Parents at PS 110 say the area near their children’s school lacks necessary safety features and are calling on the city’s Department of Transportation to make upgrades.
500 kids attend the elementary school, which directly faces McGolrick Park. Local parent Chris Roberti noticed morning drop-off issues on the very first day he showed up to school.
“Parents were really crushed on the sidewalk, people were kind of spilling into the street, there were cars double-parked, people honking,” he recalled. “It was chaos.”
The school’s Safe Streets Committee formed in 2021. Roberti says a Safe Streets survey found that about 87% walk or bike to school. Many parents said the area could use better infrastructure to help ensure that everyone, including cyclists and drivers, can peacefully coexist. The current lack of traffic calming measures can make for a perilous situation, with dozens of crashes occurring in the area over the past few years. An earlier DOT effort to create a play street on Monitor had faltered years prior due to some neighbor pushback.
In recent years, the area has been rocked by traffic violence. The hit-and-run killing of Matthew Jensen on the nearby McGuinness Boulevard shook the Greenpoint community, especially parents at PS 110, where Jensen was a beloved teacher. Jensen’s death prompted the formation of the Make McGuinness Safe movement (and subsequent counter movement). The PS 110 Safe Streets group ramped up their work in 2023 after a motorist fatally struck cyclist Teddy Orzechowski on the same block as PS 110, at Monitor Street and Driggs Avenue; the DOT eventually added daylighting to the intersection.
Additional deaths further rattled the community. A motorist fatally struck Danielle Aber just a few blocks away from PS 110, and two separate incidents where Brooklyn children were hit and killed by cars near their school also sparked fears.
The school and park are near the North Brooklyn Industrial Business Zone (IBZ) and crisscrossed by designated truck routes. Safe Streets calls for trucks to stay on those designated routes instead of illegally cutting through residential streets.
“People are just driving through the neighborhood, there’s no way for them to see what’s happening if they don’t know the neighborhood,” Roberti says. “They don’t know they’re coming up on a really populated park and residential neighborhood.”
Safe Streets hopes the DOT will implement intersection daylighting, midblock crossings, and raised crossings for better visibility. The agency can make those fixes with relative ease, while others, such as a comprehensive traffic study, necessitate a little more wherewithal. The group has encouraged the DOT to consider a street reversal on Monitor, which they say would further discourage trucks from using it as a cut-through street.
One of the bigger changes the DOT could make is turning part of the block between the school and McGolrick Park into a public plaza.
The DOT recently told News 12 that they are open to making changes, but said PS 110 needed to make the request. In the meantime, the Safe Streets committee will continue to spread awareness—they presented at a recent Brooklyn Community Board 1 meeting. The group also host frequent bike-to-school events, which have proved popular with students and families.
You can find out more about the proposal and sign the petition here.
I work in the area and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve nearly been hit by cars blowing through stop signs. I’ve also witnessed numerous accidents in the area, one involving a pedestrian. Drivers around here, especially toward the K bridge, are often only looking out for other cars, not pedestrians. Cars also speed through the residential streets to get to/from Meeker or the BQE. You have to be hyper-vigilant as a pedestrian – it would nice to see some caution from the drivers too!