by Matt A 
We’re well aware by now that the imminent five-week G suspension this summer (from late July through the end of August) has many commuters spooked. Adding insult to injury, the New York Waterways ferry landing at India Street—by far the second-best option for many—has been suspended indefinitely since February, when a gangplank failed and plunged into frigid East River waters moments after passengers climbed aboard.
This looming transportation brownout has…
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Great article. I agree with you. Pulaski bridge during rush hours is jammed with traffic. The G won’t be running the ferry is out and the developers want to build more houses. Oh and Pulaski bridge will have a bike lane. Give me a break.
thank you for the great update! the ferry is my mode of work transportation, and the shuttle bus thing is really getting old. this has to get resolved and quickly!
I too rely on the ferry to commute, but don’t see the big deal about the shuttle. It doesn’t appreciably change my door-to-door time, and it’s not like it’s a stinky MTA bus. Why the beef?
Ed – Are you heading south? It adds plenty of extra minutes on the north-bound journey.
You don’t see the big deal about the shuttle? Wait until you have to take it, and have to let 3 buses pass you by because they’re filled to the max. It’s horrible. The MTA is never fully prepared.
Well done in terms of research. Thank you.
I lived in a RedSky building. They were TERRIBLE. Just a truly awful company. They’re exactly the type of developer who is ruining Brooklyn – buying up buildings, raising rent astronomical amounts (they literally doubled our rent), and are incredibly difficult to deal with on the phone.
When I saw their name attached to this story, I had to laugh. Makes absolute sense to me.
For real! Thank you.
Great article and research – this is the most information I’ve found anywhere on this topic. I think the discussion regarding transportation to match the new housing is very important and getting short-shrift. Despite misleading PR anyone who uses the G to commute from Greenpoint in the morning knows that trains are frequently skipped, there is no ‘schedule,’ and crush-loading is to be assumed most days between 8:15 and 9:15.
It’s preposterous to dump thousands of new residents who will mostly be commuting to Manhattan each morning without increasing transportation capacity. This needs to be required as part of residential re-zoning. Meanwhile the ‘private solutions’ such as the East River Ferry and CitiBike have entirely let down the neighborhood by being absent. Buses are great but with the bottlenecks and congestion through LIC they are not able to match the G or Ferry. Without bikeshare – which probably would help Greenpoint more than an almost any other neighborhood – we’re left with no good options for commuting. This will lower rental demand (not all bad haha) and harm the same developers hoping to make a big windfall on new waterfront condos. Anyone with basic numeracy can see that the relative profits for Redsky vs the cost of the ferry work is a non-factor. These delays and silence are thus more likely related to quiet back room liability ‘negotiatians’ made possible by shady Bloomberg-era privitization. As this same lack of public benefit accountability is responsible for the failure of Citibike to deploy in Greenpoint as was intially promised I think we need to push to ensure there are actual means of reciurse for the public before we hand out the rights to manage these critical transit links to private interests.
If the politicians want the investigation they should have come up with the funds to do so and it should have been done so 7 months ago. Of course no private interest is going to pay for their own investigation due to the liability it might bring. My feeling is there is some criminal negligence that redsky is trying to hide. This is going to happen again let’s find another landing for the ferry because some one might die next time.
Thanks everyone for your great feedback. I have sent a link to the article to The New York Times metro desk and several other outlets with the hope of shining more light on the problem.
If all involved can simply get their acts together, the ferry can still be operational by the G-train shutdown. We will post an update to this story in about two weeks—with RedSky’s office phone number, if they don’t act.
This is a great post. I would like to share it with our audience as well. Its quite a curious claim by the council member that these professional builders couldn’t erect a crane more than once, especially considering the benefits they have reaped from the community.
Any further updates? I commute to work avery day via the ferry Northbound and I agree the shuttle bus is getting old. Not to mention the worries of crowding when the G goes down.
Michael,
According to a NY1 report by Jose Martinez on June 18 (which was a response to this blog post), the ferry owners had come to and agreement with the city about restoring service. Both Councilman Levin and State Senator Squadron were quoted in the NY1 piece.
Unfortunately, as of July 9 there is no visible progress at the landing.
Could it be that the landing owners’ promises are full of hot air? You bet your bottom dollar. We need to pressure Levin and Squadron to contact the ferry owners DIRECTLY. They are our elected representatives and it is their job to apply pressure to these greedy and negligent nincompoops on our community’s behalf.
You can also feel free to call RedSky to ask them what’s up…if you can get them to take your call: 718-366-1800. Or maybe several hundred of us need to call them…