Mayor Adams will install a bike lane on the southern portion of McGuinness Boulevard without reducing the number of lanes on the highway-like road — and local elected officials slammed the watered-down plan after a briefing on Tuesday morning.
The Department of Transportation originally wanted to cut the speed-fostering boulevard's two lanes in each direction to one from the Pulaski Bridge to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and install a parking-protected bike lane, but then scaled back the first phase of the project after pushback by powerful local film studio Broadway Stages. Now the agency plans to roll out the same half measure for the rest of the road.
"The priority of our community and the 10,000 people who signed a petition, and every elected official that represents Greenpoint is to dramatically slow down traffic on this dangerous boulevard — and this plan fails to do so," Council Member Lincoln Restler told Streetsblog. "It hasn’t worked from Calyer to Freeman [streets]. I can’t understand for the life of me why we’re replicating it below."
Restler and other lawmakers released a joint statement on social media slamming the administration.
Like with the portion north of Calyer Street, DOT plans to keep both lanes intact in each direction, but the outer lane will convert to parking overnight. That design has led to cars to just illegally parking in the bike lane, pushing cyclists into dangerously fast car and truck traffic.
The agency, which told lawmakers about the plan earlier in the day, confirmed it will move forward with the lesser proposal beginning in September.
"This redesign for McGuinness Boulevard will make this corridor much safer for everyone, including drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists," DOT spokesman Vin Barone said in a statement. "Based on community feedback, DOT will be extending the protected bike lane from Calyer Street to Meeker Avenue ... and adding sidewalk extensions at streets intersecting McGuinness Boulevard."
The move marks Adams's final insult against a marquee street safety project launched by his predecessor Mayor Bill de Blasio, which came after teacher Matthew Jensen was fatally struck by a speeding, hit-and-run driver on McGuinness Boulevard in 2021.
But Broadway Stages owners Gina and Anthony Argento were able to get the ear of Adams's chief adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin to stop the plan.
Advocates criticized the mayor for putting the wishes of donors to Adams and the Brooklyn Democratic Party over the safety of Brooklynites.
"Today, the DOT announced [its] plan to break [its] promise to Greenpoint to Make McGuinness Safe," the group Make McGuinness Safe wrote on Instagram. "Mayor Adams has, for the third time, revoked his plan for a road diet on McGuinness Boulevard, in favor of prioritizing his donors over our lives."
The plan's opponents weren't really happy with the compromise either, due to the removal of parking, which the original plan of a road diet would have retained.
"We always believe that civics requires compromise and that there are varying needs and wants within our community that may differ from one to another," said Broadway Stages spokesman Juda Engelmayer in a statement. "We agree with limiting a lane from the hours of 7 p.m.—7 a.m. as well as weekends, but still take issue with the removal of parking which the residents so desperately need."
The mayor's decision came on the same day that he questioned whether protected bike lanes are actually safe — one of the bedrock findings of his own DOT, whose data also shows that road diets are the most effective way to reduce the rate of people killed or seriously injured in crashes.
Those safety benefits are sorely needed on McGuinness Boulevard, where three people have died in wrecks since 2012, according to the agency, and a whopping 230 people suffered injuries over five years between 2016-2020.
McGuinness Boulevard was also slated to provide a crucial north-south connector, linking the new protected bike lanes below the BQE on Meeker Avenue to Queens via the Pulaski Bridge.
At his weekly off-topic press conference, Adams claimed that he's fallen behind his campaign promises to construct hundreds of miles protected bike lanes in part because of safety concerns around people who he said are "speeding" in them.
"You go to some of the locations that I have watched some of our bike lanes that we have, you see people speeding at high speeds," he said.
He also gave aid and comfort to the powerful business interests and car owners who simply don't like bike lanes and believe that DOT does not do enough community engagement.
"I’m a biker and I enjoy riding, but there are those who are not bikers, and we get a lot of concern that people have throughout the year on how do we go about building out the bike lanes, how are we communicating?" said the mayor, who once promised to build 300 miles of protected bike lanes.
