BY THE VILLAGE SUN | Billed as an East Village/Lower East Side Access Study, a meeting was held at the Lower Eastside Girls Club on Thurs., Oct. 26 to gather community input for construction of new bridges to East River Park as part of the ongoing East Side Coastal Resiliency project.
Attendees were presented with large maps, along with post-its and magic markers to write suggestions to stick on them.
All design plans for the bridges and surrounding areas so far, though, are “speculative,” the meeting was told.
However, some ideas were put out there. One was to turn E. Sixth Street near Avenue D into a cul-de-sac — instead of connecting to the F.D.R. access road — with a bridge across the F.D.R. Drive to the park.
There was some support voiced for taking away some of the current parking — or “car storage,” as bike advocates like to say — in the area, which is filled with New York City Housing Authority developments.
Although there were bike activists at the meeting — plus a dog-run founder and former City Council candidate Allie Ryan — not many NYCHA residents made it.
Where was the outreach for this meeting?
The East Side deserves the same 30 MPH, slower travel lanes, crossings at street level, with traffic lights treatment instead of a multi-lane highway, just like the wealthier West Side of Manhattan.
There are plenty of wealthy people on the East Side, and sadly lots of East Side gentrification.
We don’t, because we don’t vote (result: Carlina and Dan Goldman) and we don’t get involved. On the West Side, they do both.