Dear Mayor-Elect Mamdani: Sunset Park Deserves a Safer Third Avenue

It’s hard to explain to your children that our home is “off limits” for playdates with some of their friends because of where we live. After all, we love our home and are proud to be raising our family in a multigenerational household which includes ourselves, our children, and their grandparents.

But the dangers of Third Avenue cause other parents to see things differently. They don’t feel safe letting their kids visit because of the dangers of a road that we must cross every day for daily activities like taking our kids to school, going food shopping, or going to work.

As the new Mayor takes office in January, we need his Administration to take a serious look at what we have been advocating for years in Sunset Park to create a safer Third Avenue, and right now we need our community to come together to amplify the call for these desperately needed changes.

What’s wrong with Third Avenue in Sunset Park

Third Avenue has been called one of the most dangerous corridors in all of Brooklyn. Just this summer, Kex Un Chen and Faqui Lin had their lives cut short in a tragic hit-and-run at the intersection of 52nd St and Third Avenue, on their way to the City Harvest food rescue center. Their deaths are just the latest in a string of preventable injuries and deaths on Sunset Park’s Third Avenue corridor, which has seen over 5,700 reported crashes, injuring more than 2,400 people and killing 19 over the last decade.

Third Avenue has a reputation as being on the “wrong side of the tracks” due to the Gowanus Expressway/BQE above and the highway-like conditions of the surface level Third Avenue -- which even has more traffic lanes than the interstate highway above.

This situation began in 1941, when NYC Parks Commissioner Robert Moses demolished dozens of homes and businesses to build what is now the Gowanus Expressway on top of what was then Sunset Park’s main business and commercial district. Thousands were displaced in the name of “progress,” envisioned as opportunities for faster through traffic.

With this came a pattern of neglect from city government toward the area along and west of Third Avenue. For instance, neighbors frequently remind us that there were many years where the city would often “forget” to pick up our block’s garbage because they thought nobody lived on our side of Third Ave.

And while our garbage is now reliably picked up, city neglect continues to show through the failure to fix Third Avenue. After all, the Department of Transportation knows that nearly all motor vehicle occupant injuries on Third Avenue are the result of speeding and vehicles running red lights, and they have the tools to solve these problems.

So, if the City knows what the problem is, why aren’t they solving it?

They have tried but are now stalled.

After years of advocacy, in 2022, the Department of Transportation committed to undertaking the “Third Ave Street Improvement Plan” to address the street’s dangerous conditions. In 2023, they hosted a series of workshops to solicit community feedback as part of an extensive outreach campaign. This process included three visioning workshops, a public feedback web portal, and the deployment of Street Ambassadors, who spoke directly with residents, workers, and business owners. They also conducted a Business Engagement Survey speaking with over 120 businesses located on 3rd Ave.

Following all this input, DOT presented a series of three options for safety and design changes to Third Ave to Community Board 7 (CB7). The Board endorsed the option that included safety and accessibility improvements including bicycle lanes, daylighted intersections, a lane reduction, and bus boarding islands in a 32-1 vote.

DOT promised to return to the Board with more specifics about this plan, including detailed road designs for the section from 54th St to 62nd St, and stated their intent of completing the redesign in 2024.

A delay to the Third Ave Street Improvement Redesign

One month after this vote, Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce President & CEO Randy Peers voiced his objections at a Community Board 7 meeting in March 2024, saying that the Board “voted on the Third Avenue redesign option that was the most disruptive and radical option.”

What’s radical is knowing that we have solutions for the problem that is Third Avenue and doing nothing about it for another twenty, or fifty years. And what’s disruptive is that now the entire Third Ave Street Improvement Plan is delayed. The result? Another two people have died on this stretch of roadway.

Randy Peers knows full well the dangers of Third Avenue from when he served as CB7’s Chairperson. Eighteen years ago, in 2007, under his leadership, the Community Board developed a 197a Plan which highlighted options like greenways and additional community spaces on Third Avenue that could be made available by “narrowing the existing right of way.”

Since March 2024, the Third Ave Street Improvement Project Plan has stalled. We’ve been told DOT is “collecting more feedback.” But we have no information on who is being consulted, what information is being gathered and what the timelines are for implementation.

What can you do?

Two weeks after Kex Un Chen and Faqui Lin lost their lives, a community rally at 60th St/3rd Avenue drew representatives from local organizations, schools, and elected officials. This rally showed that fixing Third Avenue has broad local support and demonstrated the necessity of immediately resuming work on the redesign. So what can you do? 1. Get informed! Read the Third Avenue Street Improvement Redesign. 2. Talk to your neighbors, and especially local businesses along Third Avenue, about the Third Ave Street Improvement Plan. 3. Note issues faced on Third Ave on DOT’s feedback portal. 4. Call for a safer Third Avenue, by sending an email to bk07@cb.nyc.gov and district38@council.nyc.gov asking for DOT to immediately resume work on Third Avenue!

Note: John DeLooper is Secretary of Community Board 7 and vice-chair of its Transportation Committee. Opinions expressed in this piece are personal views and are not those of Community Board 7.