Say No to Flatbush Avenue Exclusive Bus Lanes

By Allan Rosen

​The New York City Department of Transportation has chosen the worst possible alternative in deciding to install bus lanes on Flatbush Avenue between Downtown Brooklyn and Grand Army Plaza.

They opted for 24-hour a day center bus lanes with pedestrian islands for boarding in the center of the street. Let us consider what that means. Passengers, including those using wheelchairs, will now have to cross a lane of traffic before getting on and off any bus. How is this safer than current conditions? It also means that at virtually every intersection, all other traffic will be reduced to a single lane with no left-hand turns allowed and only opportunities for three right turns, which will be difficult for trucks. That means once you become stuck in traffic, there will virtually be no way out. All traffic will have to stop when any car needs to park or leave a parking space. The impact on other traffic has not been studied and is being ignored.

Last July, I weighed the pros and cons of installing dedicated bus lanes on Flatbush Avenue. In that article, I mentioned that every alternative to Flatbush Avenue has either been eliminated or had traffic lanes reduced. DOT is also studying reducing traffic lanes on Atlantic Avenue.

I stated that during midday, buses operate about every four minutes, but the MTA is proposing to cut that to every five minutes and every six minutes north of Empire Boulevard under the Brooklyn Bus Network Redesign. That is a one-third reduction in bus service. The MTA is also considering converting the route to articulated buses, which would replace every five buses with four buses for another 20 percent reduction in bus service frequencies.

How does it make any sense to cut the bus service in half and traffic capacity in half, doubling the traffic congestion by adding 24-hour a day bus lanes? It is totally ludicrous. Traffic on Flatbush Avenue is heavy, as late as 11 PM when buses operate infrequently about every 15 or 20 minutes. The bus lanes will be virtually empty with few passengers on those buses, while traffic will move at average speeds of 5 mph or less, and it will be very difficult to enforce compliance. What would you do if you were sitting for five or ten minutes not moving with an empty bus lane to your left?

Only two traffic lanes during rush hours and one lane at all other times will ensure near gridlock conditions 20 hours a day. Is this what DOT wants? 

Allan Rosen, a Brooklyn resident, is a former director of MTA NYCT Bus Planning with three decades of experience in transportation and a master’s degree in urban planning. You can find him on X: @BrooklynBus.