Hey, Mayor Adams — throw these kids a bone.
Brooklyn College students and transit advocates walked four miles up Flatbush Avenue from Nostrand Avenue to Atlantic Avenue on Thursday to call attention to Mayor Adams's stubborn failure to improve bus service there.
"Brooklyn College students rely on Flatbush buses daily to reach campus, and improved bus service would mean shorter commutes, more reliable transportation, and better overall quality of life for students like myself," said Damian Andrade, a Brooklyn College student and member of the New York Public Interest Research Group. "Having a system we could trust is essential for our success and wellness."
Another student who said he usually avoids the bus echoed Andrade's complaints.
"A few months ago, I had to take the [subway] shuttle bus, and it was so bad, the bus service was so slow," said Samuel Bamigbade, as he walked with the group.
Flatbush Avenue bus riders have waited over two years now for Mayor Adams to advance bus lanes on the corridor. Years of outreach and advocacy has yet to result in any commitment from the city to make improvements, much less paint even a drop of red anywhere on the congested portions of the strip — even after Adams himself promised changes in his first year as mayor.
The city held initial outreach meetings in June 2022 to lay out where buses get stuck along the route — specifically north of Empire Boulevard during the morning rush hour and along the entire seven-mile corridor during the evening rush hour.
During those times, buses barely run faster than 7 miles per hour. In some stretches they move slower than 5 miles per hour. Yet that ongoing disaster hasn't spurred much movement since the first meetings.
The city didn't say anything at all about the project from 2023 through this June. During that time, Streetsblog revealed that Adams's City Hall was routing all street redesign projects through bureaucrat Richard Bearak, a right-hand man to Adams adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin, a vocal foe of street safety projects.
When DOT finally resurfaced the project this June, the agency revealed three potential concepts for a bus lane from Grand Army Plaza to Livingston Street, the northern stretch. That bus lane won't happen until at least next spring or summer, and the city has said nothing about what it intends to do for the rest of the strip.
DOT has not made any public presentations on the project since a June slideshow for Brooklyn Community Board 8. Members of Community Boards 2 and 6 have not heard from the city about when they'll get the next update on the project. In the meantime, advocates for bus riders have taken matters into their own hands — working with researchers from the Pratt Center to better understand conditions for riders along the corridor.
A DOT spokesperson said that the agency is still working on its traffic analyses before announcing exact next steps.
"By redesigning Flatbush Avenue we can speed up bus service to improve the lives of bus riders currently stuck on one of the most congested corridors in Brooklyn — while also enhancing pedestrian safety," said spokesperson Vincent Barone. "We look forward to continued public outreach, design refinement, and completing our traffic analysis in consultation with the community. This process will help inform the best way to make Flatbush Avenue work best for all New Yorkers using the corridor."
Mayor Adams's lack of urgency on Flatbush Avenue is part of a larger pattern of apathy towards making life better for bus riders.
Under Adams's watch, the city has installed one single busway, on Livingston Street, while cutting the hours of busways in Inwood and Jamaica. The mayor sided with alleged business interests on Fordham Road and threw out a plan to upgrade the struggling bus lane there. He refuses to revisit that decision even as the MTA calls him out for bus speeds there barely faster than six miles per hour.
The mayor on Thursday announced yet another redesign propose for Fifth Avenue in Manhattan that removes a bus lane. A press release from City Hall failed to even mention bus riders — a far cry from his predecessor Mayor Bill de Blasio's plan to put a busway on the tony stretch of Midtown street.
To date, the city has proposed only seven miles of bus lanes for 2024, and will not even hit that number if a proposed busway and bus lane project on Tremont Avenue doesn't get painted before the end of the year.
Meanwhile Brooklynites who rely on the bus on Flatbush Avenue have been waiting for promised improvements for years.
"We've been hearing for a long, long time that buses would be improve, and we haven't seen anything," said NYPIRG Regional Director Natasha Elder. "That's what I heard today marching. And being a person who lives in this area, and was raised on Flatbush, talking and having that conversation, residents want faster [bus] service."
