Mayor Adams’ decision to water down a popular plan to redesign the safety of one of Brooklyn’s most dangerous streets in the interests of powerful business interests — for a second time — sheds dramatic light on the mayor’s failure to make safety a top priority, indeed, as his harshest critics say, to put it on the agenda in the first place.
Last week, Hiszzoner rejected the Department of Transportation’s plan to reduce McGuinness Boulevard by one lane in each direction, a move he made after pressure from major businesses in the area, particularly the film studio and Adams’ political donor Broadway Stages.
This decision only further angered elected officials who supported the Road Diet.
“Mayor Adams says safety is important to him, except when it comes to McGuinness Boulevard,” said Councilman Lincoln Restler.
So how did this happen? How did a Vision Zero city go from a $40 million safety overhaul announced by then-Mayor Bill de Blasio after a popular teacher was killed by a reckless driver in 2021 to a plan that doesn’t noticeably slow drivers down? Here’s a timeline of the debacles:
Decades of danger
McGuinness Boulevard was a quiet residential street called Oakland Street until the 1950s, when planners expropriated property to expand it after the Pulaski Bridge opened. Authorities gave it its current name in 1963, and since then the freeway-like artery has brought pollution, death, injury and a wide dividing line to the northern Brooklyn neighborhood.
According to the city, nearly 2,000 traffic accidents have been reported on the roughly one-mile stretch between the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and Pulaski since 2011, in which more than 500 people were injured – about one every ten days – and three died.
Back in 2009, activists called on the city to make the street safer after a pickup truck driver killed 33-year-old DJ Solange Raulston and another hit-and-run driver mowed down 28-year-old Neil Chamberlain months later. Activists then referred to the street as a “race track.”
A 2012 study by Transportation Alternatives found that two-thirds of drivers on McGuinness Street were speeding, and after Nicole Detweiler was killed in a traffic accident in 2014, local politicians again called on the Department of Transportation to do something about the deadly conditions.
The promise
In May 2021, local teacher Matthew Jensen was fatally struck by a fleeing driver, prompting then-Mayor Bill de Blasio to donate $39 million to rehabilitate the boulevard. The Department of Transportation would begin an internal redesign next year before embarking on a major capital project.
The Department of Transportation, currently headed by Mayor Adams, presented three options in July 2022, all of which would include a protected bike lane in one form or another:
- convert the outer lane into a parking lot overnight
- Converting the outer lane into an all-day parking lane and reducing McGuinness from four to two lanes
- Establishment of a two-lane bicycle path on the south side of the road, while the northbound section remains unchanged.
The city chose the middle option – reducing the number of lanes on the street and creating a bike lane protected by parking spaces – as Streetsblog exclusively revealed almost a year later. This option was also the one that had the full support of the neighborhood’s elected officials.
According to DOT, this plan also received the most support from local residents, and the agency ranked Road Diet as the most effective road safety overhaul, reducing the number of fatal and serious crashes for all road users by 30 percent.
The road reduction would have been a boon for pedestrians thanks to shorter crossings, while also promising to retain vehicle parking spaces and create loading zones for drivers and delivery workers supplying the shops on McGuinness Street.
The pushback
Critics, especially the theater production company Broadway Stages, were outraged by the plans and mobilized an opposition movement called “Keep McGuinness Moving,” which included several shipping companies whose accidents had already resulted in deaths.
Broadway Stages owners Gina and Tony Argento have a history of hampering traffic safety in North Brooklyn. Tony opposed a bike lane on the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge back in 2009. Gina, who is a member of Community Board 1, railed against a planned bike lane on Monitor Street in 2022, where Broadway Stages later applied to privatize that street for an outdoor space.
Opponents of the redesign feared that fewer lanes would hamper traffic and hurt businesses – even though Department of Transportation data shows that 30 to 50 percent of the traffic on the road is simply shortcut drivers. To appease critics, the agency even produced maps of Broadway Stages’ locations showing that the company’s trucks didn’t even rely on McGuinness to get around.
All local politicians supported the measure and parliamentarians sharply accused opponents of stirring up fear in the neighborhood.
Broadway Stages showed its political muscle by holding a bizarre town hall-style meeting in one of its recording studios in mid-June 2023, attracting the leadership of the Department of Transportation and the chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party (a congressman whose district is miles away from the area in question). Meanwhile, proponents of the redesign were excluded from the “town hall meeting.”
betrayal
In July 2023, the mayor gave in for the first time to opponents who found a listening ear in his closest advisor, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, and ordered the Ministry of Transport to start all over again.
Lewis-Martin reportedly told the mayor that businesses hated the plans and that her supporters were not from the community. In the days that followed, residents demonstrated in support of the plan, proving her wrong.
The mayor’s right-hand man has routinely sabotaged street safety projects and has since set up a dedicated chain of command at City Hall to stymie the Department of Transportation’s efforts to build bus lanes on Fordham Road in the Bronx and bike lanes on Ashland Place and Underhill Avenue in Brooklyn.
In the days following the mayor’s retraction, Adams continued to mock Restler at a press conference, while Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez tried to remain “positive” and claim that the plan was not doomed to failure.
But in August, the Department of Transportation announced that the city would back off from redesigning the section north of Calyer Street, with the outside lane remaining open to drivers during the day and converted into a parking lot overnight – a half-measure that became known as the “Calyer Compromise.”
The carnage on the road continued. Later that month, the mayor officially signed the compromise and in September the Ministry of Transport began work.
It was unclear what would happen to the southern section, as the Department of Transportation said in a news release late Friday in September that it needed to conduct further “analysis” that could “inform about any adjustments” on the section between Calyer and the BQE.
Backpedaling after backpedaling
The fate of McGuinness remained uncertain in 2023 as the Department for Transport imposed a half-measure on the northern section.
Politicians sharply criticized the compromise draft because it would do “nothing” for pedestrians. They would now have to cross four car lanes and two cycle paths, while cyclists would be forced to avoid illegally parked cars on the cycle path and get into the flow of traffic.
Meanwhile, Broadway Stages requested the remapping of Monitor Street in the spring to secure its own private backlot on a section where the Department of Transportation planned to install a bike lane in 2022. Broadway Stages also opposed that bike lane, and the request did not go through. In 2023, a 73-year-old cyclist died in an accident on that street.
The McGuinness Legislature’s redesign overshadowed the Democratic primary last June, when politicians supporting the reforms faced challengers backed by Broadway Stages. However, the candidates in favor of a street diet all won a clear victory.
Then on Tuesday, the Adams government dashed any hopes of a road diet on McGuinness when the Department of Transport announced it would roll back the redesign of the entire road. The overnight parking lanes, which have not worked in the north, will continue up to the BQE, with construction starting in September.
“The mayor is pushing a plan that does nothing to address our community’s core safety concerns,” said Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher. “But we will keep fighting until McGuinness is safe.”
Prosecutor Jumaane Williams accused the mayor of playing “politics.”
“Road safety is about saving lives, not playing politics,” he wrote on Twitter. “For the sake of New Yorkers who have lost loved ones to traffic violence on McGuinness, we must finally make McGuinness safe by listening to the community, local businesses and the Department of Transportation’s evidence-based plan, not the select few.”
