Study: Ikea a traffic horror

The Brooklyn Papers By Jotham Sederstrom

A proposed Ikea home furnishings megastore in Red Hook would flood the neighborhood with 20,000 more cars each Saturday, a number that would force as many as 800 drivers to park along already crowded side streets, according to a report by an independent traffic engineer.

The findings conflict with those revealed in an environmental impact statement commissioned by Ikea in April, which reported that 14,000 cars would vie for 1,400 parking spaces each Saturday. “They low-balled all the numbers,” charged traffic consultant Brian Ketcham, executive director of Community Consulting Services, the company that conducted the new traffic study.

Ketcham said the inconsistencies are not the result of erroneous research on the part of Sam Schwartz, a former city Transportation commissioner, better known as “Gridlock Sam” for his newspaper advice column, whose firm compiled traffic data for Ikea for an estimated $1.5 million.

“The name of the game in this is getting the project approved and if you have to fake the numbers to do that then that’s what you do — and everybody does it,” said Ketcham, who released his study last month after compiling data from the Ikea in Elizabeth, N.J., in May. He said his study was completed at a cost of $75,000.

Ikea hopes to construct a 346,000-square-foot store at the former New York Shipyard site between Dwight and Columbia streets along the Erie Basin. The plans, endorsed by Borough President Marty Markowitz, also include more than 70,000 square feet of additional retail and restaurant space along the waterfront.

Despite the growth over the past two decades of Ikea and its minimalist furniture designs to 25 locations throughout the United States, the project in Red Hook would be the company’s first in a truly urban setting. For that reason, said Ketcham, engineers have relied on previously held assumptions that most drivers would use major highway routes to get to the store.

But because the Brooklyn- Queens Expressway and the Gowanus Expressway are already at capacity, and because it is impossible to build a highway ramp to the site, much of the new traffic will spill onto nearby roads, most notably along Hamilton and Third avenues, said Ketcham.

Besides the influx of traffic on Saturdays, an average of 5,000 cars and trucks will enter the area surrounding Ikea each weekday, according to the Ketcham study. Ketcham estimated that each year there would be about 3 million car and truck trips to the site.

“The [Ikea draft environmental impact statement] assumes that nearly 60 percent of trips will be on those expressways because highways are what Ikea-bound drivers use around the world, but they can’t in Brooklyn,” said Ketcham. “They’re both at capacity for peak hours, and that capacity will be especially limited on weekends as both roads face decades of construction.”

Ikea officials say they will refashion the surrounding streets with traffic signals at five intersections and perform a host of other traffic-calming measures on numerous other corridors. Pat Smith, a spokesman for Ikea, said those recommendations and plans to reevaluate traffic a year after opening, should ensure that congestion won’t become an issue.

But Ketcham contends those concessions would not reverse the traffic influx, which at its height will usher in about 60,000 car and truck trips each week, he said.

“There’s no question that you’re going to get traffic not just from Manhattan, but from portions of Queens and Long Island,” said Ketcham, whose report finds that the store would draw customers within an eight-mile radius. That means drivers from New Jersey and Long Island, as well as the five boroughs, would likely find their way into Red Hook each weekend.

In terms of traffic safety, Ketcham boldly predicted five deaths within the first two years of the store’s opening, despite his own earlier findings that indicated only one fatality for every two years. Based on current accident rates in Brooklyn, he said, 57 more will be injured and 94 cars and trucks will be damaged each year.

“Within the first two years, I guarantee five children will get killed,” said Ketcham. “I see how those kids play and I guarantee your going to have a tragedy on your hands.”

Ketcham’s study also finds that the new traffic will result in an additional 506 tons of carbon monoxide, 36 tons of hydrocarbons and 34 tons of nitrogen oxide, all of which will most heavily impact Red Hook and Carroll Gardens residents and workers.