Transit advocates and researchers are asking New Yorkers who ride the B41 bus across Brooklyn’s Flatbush Avenue to share their commuting woes.
A participatory research action project will kick off on Tuesday with a rally at 11 a.m. at the Flatbush Trees, at the intersection of Empire Boulevard and Flatbush Avenue, in Brooklyn. It’s part of a push from advocates Riders Alliance to put more pressure on the Department of Transportation and elected leaders to address lagging bus service on one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares.
The B41 bus remains a critical route across Flatbush Avenue, which spans nearly 10 miles from the Manhattan Bridge to Jamaica Bay. Tens of thousands of riders commute across the busy stretch of land each day, braving congestion from competing drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. The busy thoroughfare has been described as “Brooklyn’s spine” by Danny Pearlstein, the policy and communications director for Riders Alliance.
“Flatbush Avenue has been slated for bus service improvements for decades – but they haven’t happened yet,” Pearlstein said in an interview. “And now? An unprecedented coalition of riders and workers is coming together to span out up and down Brooklyn’s spine, talk to people about why we need to change and hold City Hall accountable for making the changes we need.”
Last month, the DOT announced that it would begin installing bus lanes on the busy street to help bring some sense of order to the traffic chaos. But it’s not enough to remedy the horrid commute, Pearlstein said.
Between September 2022 and September 2023, B41 buses ran an average of 6.8 mph, which was slower than the citywide average of 8.2 mph during that same time period, according to MTA statistics cited by the Riders Alliance.
“What we want to show the Adams’ administration – and DOT – is that there’s robust support for a very transformative remedy for slow bus service on Flatbush Avenue,” Pearlstein said. ”While they’ve put…
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