails from the Belt Pkwy up Knapp Street have already caused major delays, with no end in sight.”

Friday, November 20th GerritsenBeach.net spent about 3 hours between 2-5 pm at that intersection. Steve G is right…it’s a nightmare and GerritsenBeach.net belives that this will cause accidents and possibly worse injury’s. Here is the photo gallery.

The intersection and Gerritsen Avenue for those that don’t know now features a concrete “green streets like” traffic island at Gerritsen and U, and the length of Gerritsen Avenue is one lane. Gerritsen Avenue has left turn bays for the other Avenues such as R, T, etc. The Gerritsen and U intersection now has a badly needed left turn bay driving on Gerritsen South (driving into Gerritsen Beach) and Avenue U East (currently not installed). More importantly no left turns from Gerritsen North onto Avenue U West (toward Nostrand Avenue).

The intersection was a mad house and to be fair this may be due to the new traffic pattern. It may be also due to impatient drivers. However all drivers are impatient, that just how life is, there is no changing that, you cant just take a intersection and Avenue that flows easily cut it down to one lane, and expect society to change its behavior.

Joseph Palmieri the appointed Brooklyn Borough Commissioner of DOT shoved this 10 year old plan onto multiple communities and cared less when the community said they didn’t want the plan. Now he left the job incomplete leaving drivers and pedestrians to the mercy of traffic.

More to the point…this is what is going on.

Making a left onto from Gerritsen South onto Avenue U East is impossible. Since the DOT left the job incomplete, for at least a week now, there is NO left turn signal/arrow yet. The new left turn bay on Gerritsen South can line up about 15 cars. Now since Gerritsen North traffic is now a single continuous lane of traffic when green, the only opportunity cars that can make a left is while red. Only one or two cars can currently make a left. Thats not going to stop some drivers who take it upon themselves jumping from the back of the line driving on the wrong side head-on into traffic to make their left onto Avenue U East.

The new left turn bay completely blocks Engine 321. Needless to say appointed Joseph Palmieri forgot about the firehouse. Engine 321 is aggravated, angry, pissed, mad and they were more than happy to explain to me their frustrations since the new left turn bay and island were installed. They explained that the engine cannot make a left or right out of the firehouse at all! They are at the completely at the mercy of the traffic. That line of 15 cars lined up to make a left block their left and right access. Also the island blocks their quick access to drive around traffic to get onto Gerritsen to head to Knapp street or to continue down Gerritsen. They explained that even that morning that had to drive down Knapp street for an accident and it took them “a long time” to even get to Knapp Street. This to GerritsenBeach.net is a deal breaker and grounds to rip up the island immediately.

The Knapp Street onto Gerritsen Merge is horrendous. It used to me a two lane to two lane merge. Now it’s obviously a two to one merge. What’s happening for drivers, is that they are forced to merge into each other, not in a nice merge either its a very dangerous low speed merge. However, since traffic at the Avenue U and Gerritsen intersection and the new single lanes traffic is now backed up just from that past Knapp St almost to the behind Knapp Street Pizza. Once you add the Knapp street traffic, it’s IMMEDIATE deadlock, blocking Gerritsen and Knapp completely, Engine 321 also explained this. Since also drivers are impatient that two lane merge with deadlock now becomes a 5 and 6 lane free-for-all as drivers try and get past the merge onto Gerritsen. This deadlock and traffic is now causing Knapp to get backed up past V backing up to PS 194. Which is bizarre.

Commercial Traffic! Gerritsen Avenue is not a commercial road. Commercial traffic is allowed on Avenue U East and West and onto Gerritsen for local deliveries. Now the commercial traffic cannot take the same way out they are forced out of Gerritsen onto W, T, S, R Avenues to get back to a road they are allowed to drive on.

Keyfood! Keyfood employees and customers are also angry. People driving on Gerritsen South are technically not allowed to make lefts across Gerritsen North into the always filled lot. That’s not stopping anyone. Gerritsen North is filled with cars and these cars are inching their way across the median, across traffic, causing more deadlock. What else are they supposed to do? There is no easy way to get into Keyfood. They would have to go to Knapp, left on V, then deal with the Gerritsen North deadlock to get 100-200 feet.

More deadlock on T, S, R Avenues getting onto Gerritsen South. That single lane is also causing deadlock and traffic backups on avenue T, S and R. R seems to be getting hit the hardest due to its short length, bus traffic and close proximity to Nostrand.

Pedestrian and community safety is now compromised. Cars on Gerritsen North are now blocking, to inch up as close as they can to jump the lights, the cross walks forcing pedestrians literally into the middle of Avenue U. The deadlock, blocking the box style, at Knapp, V, U, T, and S have pedestrians crossing, bobbing and weaving through cars to get across the street.

Drivers are still making lefts, including light and heavy commercial traffic, city buses, and access-a-rides. We would also like to add that we saw hundreds of empty access-a-rides, who cannot drive.

It seems fitting that this came after elections.

DOT, Bloomberg, Lew Fidler, Marty Golden, Alan Maisel, God help us.

Continue reading New Intersection Destroys Communities. DEADLOCK Throughout Marine Park, and Gerritsen Beach