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In Sunset Park, a plan to improve street safety is on ice until NYC mayoral election
By
Brigid Bergin
Published May 8, 2025
Modified May 8, 2025
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Brigid Bergin
By
Brigid Bergin
Published May 8, 2025
Modified May 8, 2025
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Third Avenue is one of the busiest and most dangerous arteries in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Passenger cars, huge tractor trailers and bikes fight their way through the intersection of 60th Street and Third Avenue below the rumbling Gowanus Expressway – while streams of pedestrians attempt to cross.
“ It's very scary,” said Luis Arce, one of the hundreds of parents rushing to drop off their kids at P.S. 939 on a recent Thursday morning. He and his 5-year-old had just run across Third Avenue’s nine lanes.
“My wife's brother actually got hit by a car down there a long time ago,” Arce said. “This whole Third Avenue area is very dangerous.”
Cars and pedestrians have struggled over this stretch of road since Robert Moses erected what was then called the Gowanus Parkway overhead in 1941. It remains a point of political tension today. Just over a year ago, the local community board approved a sweeping street redesign – which the city Department of Transportation has put on hold, most likely until after New Yorkers elect their next mayor.
Transportation department data shows 87 people were injured at this intersection alone between 2018 and 2022, and 14 people died over the same period along Third Avenue stretching north to Prospect Avenue. Compared to the equivalent stretch on nearby Fourth Avenue, that’s more than three times as many deaths in the same time period.
“We have nine travel lanes of traffic. We have a major entrance to the BQE towards Staten Island here, which everyone uses coming from the south, coming from the east to get onto the highway,” Julio Peña III, chair of Sunset Park’s Community Board 7, told Gothamist during a tour of the street. Pointing up 60th Street, he added, “we have a broken traffic light on Fourth Avenue, which makes it even worse.”
“We have nine travel lanes of traffic," said Julio Peña III, chair of Sunset Park’s Community Board 7. "We have a major entrance to the BQE towards Staten Island here, which everyone uses."
Brigid Bergin
Community Board 7 approved its plan to reduce traffic and add protected bike lanes on Third Avenue more than a year ago, after decades of clamoring from local leaders who argued the street needed to be made safer. It’s one example of how many street safety proponents have turned to City Hall in recent years to ease traffic congestion, expand bike access and improve pedestrian safety.
While Mayor Eric Adams once pledged to be the city’s “bike mayor,” he’s faced withering criticism from street safety advocates over the delays in implementing other street redesigns during the course of his three years in office. That sense of inaction has created an opening for Adams’ would-be successors.
“The Adams administration has fallen woefully short of the NYC streets plan and even of their own promises for delivering on the bus and bike lanes that all New Yorkers deserve,” city Comptroller Brad Lander said last week, when he announced his street safety proposal as part of his mayoral campaign.
Lander and fellow mayoral candidate state Sen. Zellnor Myrie of Brooklyn were among the earliest proponents of the Third Avenue redesign plan. In 2020, Myrie wrote an op-ed for Streetsblog calling for a protected bike lane on Third Avenue after nurse Clara Kang was killed while riding home from work that October.
“Eric Adams should not be playing politics with the safety of our streets,” Myrie told Gothamist.
“The Adams administration is committed to enhancing safety and accessibility for walkers, bikers, and drivers alike, which is why we have installed a record 87.5 miles of protected bike lanes," City Hall spokesperson Allison Maser said in a statement. (This number is far below the city's mandated requirement.) Maser added that the city had "upgraded more than 20 miles of existing lanes, created 1.5 million square feet of new pedestrian space, and implemented numerous other improvements."
This stretch of road has been a point of political tension since 1941, when Robert Moses erected the highway.
Brigid Bergin
The redesign plan currently on ice was one of three the city DOT proposed after a street safety study and a pair of community meetings in 2023. It would reduce traffic by one lane and add a bike lane from Prospect Avenue to 54th Street, with smaller street enhancements south of there.
After the Board approved the plan, Peña said businesses began pushing back.
“DOT told us that they're pausing on any work for the rest of this year and possibly until the next mayor administration,” said Peña.
The DOT did not respond to specific questions about the Third Avenue redesign and what prompted the delay. An agency spokesperson said they’re still collecting feedback while they work on other projects in Sunset Park — like new concrete medians, curb extensions, and signal crossings along Third Avenue. Maser, on behalf of City Hall, pointed to the same improvements.
Speaking for local business leaders, Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce President Randy Peers said over email that the redesign vote was premature and argued that local businesses were not invited to the planning session, a complaint Peña called “unfair.” Peers said the adopted plan was, “a big disregard to the generational businesses that have been part of Sunset Park longer than most of the board members themselves.”
Frankel's owner Martin Frankel, 84, said the discount clothing store has been in his family since 1890. He recalled prior decades when crime was rampant in the area, and said now, he sells work clothes alongside Vietnamese coffee and tea.
“I used to go to work here every day with two guns, a bulletproof vest, and see who got shot over the weekend,” Frankel said. “Now the most dangerous thing in Sunset Park now is gluten.”
84-year-old Max Frankel said his store has been in his family since 1890. He's worried about parking.
Brigid Bergin
His concern about the proposed redesign was that it would make it hard for him to find parking. One side of his store is already home to a Citibike docking station, which takes up multiple spots on 40th street.
Another group representing other local businesses was actively part of the Third Avenue redesign planning process. Jesse Tinen Solomon, who leads the Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corporation aimed at supporting the industrial working waterfront west of Third Avenue, said her team attended all the visioning sessions and solicited additional feedback from her members.
“ I think where SBIDC stands is that it shouldn't be a zero-sum game. We desperately want and need to see safety improvements to the corridor,” said Solomon. To keep businesses in the area, she said people need to get around and they want a safe bike network — but she’s also heard concerns about a Third Avenue bike lane from businesses in the so-called IBZ, or industrial business zone.
“We want to see Third Avenue still be conducive to the movement of goods throughout the IBZ while also finding solutions for folks to get to work,” she said.
For now, those solutions are likely on hold until after the election, which starts with next month's primary.
Several of Adams opponents’ framed the delays to this redesign as part of a broader pattern for street safety projects citywide. North of Sunset Park, one of the most notable and controversial street redesigns played out along Greenpoint’s McGuinness Boulevard, where the on-again, off-again protected bike lane became the target of ire of a local film production company with ties to the Adams administration.
Along with Lander and Myrie, other democratic mayoral candidates including City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, state Sen. Jessica Ramos and former city Comptroller Scott Stringer said they supported the community board’s redesign plan. The only candidate who suggested he would not was the front-runner, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
“With a project of this magnitude, securing local community support is essential,” Cuomo said in a statement. “As mayor, I’ll work with local stakeholders to develop a plan that both earns community backing and delivers on these crucial goals.”
This story has been updated with a comment from a City Hall spokesperson.
Tagged
new york city
Politics
transportation
Brigid Bergin
Brigid Bergin is an award-winning senior reporter on the People and Power desk. She is fiercely committed to telling stories that help people engage and support democracy. In 2022, she hosted a live, ten-week call-in politics show ahead of the midterm elections called The People's Guide to Power. Brigid's reporting in 2017 included some of the first coverage of a political newcomer now known as AOC. In 2016, she broke the news of a voter purge in Brooklyn just days before New York’s presidential primary, triggering city, state and federal investigations. Brigid also guest hosts The Brian Lehrer Show and All Of It. She graduated from the University at Albany and the CUNY Newmark School of Journalism. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 917-723-4719.
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