The February 6 edition of the Williamsburg Courier has a couple of good articles on the Kent Avenue bike lane situation. Unfortunately, you won’t find these articles online.

First up, Greg Hanlon has quite a scoop from Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez:

Rep. Nydia Velazquez, who secured funding for the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative, has weighed in on how to solve the problems along [sic] associated with the proposed Greenway and temporary bike lanes installed as placeholders.
Her solution? Remove the southbound lane of traffic on Kent Avenue and replace it with a lane dedicated to parking and loading zones for the light manufacturing businesses along the strip.

Wish I had thought of that.

(Hanlon notes that DOT, citing safety concerns, is reluctant to move the bike lanes to one side of Kent. The concerns are legitimate, but only because DOT has chosen to this whole project on the cheap. The issue is this – if a two-way bike lane is located on the west side of Kent, cars leaving the new residences on that side of the street will have to look both ways for peds, then look both ways for bikes, and then look both ways for cars. The solution is simple – install traffic lights. In December, DOT announced that they were considering traffic lights at North 6th and North 7th.)