{"id":295619,"date":"2026-07-14T17:16:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T17:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/295619\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T17:16:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T17:16:07","slug":"citing-vague-legal-requirements-mamdani-wont-say-if-or-when-hell-fix-bedford-avenue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/295619\/","title":{"rendered":"Citing Vague \u2018Legal Requirements,\u2019 Mamdani Won\u2019t Say If or When He\u2019ll Fix Bedford Avenue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mayor Mamdani on Monday cited vague \u201clegal requirements\u201d to explain his continued inaction<\/a> to reverse his predecessor Eric Adams\u2019s backroom decision to erase three blocks of the protected bike lane on Brooklyn\u2019s Bedford Avenue.<\/p>\n

Asked at an unrelated press conference why he has yet to follow-through on his campaign pledge<\/a> to bring back the removed protections for cyclists, Mamdani said \u201clegal requirements\u201d could derail the effort if city officials aren\u2019t careful \u2014 even as his administration has moved quickly to implement street redesigns blocked by his predecessor, often as part of quid-pro-quo deals or, as federal authorities charged<\/a>, outright corruption.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are following up on a lot of the different projects that were either paused or canceled by the prior administration,\u201d Hizzoner told Streetsblog on Monday. \u201cAnd we are also looking to ensure that the way that we are going about doing so is one that is both in line with the legal requirements and also in line with ensuring that those projects will be durable for not just the short term, but the medium term and the long term.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear what \u201clegal requirements\u201d are at play on Bedford Avenue, where the Department of Transportation under Adams installed protected bike infrastructure in 2025 in accordance with all legal requirements, but then ripped up three blocks of the protection after Adams changed his mind in consultation with political allies in the Satmar Hasidic community of Williamsburg.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Bedford Avenue bike lane, pictured this summer after Mayor Adams ordered DOT to eliminate recently installed protection for cyclists. Photo: Yoshi Omi-Jarrett<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s DOT could re-do the bike lane at any time. And Satmar Hasidic leader Moshe Indig, an ally of the mayor\u2019s, recently told Streetsblog he was ready to sit down with the city and come up with a way forward.<\/p>\n

On Monday, the mayor said his administration \u201cbelieves there should not be a hierarchy of safety. Whether you are driving, whether you are walking, whether you were biking, whether you are using public transit, you should come to expect the same level of safety in our city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hizzoner stopped short of explicitly extending that commitment to Bedford Avenue, however. That obfuscation may have to do with the political value offered by Indig, one of the few Orthodox Jewish voices willing to defend the Muslim mayor in the press from unsubstantiated allegations of anti-semitism, said one political analyst who studies Muslim identity in American politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnyone who\u2019s aware of these issues and aware of the [anti-Mamdani] campaign and what happened would immediately realize that identity is at the forefront of what is happening,\u201d said Mobashra Tazamal, the associate director of Georgetown University\u2019s Bridge Initiative, and the author of, \u201cIslamophobia And The Political Rise of Zohran Mamdani<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tazamal\u2019s report traced the Islamophobic rhetoric used against Mamdani by other politicians during his campaign. The young mayor continues to face intense scrutiny over his views on the Middle East, specifically Israel and the war in Gaza. He has been clear to call Israel\u2019s actions a genocide and has advocated for Palestinian rights.<\/p>\n

Politicians, especially Muslims, who are critical of Israel often face accusations of anti-semitism from opponents who claim that criticizing the government of Israel is a form of hatred of Jews, Tazamal said in her report. Even though the contested area spans just three blocks in Brooklyn, any action from Mamdani could invite scrutiny because of the Hasidic groups involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he didn\u2019t have the pressure of constant media and political, not just national, but international attention, I think we could have a different story,\u201d said Tazamal. \u201cYou are focused on a very local issue. Unfortunately, that local issue domino effects into an international issue. \u2026 It is so much larger than bike lanes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\tRecommended<\/p>\n

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For years, activists pushed the city to install a protected bike lane on Bedford Avenue from Crown Heights to Williamsburg. Council Members Chi Oss\u00e9 (D-Bedford-Stuyvesant) and Lincoln Restler (D-Williamsburg) led the most recent charge.<\/p>\n

But after DOT finally installed the redesign in late 2024, leaders of the Satmar Hasidic community pushed for its removal on the three blocks between Willoughby and Flushing avenues. Indig and others corralled then-Mayor Adams to a\u00a0town hall<\/a>\u00a0meeting in May 2025. Adams announced plans to rip up the bike lane days later, restoring the segment to an earlier, more-dangerous unprotected bike lane design that forces cyclists to navigate in and out of car traffic to avoid illegally parked cars.<\/p>\n

Despite Mamdani\u2019s inaction on Bedford, the mayor has otherwise made undoing Adams\u2019s missteps a key theme of his nearly seven-month tenure. Since taking office, Mamdani ended the Adams\u2019s push to increase\u00a0criminal summonses<\/a>\u00a0for cyclists who break minor traffic laws, announced plans to finish the protected bike lanes on\u00a0Ashland Place<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0McGuinness Boulevard<\/a>, and he is placing a bus lane on\u00a0Fordham Road<\/a>\u00a0in the Bronx.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Streetsblog Editorial Board pinned its Mamdani-O-Meter at zero until the mayor makes good on his promise to make Bedford Avenue safer.<\/p>\n

But Bedford stands out as an outlier. DOT\u2019s original proposal for a fully protected bike lane followed decades of research and planning \u2014 and officials even admitted<\/a> the bike lane\u2019s removal made the street less safe. DOT recorded a\u00a047-percent reduction in injuries\u00a0on Bedford Avenue between DeKalb and Flushing Avenues after its installation.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, safety has declined since undoing part of the protected bike lane. During the seven months<\/a> when the original project was intact, the city counted 31 crashes that injured nine cyclists. But in the seven months\u00a0after\u00a0Adams deprotected those three blocks, the city counted 34 crashes that injured 13 cyclists \u2014 a 44-percent increase in cyclist injuries, albeit based on a small sample size.<\/p>\n

Despite the opposition of some members of the Satmar community, many others bike around Williamsburg and deserve safe streets, said Baruch Herzfeld, whose teenaged son Rafe<\/a> served as the lead plaintiff in an unsuccessful lawsuit to stop Adams from removing the lane.<\/p>\n

\u201cZohran Mamdani represents New York City\u2019s future, and he should not manage neighborhood politics according to the old rules of Brooklyn,\u201d Herzfeld said. \u201cThe Bedford Avenue bike lane is about recognizing where the community is going \u2014 not preserving assumptions about where it used to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Correction: An earlier version of this story citied an 85 percent increase in cyclist injuries, that number is 44 percent. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Mamdani on Monday cited vague \u201clegal requirements\u201d to explain his continued inaction to reverse his predecessor Eric…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-295619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295619","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=295619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}