Statement from Transportation Alternatives on Urgent Need to Redesign McGuinness Boulevard Following Reports that Mayor Adams Reversed Redesign

There have been dozens of community meetings on the McGuinness project.

There are 18 schools within a quarter-mile of McGuinness Boulevard.

NEW YORK — Today, Streetsblog reported that Mayor Adams ordered a reversal on previous DOT plans to redesign McGuinness Boulevard for safety. The DOT redesign was created following a two-year-long process with community input and dozens of public meetings.

Statement from Elizabeth Adams, Deputy Executive Director for Public Affairs at Transportation Alternatives: 

The choice here is simple: either the mayor cares more about children walking safely to school or speeding trucks taking an unnecessary and dangerous shortcut from one expressway to another. 

Selfish corporate interests might support a broken and lethal status quo, but City Hall has the opportunity to declare loudly and forcefully that New York City supports and protects its families, not a few wealthy neighbors more concerned about travel times than children’s lives.

Mayor Adams: Make McGuinness safe. 

McGuinness Boulevard is killing New Yorkers. If the mayor chooses to leave the boulevard as it is – a dangerous, deadly, unwarranted shortcut – he will have to answer when more of our smallest and most vulnerable neighbors are killed. 

Statement from Bronwyn Breitner, Coordinator for Make McGuinness Safe:

Hundreds of children like mine attend school on McGuinness Boulevard, and risk their lives every day walking or biking to school. They know how dangerous it is – our own local teacher, Matthew Jensen, was killed crossing the very same street they cross every day. Their parents squeeze their hands a little tighter instinctively as they cross McGuinness.

McGuinness Boulevard wasn’t always like this – and it doesn’t need to remain like this. McGuinness is a highway masquerading as a road, a shortcut for speeding vehicles to take between the Long Island Expressway and the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, two highways that meet just a few miles away anyway. Decades ago, our city decided that cars and trucks were more important than children, but we have an opportunity to reverse these damages and design a street that truly serves our smallest and most vulnerable pedestrians, young children walking to school. 

Ever since Robert Moses’ McGuinness Boulevard became a highway, community members and leaders have begged for change. This is a movement by and for Greenpoint, asking for safe streets for their families and their children. More than half of the households within a half mile of McGuinness are car-free, but they are all forced to dodge an endless barrage of cars and trucks speeding just blocks from their homes. 

We know the names of many lives stolen by McGuinness. We already know too many faces and stories of our neighbors that were killed and injured here. Don’t make us learn any more names, go to another vigil, or explain death to another child. Mayor Adams, Make McGuinness Safe before there are even more reasons to redesign the road. 

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