Last night I attended the 84th Precinct Community Council Meeting. During the public forum portion of the evening, I presented an illegal use issue on behalf of the Brooklyn Committee of Transportation Alternatives. Many thanks to Rebecca Mayo for bringing this issue to the committee's attention.

The issue, as discussed at our May meeting: livery cars parked in the bike lane at the SW corner of Fulton and Smith/Jay. (see attached images). This causes bikes to merge into the single car lane, in a heavily trafficked pedestrian intersection. As instructed by the Precinct, I also presented photographs of the issue, with livery car companies visible in the images. (thanks to Paco for the pictures!)

I expressed our concern with this issue, and Captain DiPaolo was receptive. He noted that the Precinct has been issuing summonses in this area, and overall, the Precinct has doubled the number of summonses for parking in a bike lane over this same period last year (50 in 2009, 99 in 2010). The Captain expressed that the Precinct will continue to enforce this law, and will give additional attention to this intersection.

I left both a letter outlining our concerns (thanks to Pippa for drafting!) and images of the illegal use with Sal Farente, who manages community relations for the Precinct and was in attendance. I also thanked the Precinct for sending Officer John Kenny to the Bike Month Kick-Off to register bikes.

This was a team effort. If anyone else has an issue like this they'd like to raise, make your voice heard in this forum. We can work together to get the right people aware of these issues.