After months of head scratching and hand wringing, it appears that work to repair the India Street ferry landing has finally visibly begun, just nine days before next Friday’s G-train closure plunges North Brooklyn into a five-week transportation brown out. It appears city officials are now “cautiously optimistic” that the landing’s owners will finish repairs before the G shuts down.
In our in-depth June 6 post on the topic, we noted a disconcerting lack of transparency about the repair process and called on local political leaders to pressure the city and the landing’s owners to publicly commit to a timeline that would ensure the ferry is operational before shutdown.
For weeks, we heard nothing but chirping crickets. But then NY1 aired a June 18 story by Jose Martinez in which State Senator Daniel Squadron and Councilman Stephan Levin both came out swinging: “I fully expect that within a month’s time, the East River ferry is going to be back up and running here at India Street. And it better be, because that’s the commitment we’ve heard time and time again and that’s what the commuters expect,” said Levin.
Squadron and Levin ratcheted up the pressure last Friday by issuing a joint press release saying that the lack of a confirmed date for the completion of repairs is “simply unacceptable” and calling on the city to “commit today to a date for a safe reopening.”
Today we finally received word from one of our readers that a tugboat is positioning a crane at the end of the pier. Can it be that the cranes have arrived just in the nick of time?
Let’s hope so.
Let’s also hope that the landing’s owners conduct thorough repairs using competent contractors and that this isn’t some kind of last-minute rush job to avoid community outrage. Because nothing would provoke more outrage than another mishap like last February—or worse yet, a future incident in which one of our neighbors gets hurt.
I can’t believe the public wasn’t let in on the details of the collapse incident. OSHA doesn’t have jurisdiction there, neither does DOT and NTSB. Does the Port Authority have jurisdiction? Or was this somehow construed as a “private” investigation? There ought not to be a “private” inquiry when it involves the safety of the general public.
Dear Senator Squadron and Councilman Levin,
Can we please bring this to *full* resolution and inform the public of how this happened.
A post on Brooklyn baby hui just said they walked down India St and the construction looks almost finished!
It seems to be complete now. They were doing work on the gangplank yesterday and finishing the gates, etc. Not sure if they need to do testing and safety checks before opening it up.
It’s really just replacing the floating platform and connecting it to the pier. Hopefully they do a better job securing it this time, but I’m not surprised by the short installation time. What’s a shame is that it took 5+ months to get the process started.
What’s almost a bigger shame is that the pier itself hasn’t been finished in years. What’s up with all those unfinished, fenced-off sections?
I was just on it this morning and noticed the piles that hold the floating dock swaying quite a bit, causing the suspended bridge to groan a lot. Normally I wouldn’t think twice about that, but given how fast it got fixed last week, I would not be surprised if no investigation into the accident happened, and if the new construction is less than thorough. I also would not be surprised if that was the pier owner’s plan all along – delay to the last minute so the pressure would be to get it done fast rather than properly. Did our local reps get any answers or are they just happy it’s running?