Ninth Street should be safer, say Brooklyn residents as they mourned one of their own last week. Plus other news.
StreetsBlog NYC | By Gersh Kuntzman
12:01 AM EST on January 14, 2025
Friends and family of Sarah Schick, the Citi Bike rider who was killed by a truck driver on Ninth Street in Brooklyn two years ago, rallied at the fatal corner on Friday to mourn and also to demand that the city make the roadway safer.
After Schick was killed the Department of Transportation did make some improvements — banishing parked cars on both sides of the two-way street and putting up some protections for cyclists between Third Avenue and Smith Street.
But “the barriers are not in place for about 75 percent of Ninth Street and are chronically blocked, particularly by businesses like Ferrantino Fuel [whose] trucks park on the sidewalk and in the bike lane daily, often overnight,
adjacent to the spot where Sarah Schick was killed, and parking in the bike lane forces cyclists to drive in traffic,” Council Member Shahana Hanif, Transportation Alternatives’ new executive director Ben Furnas, Brooklyn Community Board 6 and Families for Safe Streets wrote to Mayor Adams and DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez.
The letter was also signed by Maxime Le Mounier, Schick’s widower, who spoke the vigil at the corner, which, ironically, is home to a Tesla dealership.
The group is seeking more barriers as well as pedestrian improvements. DOT spokesperson Mona Bruno said the agency would review the TA letter. “Safety is our top priority, and we’re laser focused on making it easier for pedestrians and cyclists to get around our city,” Bruno said. “We … continue to monitor the success of the safety enhancements we have already made at this intersection.”
