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A new day on Flatbush Avenue: City begins work to speed up buses on traffic-choked street
By
Ramsey Khalifeh
Published Apr 28, 2026
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Ramsey Khalifeh / Gothamist
By
Ramsey Khalifeh
Published Apr 28, 2026
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City officials broke ground Tuesday on a project to give buses priority on the traffic-jammed stretch of Flatbush Avenue between Downtown Brooklyn and Grand Army Plaza.
The project will build two-way bus lanes in the middle of the avenue, where cars will be barred from driving 24 hours a day. Six large concrete islands for riders to board and get off buses will also be added to the street, along with wider sidewalks for pedestrians at intersections.
The work is slated to be finished in the fall, and the city transportation department has warned drivers to avoid the area while construction is underway. Once completed, officials said, it will help fix a bottleneck that’s long been a bane for Brooklyn bus riders.
But it’s just the first step Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration is taking to improve bus commutes along Flatbush Avenue. Earlier this month, the mayor announced a plan to redesign Grand Army Plaza by redirecting car traffic to create a unified pedestrian plaza between Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch and Prospect Park.
The city transportation department in 2023 laid out plans to install bus lanes on the avenue all the way down to Kings Plaza in South Brooklyn, but those efforts were shelved under then-Mayor Eric Adams.
A rendering of the city's plan to add new bus lanes to Flatbush Avenue.
Courtesy of the NYC Department of Transportation
Transportation Commissioner Michael Flynn said during a news conference the new administration has a new vision for the street, noting he’s excited about the idea of “continuing to move buses faster all the way down Flatbush [Avenue].”
“We really want to make sure we’re integrating those two projects so that the redesign of Grand Army Plaza supports and integrates the bus priority along Flatbush,” Flynn said.
Flatbush Avenue is both one of the city’s busiest and slowest corridors for bus riders. The new bus lanes are expected to improve bus speeds along the avenue where the bus lanes will be added, which travel around 4 mph on average, according to transportation department data.
MTA Chair Janno Lieber said the new bus lanes were a good start toward improving transit service on the street, and encouraged the city to crack down on drivers who block them.
“There are factors that go well beyond the construction that typify what we need to do to make it possible for buses to move in this city. There's a dollar van over there blocking a lane in a no standing zone, an illegal dollar van,” Lieber said. “The Shake Shack down there takes up a whole lane with people parking, waiting for their deliveries.”
“Buses could only move as fast as the traffic and the street configuration allows,” Lieber said.
Tagged
brooklyn
new york city
transportation
Ramsey Khalifeh
Ramsey Khalifeh is a transportation reporter on the NYC Accountability desk covering the largest transit system in the country. He was previously a general assignment reporter at Gothamist and worked on the Boston Globe's metro and copy desk. Got a tip? Email [email protected]
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