Residents of booming ‘South Brooklyn’ want their B71 bus back

Residents of Carroll Gardens, Gowanus, the Columbia Street Waterfront District and Red Hook are calling on the MTA to reconnect their neighborhoods by bringing back the B71 bus — a route that once ran along Union Street, looped around Grand Army Plaza, and continued to Eastern Parkway.

They are also pushing for a proposed B81 bus to connect Red Hook to Manhattan — so near, yet so far — through the Gov. Hugh Carey Tunnel.

The MTA eliminated the B71 in 2010, leaving residents of the area traditionally known as South Brooklyn (as opposed to Southern Brooklyn, around Bay Ridge and Coney Island) with no easy way to get by bus to schools, shops or the Central Library, or to connections in Crown Heights.

Local officials say now is the time, as MTA has restarted its Brooklyn Bus Network Redesign project, which was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A draft plan released by MTA in December 2022 addresses many longstanding issues, but not the loss of the B71, they said in a letter to top MTA officials on Feb. 8. 

“For well over a decade, a coalition of elected officials, community residents, schools, civic groups, advocates, and cultural institutions have called on the MTA and City DOT to bring back our bus. The MTA’s current Brooklyn Bus Network Redesign is the perfect opportunity to ensure that these neighborhoods, which have experienced significant population growth, are connected once again,” nine local elected officials wrote in a letter to MTA brass. 

These include Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, Assemblymember Robert C. Carroll, Assemblymember Marcela Mitaynes, Councilmember Shahana Hanif, Rep. Daniel S. Goldman, state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, Assemblymember Brian A. Cunningham and Councilmember Alexa…