Construction crews hit the streets of Brooklyn on Thursday to start a massive overhaul of DeKalb and Lafayette Avenues. The Department of Transportation is rolling out nearly three miles of new bus and protected bike lanes in a bid to speed up the sluggish B38 route. While Mayor Zohran Mamdani frames this as a win for safety and transit, the project comes amid a heated debate over whether these changes will actually help commuters or just squeeze out drivers in neighborhoods that are already struggling.
This week, the DOT started painting bus lanes along 2.7 miles of each road, both curbside and offset. The goal is to boost the B38, which currently crawls at just 4 miles per hour during peak hours despite serving 18,000 daily riders. The lanes will stretch from Flatbush Avenue to Broadway on DeKalb and from Ashland Place to Patchen Avenue on Lafayette. Data from the MTA shows these one-way streets run parallel through Downtown Brooklyn, Clinton Hill, Bedford Stuyvesant, and Bushwick, creating a critical corridor for the borough.
Safety Claims and Traffic Reality
Mayor Mamdani argues that the redesign is essential for protecting vulnerable road users while keeping buses moving. In a statement released Thursday, he insisted, according to amNewYork, “New Yorkers shouldn’t have to choose between getting where they need to go on time and getting there safely.” He added that the administration is not waiting to build streets that respect time and prioritize safety. DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn backed the move, noting that 62% of households along the corridor do not own a car.
Flynn stated, “Your zip code shouldn’t determine whether you have access to high-quality, affordable transportation, and that’s what we’re working to deliver on DeKalb and Lafayette avenues.” The department points to injury data as proof of necessity, reporting 841 injuries on these two roads since 2021. The plan includes barrier-protected bike lanes and parking zones to calm traffic, which Flynn claims will “increase bus speeds and improve reliability for bus riders while creating safer routes for all road users and calmer corridors for pedestrians.”
The Ballot Measure and Legal Pushback
This construction kick-off follows the recent passage of Ballot Proposal 3, which removed several bureaucratic hurdles for street redesigns. According to reports, this legal change is projected to accelerate the implementation of bus and bike lanes by 33 percent. However, the shift has drawn sharp criticism from opponents who feel it strips away community input. Hartley Bernstein, a lawyer who has sued the city over previous bike lanes, told Gothamist that the proposition essentially grants the DOT commissioner too much power.
Bernstein argued, “This proposition essentially grants the authority to an unelected individual, the commissioner of transportation in the City of New York, to make any changes that he feels in his specific and individual opinion is necessary for safety.” He warned that he expects to see many more of these projects roll out quickly under the new rules. While the ballot question still requires input from community boards, the removal of other hoops has accelerated the timeline for projects like the one on DeKalb and Lafayette.
The immediate focus now shifts to how these physical changes impact daily traffic flow in the coming weeks. The DOT aims to finish the initial painting and striping soon, but the long-term effects on congestion remain a major point of contention for local businesses and residents. Critics worry that adding protected lanes on already narrow streets will create bottlenecks, while proponents insist the B38’s current 4 mph average is unsustainable for a modern city.
As the work progresses, the Mamdani administration will be watching closely to see if the promised 33 percent acceleration in project timelines holds true across the city.
This is opinion and commentary from the RapForMayor team.
