Ever since getting hit in the face with a brick while riding his bike under the pedestrian footbridge on Navy Street in Brooklyn, Stephen Arthur has made it his mission to stop this sort of thing from happening again. The Park Slope computer programmer tells us he's sent "dozens upon dozens of e-mails that have gone unanswered and/or unaddressed to the City Government" to get safety improvements. Now the DOT is installing a fence over the bridge, but Arthur says it's not good enough. Also dissatisfied? Local residents who use the footbridge and say the fence extension feels more like prison bars.
The new fence over the bridge will form a curved-in barrier intended to thwart the youths who threw a brick at Arthur, knocking him off his bike and breaking a tooth. One resident of the Walt Whitman and Ingersoll houses tells the Brooklyn Paper, "We don’t want anybody getting hurt either — but this feels like a punishment, like we’re in jail. It’s offensive." Another resident says, "Safety comes first. It seems like there’s a better way, though."
Arthur—who had to spend $5,000 on medical bills to recover from the assault—agrees, and tells us, "Ideally, my plan would be to close Navy Street, tear down the Fleet Walkway, and turn that area into a park for the good people of the Ingersoll Houses so they would have more room to socialize. They deserve a better living environment than the city currently provides them on Navy Street. The problem is the Navy Street design which allows these easy attacks, not the Ingersoll residents." But "given the realities of the situation and misunderstanding of the road design improvements that need to be made," he concedes the fence extension is appropriate. In an email, Arthur elaborates:
First and foremost, I have nothing against the people who live in the Ingersoll Houses. Very unfortunately, there are some kids there who are not being supervised well enough by their parents: hence the attack I suffered. I actually hung out at the Ingersoll Houses a couple of times with the residents in late December, and spoke to some at length, and at no time to I remember them being against a fence or being offended by the proposed fence extension. Of course, their opinions do not represent everyone's who live at the Ingersoll Houses.
An after school program, possibly involving bicycles for the kids seems to make sense too, but as I've stated, there is a lot of talk on this subject, and no action. I feel like I am not in a legal position, on my own to do anything about this... In over 5 months since I was attacked, I am doing about 99.0% of the work to get something done, and yet get criticized for what I am able to achieve on my own. We need the criticizers to step up with solid ideas of their own to offer a better alternative.
It's worth noting that the youths who threw the brick were not on the bridge itself, but on the landing leading up to the footbridge. (No arrests were ever made.) Here's a recent channel 12 TV news segment that shows the current state of the bridge, and its hidden dangers:
Asked for details about the fence extension, a DOT spokesman tells us, "Making the bridge safer for everyone is a goal that DOT shares with the local community. The agency currently is designing modifications for added safety, including installing an 18-inch return to the current fence and adding fencing to the bridge's approaches. These adjustments conform to more current pedestrian fence standards that DOT now looks to use whenever upgrading fencing on City bridges.
"Examples of this type of fencing can be found across the city, including on the Manhattan bridge's pedestrian and bike paths as well as the Roosevelt Island bridge. DOT also will continue to discuss ideas for ways to further enhance safety on and around the bridge with the local community."
