Brooklyn Borough President makes a speech, by Brian Abate

On March 13, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso delivered his State of the Borough speech in front of a packed crowd of hundreds of people at New York City College of Technology.

Reynoso spoke about a variety of issues including how to move freight throughout the city in safe, sustainable, and efficient ways. The problem is one that Jim Tampakis of Tamco Mechanical (54 Richards St.) has given a lot of thought to and he has pushed for more frequent and better use of our waterways to transport goods. Now, his ideas are catching on and politicians are pushing for the same ideas.

“Did you know that in the 30s and 40s, New York City had ‘the largest, most frequently used, and best-known port in the world?’” asked Reynoso. “By 1939, the Port of New York employed 400,000 workers. Today, the ports of New York and New Jersey together employ closer to half that amount.”

For the most part, trucks have been used to move freight rather than the waterways, including in Red Hook where lots of big trucks come down Van Brunt St. every day even though the neighborhood is right on the water.

“We have these monstrosities [trucks] coming into the neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning, which the locals all hear,” said Tampakis in 2017. “Their houses shake at 4 am, because [the distribution centers receive these trucks] early in the morning.”

Right now, residents in Red Hook and throughout Brooklyn are dealing with traffic from trucks going to last-mile warehouses like Amazon and also congestion from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) which goes all the way down Columbia St. Tampakis said that he lives only three miles away from Red Hook but at times, the traffic coming into the neighborhood has caused his commute to take over an hour.

“I think we need to create a water distribution network in New York City,” Tampakis said. “The freight can be brought in via water in containers, then they can be broken down at different facilities including sorting facilities, and then they can go out again via water for final distribution.

“The Department of Transportation (DOT) has approved bike deliveries which is great. NYC has 525 miles of waterfront property. It would be great to have Amazon bring in the majority of their freight, which comes from New Jersey or Pennsylvania, and get it offloaded at one of the piers there, then brought in to places like Red Hook via barge. It can be offloaded and broken down into smaller containers that can fit on those delivery bikes and go back on barges which can then be taken to the city’s 525 miles of waterfront for deliveries. This would alleviate sprinter vans and bigger trucks as well.”

Additionally, the move to the water would be environmentally friendly as there are now all-electric tug boats. Tampakis believes that going back to relying on the waterways is a solution for traffic not only in Red Hook but throughout New York City and Long Island.

“I want to foster a new vision that puts communities first, supports a vibrant working waterfront, gets trucks off our streets, and creates green jobs for Brooklynites,” Reynoso said. “And we’re doing it not by reinventing the wheel, but by remembering why our city became a hub of commerce in the first place: our waterways. What it comes down to at the end of the day is who we are and who we always have been as New Yorkers.”

Tampakis and Reynoso both want Brooklyn to get back to using the waterways which should dramatically improve traffic both in Red Hook and throughout the borough.