Mamdani BQE Plan Teases Brooklyn Third Av. Redesign Stalled by Adams
The Mamdani administration is teasing the relaunch of the Third Avenue redesign buried by ex-Mayor Eric Adams as part of Mayor Mamdani’s new pledge to rehab the city’s 1.5-mile segment of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway starting in 2030.
City Hall’s Monday press release about the mayor’s $4 billion BQE project also pledged to advance “major near-term investments in traffic safety and quality-of-life upgrades to neighborhoods along the BQE corridor,” including “a traffic safety redesign of Third Avenue in Sunset Park.”
The Department of Transportation declined to share more details, and it’s unclear whether Mamdani will revive the full road diet and protected bike lane the agency floated three years ago, which the last administration punted following opposition from the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce.
“The Mamdani Administration is committed to advancing a redesign of Brooklyn’s Third Avenue that will reflect the needs of the community and enhance safety for all road users. We look forward to sharing more information in the coming months,” DOT spokesperson Will Livingston said.
Locals have for years urged the city to fix the deadly Third Avenue corridor, which runs below the BQE’s elevated highway section, not the section included in Mamdani’s project.
Advocates expressed the mayor’s hint at a comeback for the much-needed redesign.
“Third Avenue is dangerous for everyone who walks, bikes, or drives along it, and we’ve long called for a redesign that prioritizes safety,” said Transportation Alternatives spokesperson Alexa Sledge. “We would be very excited to see improvements along the road, and we hope to see the Mamdani administration transform a deadly street into one that’s safe for all New Yorkers.”
Third Avenue was among a slate of stalled Adams-era street redesigns Mamdani vowed to finish on the campaign trail. Those also included protected bike lanes Bedford Avenue and Ashland Place in Brooklyn, as well as busways on Fordham Road and Tremont Avenue in the Bronx.
The apparent forthcoming redesign leaves Bedford Avenue as the highest profile Adams-impacted project left where Mamdani has not committed to restore since taking office.
In Sunset Park, Brooklyn Community Board 7 overwhelmingly endorsed a full-fledged road diet for Third Avenue in 2024, backing the boldest of three options DOT presented to the board a few months earlier.
The proposal would have removed one of three car lanes in each direction and installed a parking-protected curbside bike lane, along with pedestrian islands to shorten crossings:
The corridor has a whopping six automobile lanes at ground level, along with another seven on the overhead highway, and recent stats collected by Transportation Alternatives found more than 80 people died or suffered serious injuries in crashes over the past seven years — averaging a life-altering crash every single month.
Those killed included 30-year-old cyclist Em Samolewicz, whom a driver struck and killed in 2019, and Clara Kang, 31, who was also riding her bike when a motorcycle rider slammed into her in 2020. And after Adams called off the project last summer, a speeding driver blew through a red light and killed two men crossing the dangerous roadway — two deaths the redesign may have prevented, since DOT stats show protected bike lanes and road diets lead to reductions in traffic crashes.
DOT’s Adams-era proposal covered Third Avenue from Prospect Avenue to 62nd Street, but Mamdani do what he did on 31st Street in Astoria earlier this year and redesign the entire length of the corridor in the neighborhood, all the way to 65th Street, said one Brooklyn CB7 member.
“Any corridor like Third Avenue which has a lot of crashes and things like that, solutions are needed and hearing that DOT is potentially coming back to that is good to hear,” said John DeLooper, vice-chair of local CB7’s Transportation Committee, who noted he was not speaking on behalf of the civic panel. “I think it’s too soon to know what’s going on with that. There’s just a line in a press release, so without seeing concrete plans, it’s hard to judge what DOT plans to do in the neighborhoods.”
Soon after the community board vote, Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce CEO Randy Peers came to the community board’s next monthly meeting to berate the civic volunteers, accusing them of choosing the “most disruptive and radical option.”
Fixing Third Avenue was “top of the list” for Adams on the campaign trail, but the pushback from Peers’s group was seemingly cause enough for him to abandon ship and punt the proposal to his successor.
DOT at the time cited a need for “additional outreach,” the kiss of death of a mayor who valued vague notions of community feedback over the expertise of DOT planners.
The agency, meanwhile, has instead prioritized plans to add more trucks to the area around Third Avenue, as part of a citywide scheme to ease access for the heavy haulers.
DeLooper said the city must tie in the likely surge of truck traffic as part of its design.
“That has to be considered with the potential increase in trucks and how that would affect designs and safety, traffic congestion,” he told Streetsblog.
Peers did not respond to a request for comment.
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