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‘He needs Hasidic voters’: Mayor Adams’ campaign gambit on a Brooklyn bike lane
By
Stephen Nessen
Published Jul 17, 2025
Modified Jul 17, 2025
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Stephen Nessen
By
Stephen Nessen
Published Jul 17, 2025
Modified Jul 17, 2025
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A legal battle over a three-block-long bike lane in a predominantly Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood has become a central issue in Mayor Eric Adams’ re-election campaign.
The mayor in June ordered the transportation department to move the newly installed bike lane on Bedford Avenue between Willoughby and Flushing avenues away from the curb, where cyclists are protected by parked cars, and into the middle of the street. The directive now sits in limbo after a state appellate judge temporarily blocked the move on Tuesday.
Critics of the mayor chastised it as a political move aimed at garnering political support from Hasidic Jewish voters in South Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant, who have protested cycling infrastructure for decades, citing concerns over safety as well as a general preference to give cars priority on streets in their area. It comes as Adams, who skipped the Democratic primary in June and plans to run on a ballot line in November called either “Safe&Affordable” or “EndAntisemitism,” rushes to build a coalition large enough to compete in the general election.
“ The mayor needs Jewish voters, he needs Hasidic voters. He's squaring off against [former Gov.] Andrew Cuomo, who did really well with Hasidic voters during the primary, he's obviously squaring off against [Zohran] Mamdani, who did not do as well with Jewish Hasidic voters,” said Chris Coffey, CEO of the political consulting firm Tusk Strategies who worked on several campaigns, including ones for former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Andrew Yang. “He's looking to use this as one of the issues that galvanizes support.”
Cuomo won 72% of the first-round votes in the election district that encompasses most of the bike lane.
“ I don't think that the Satmars in Williamsburg are going to base their decision for mayor based on this bike lane,” added Coffey. (Coffey also advised Cuomo’s Democratic primary bid, but his company's founder, Bradley Tusk, has since expressed support for Mamdani.)
Adams ordered the change less than a month after a 3-year-old girl was struck by an e-bike rider in the bike lane while crossing the street mid-block.
Cycling advocates sued Adams shortly after he ordered the changes to the bike lane, arguing it was a “major transportation project” that required notice and review from community leaders. "After several dangerous incidents — many of which involved children — the Adams administration listened to the community’s concerns and moved to reconfigure the bike lane to its original model while still maintaining safety measures,” said mayoral spokesperson Sophia Askari.
City Councilmember Lincoln Restler, who represents the neighborhood, said Adams disregarded the bike lane’s safety benefits, noting its installation correlated with a reduction in car crashes along the corridor. The transportation department acknowledged as much in court filings in the lawsuit that aims to prevent the bike lane from being moved.
“ It's nakedly obvious what this is and it's really sad,” said Restler. “ Eric Adams’ decision to rip out the Bedford Avenue protected bike lane and send cyclists back into three lanes of vehicular traffic is purely political.”
Still, many members of the area's Hasidic community said they were elated by the decision.
“ It's dangerous. Everyone is happy that they’re moving it,” said Mike Joel, 23. “ I think the kids are supposed to be safer than the bikers.”
Adams’ push to remove the bike lane is not an original political idea. The same bike lane stirred controversy in 2009 after Bloomberg won a third term. In December of that year, he agreed to remove cyclists’ protections along 14 blocks of Bedford Avenue, citing concerns from local residents.
Danny Pearlstein, spokesperson for the transit advocacy group Riders Alliance, protested against Bloomberg’s removal of the bike lane, which sparked a culture war in Brooklyn.
“Protesters at the time promised a naked bike ride through the community,” he said.
Like Adams this year, Bloomberg ran as an independent during his 2009 re-election. “There were various parts of the margin of victory, but one of them was certainly the Jewish community in Williamsburg,” said Pearlstein. “And the mayor's political team knew that.”
Tagged
Politics
brooklyn
new york city
transportation
Stephen Nessen
Stephen Nessen covers transportation. Since 2008 he has reported on everything from Occupy Wall Street, the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, Hurricane Sandy, to Trump’s campaign for president. His transportation reporting has taken him everywhere from the MTA’s secret Rail Control Center to the gleaming subways of Seoul. Got a tip? Email [email protected].
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