Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn announced the competition of the bike lane on Ashland Place in Downtown Brooklyn, according to a press release from the Office of the Mayor. The bike lane will fill the final gap in a 5.5-mile corridor between Sunset Park and DUMBO.
According to Mamdani, the redesign will shorten crossing distances for pedestrians and calm traffic. “For years, ‘Crashland’ has been a symbol of broken promises and safety put on the back burner,” Mamdani said. “Today, we finish the job.”
The street section gets its nickname from a reported high concentration of crashes — NYC Crash Mapper reported 27 crashes between Sept. 2023 and the end of 2025.
NYC DOT began the redesign in 2022, but the project halted before the final bloc of unprotected bike lanes was installed. Since, bags have sat covering new traffic signals on the Ashland Place stretch. On Sept. 1, the bags were removed.
Flynn noted that the section completion is about more than just one section of a bike lane. “Completing the Ashland Place redesign is not just the completion of one city clock, but a critical link that will safely connect cyclists from across Brooklyn to Manhattan, North Brooklyn and Western Queens,” he said.
Jackson Chabot, director of advocacy and organizing at Open Plans noted that the area surrounding Atlantic Terminal and Barclays Center is “one of the best-connected places in New York, yet its streets have long devoted too much space to moving and storing cars.” The completion of the new bike lane, Chabot said, is “an important step toward changing that.”
