{"id":213081,"date":"2026-04-28T20:44:44","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T20:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/213081\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T20:44:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T20:44:44","slug":"work-on-flatbush-avenue-redesign-in-brooklyn-gets-underway-as-mamdani-admin-looks-to-make-buses-faster-on-five-different-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/213081\/","title":{"rendered":"Work on Flatbush Avenue redesign in Brooklyn gets underway as Mamdani admin looks to make buses faster on five different lines"},"content":{"rendered":"

City Department of Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn<\/a> stood with MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber and a cadre of transit advocates to mark the continuation of the Flatbush Avenue project, which the city began late last<\/a> year under former Mayor Eric Adams.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur crews will be here on Flatbush Avenue undertaking a large reconstruction of the corridor, from Flatbush Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn to Grand Army Plaza,\u201d Flynn said during the event. \u201cNow that the weather is warmed and the construction season is here, the real work starts today.\u201d<\/p>\n

The effort involves the city building center-running bus lanes, several concrete boarding islands, and 29,000 feet of new pedestrian space along the thoroughfare between Livingston Street and Grand Army Plaza.<\/p>\n

While construction on the project will last through the fall, Flynn played down how much it will disrupt commutes down the corridor over the coming months. The construction will be conducted on one side of the street at a time to allow for the flow of traffic, while the city will optimize traffic signals to keep vehicles \u201cmoving as smoothly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The project is designed to make travel faster on several bus lines that use the portion of Flatbush Avenue \u2014 the B67, B69, B63, B45, and B103, which serve a combined 132,000 daily riders. It aims to do so by providing dedicated lanes where buses are less likely to contend with private vehicles.<\/p>\n

Under the street\u2019s current design, buses can move as slowly as four miles per hour.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThis design will separate out bus lanes from general traffic lanes,\u201d Flynn said. \u201cThat means riders will no longer suffer behind double-parked cars and commuters won\u2019t lose time as buses that weave in and out of the curb lane for pick-up and drop-off slow everything down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"City Department of Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn.Photo by Ethan Stark-Miller<\/p>\n

Although the administration has pledged to boost bus speeds by 20% accross several corridors<\/a>, Flynn would not commit to that specific target for Flatbush Avenue when asked during the event. Instead, he pointed to the center-running bus lane design as being particularly effective at increasing speeds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have a huge impact, and we see that in places where we have done center-running bus lanes or otherwise separated bus lanes, and we\u2019re expecting a similar benefit here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Lieber lauded the Mamdani administration for making a \u201clong-overdue commitment\u201d to install infrastructure designed to make buses faster. That includes bus lanes, busways, and bus-mounted cameras that enforce against drivers obstructing those areas \u2014 under the MTA\u2019s Automated Camera Enforcement (ACE) program.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t always had this partnership; it\u2019s not a secret,\u201d Lieber said, in an apparent reference to Adams\u2019 administration shelving or watering down many of its own bus lane projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat made MTA\u2019s mission to speed up service very, very difficult,\u201d he continued. \u201cAfter all, buses can only move as fast as the traffic and the speed configuration allows.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senior Riders Alliance Organizer Jolyse Race said the advocacy group, which pushed for the redesign, was seeing the \u201cfruits of our labor\u201d with Tuesday\u2019s announcement. But she said there is still more work to be done along Flatbush Avenue south of Grand Army Plaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cRiders are ready to see the next significant projects that extend all the way to Kings Plaza,\u201d Race said, referring to the Kings Plaza Mall, which sits at the southern end of Flatbush Avenue.<\/p>\n

However, when asked by amNewYork what plans the administration has for the remainder of Flatbush, Flynn said it is \u201clooking at potential ideas\u201d without going into specifics. He pointed to the recently announced plan to close the southern portion of Grand Army Plaza to vehicle traffic and integrate that with the Flatbush Avenue redesign.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re really excited about the idea of continuing to move buses faster all the way down Flatbush,\u201d Flynn said. \u201cThat\u2019s something we\u2019ll definitely want to look at in the coming months.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City Department of Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn stood with MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber and a cadre…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,6157,43991,42372,76506,22925,141,31847,9,24,63,613,14328],"class_list":["post-213081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-dot","tag-dot-commissioner-mike-flynn","tag-fast-and-free-buses","tag-flatbush-avenue-redesign","tag-mayor-zohran-mamdani","tag-mta","tag-mta-chair-and-ceo-janno-lieber","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-pm-newsletter","tag-riders-alliance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}