During his campaign for City Hall two years ago, Mayor Eric Adams promised to be a “bike mayor” who would “build out a state-of-the-art bus transit system.”
But now, as Adams approaches the halfway mark of his first term, street safety and transit advocates worry about which major street safety project will be next on the chopping block – and say they feel betrayed by the mayor.
Their concerns come after the city Department of Transportation this year drastically scaled back two long-planned street redesigns: One that would add bike lanes and reduce traffic lanes on McGuinness Boulevard in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and another to give buses priority on Fordham Road in the Bronx.
The administration drastically reduced the ambition of both projects. Fordham Road was envisioned as a “busway” where most passenger cars would be banned. Now the administration says it will just boost enforcement against cars illegally parked in the bus lane. McGuinness Boulevard began as a project to reduce the street’s traffic lanes and add a protected bike lane stretching to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The Adams administration halved the length of the bike lane at the last minute and reconfigured the design to save overnight parking spaces.
The projects faced last-minute opposition from coalitions of business groups that included the Bronx Zoo, the New York Botanical Garden and the Broadway Stages production company. Opponents argued the street safety changes would cause gridlock and reduce parking, harming their bottom lines.
“I think the thing that’s most jarring is that Eric Adams poses himself as the public safety mayor, and we’re not seeing any real action on street safety,” said Jon Orcutt of the advocacy group Bike New York.
One high-profile project that appears to have slowed dramatically is a priority bus lane on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. The dedicated lane would speed up the commutes of approximately 118,000 daily bus riders between Downtown Brooklyn…
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