The recent DOT street designs, lane reductions, and loss of parking around Brooklyn, Kingston, Empire, and Winthrop are destroying our neighborhood's safety and paralyzing our neighborhood.

We, the residents, homeowners, and community members of the East Flatbush / Wingate area, are calling on the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT), local community boards, and elected officials to immediately review, halt, and reevaluate the recent street redesigns (including lane reductions, concrete dividers, and massive parking removal) along Brooklyn Ave, Kingston Ave, Empire Blvd, and Winthrop St.

Our neighborhood is a vital healthcare, religious, and educational hub—surrounding Kings County Hospital, SUNY Downstate, a dialysis center, 5 local schools, multiple churches, synagogues, a fire department, and Wingate Park. However, recent street modifications have severely compromised residential quality of life, emergency access, and public safety.

We are demanding immediate action on the following issues:

1. Traffic Bottlenecks & Honking: Converting 2-lane straightways into 1-lane configurations with center-turning lanes has created severe bottlenecks, intense gridlock, and continuous horn honking.
2. Pedestrian Hazards: Pedestrians continue to jaywalk diagonally and bypass the new pedestrian islands built to shorten crosswalks.
3. Blocked Street Sweeping & Sanitation Failures: Narrowed streets combined with double-parking (and quadrupling by local institutions) make alternate-side parking impossible to manage, preventing street sweepers from cleaning our gutters, creating unsanitary conditions. 
4. Sideswipe Risks: Placing parked cars between active bike lanes and single traffic lanes leaves vehicles exposed to constant sideswipe damage.
5. Increased Safety Hazards: Delayed left-turn signals and divider placements directly led to a vehicle rollover on October 6, 2026—an unprecedented type of accident for this corridor.
6. Institutional Overcrowding: Local churches and medical institutions that previously parked efficiently are now quadruply parking, paralyzing neighborhood traffic flow and putting ambulettes at risk.
7. Severe Winter & Snowstorm Hazards: During the winter of 2026, the city failed to clear snow properly on our streets. Now that vital parking spaces have been repurposed for street crossing buildouts and dividers, where does the city expect residents to park during severe snowstorms when snowbanks take over the remaining curb space?
8. Lack of True Community Representation: Decisions were made without proper neighborhood-wide voting or input from everyday residents who bear the daily brunt of these changes, which do not fit the residential, reality of our neighborhood compared to commercial hubs like Dumbo or Prospect Park.
9. Severe Parking Deficit: The combination of extensive "No Standing" zones around Wingate Park, narrow single-lane configurations, and lost spaces has made parking virtually impossible for residents who live here.