I moved to Prospect Heights from Detroit a few years ago to escape the paved nightmare of freeways and huge roads that chopped up a thriving city into disconnected bits and pieces. The automobile and the calls for more of the roads it requires killed Detroit. I came to Brooklyn to live in a place where I would never again have to worry about cars. I thought I could ignore them here, pretend they don't exist. And I do! I love walking to the store, to the Park, to the subway, riding the subway to work, etc.

So to those who continue to quote traffic projections and the gloom and doom that will result from adding cars to this part of Brooklyn, PLEASE STOP!! You sound like the highway planners of the 1950s that ripped Detroit apart (and many other US cities in similar fashion). The Atlantic Yards proposal has its lowpoints and highpoints... but how it will affect congestion on Flatbush?!! Come on. If you want to drive your car around Prospect Heights, Fort Greene and Park Slope, you picked the wrong place to live, AND housing affordability and job creation (which this plan should be crafted to provide) are obviously not everyday worries for you. Bringing up traffic volumes in any discussion of the pros and cons of a plan for Atlantic Yards discredits people who want to intelligently speak about the area's future.

The area around the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues is the best-served by public transit of any point in New York. Probably in the country. Nearly every subway line runs through this area, plus the LIRR. If we're going to add affordable housing and jobs in NYC, this is where it should be. Whether the plan as proposed does these things effectively is definitely up for debate, but whether density at this location is appropriate given the amount of car traffic it will generate? - This is truly a ludicrous question to which to devote time.

We learned the hard way in Detroit that planning for more cars is a very, very bad idea, especially in areas that are well served by alternative forms of transportation (which few parts of Detroit are - see LA for a better example). The ONLY way you can prevent more people from driving through a specific area is by making it difficult to drive through. Flatbush is already congested. Adding lanes to the Avenue wouldn't change that fact, but more importantly, neither will adding more residents and businesses.