Transit advocates and researchers are asking New Yorkers who ride the B41 bus across Brooklyn’s Flatbush Avenue to share their commuting woes.
A participatory research action project will kick off on Tuesday with a rally at 11 a.m. at the Flatbush Trees, at the intersection of Empire Boulevard and Flatbush Avenue, in Brooklyn. It’s part of a push from advocates Riders Alliance to put more pressure on the Department of Transportation and elected leaders to address lagging bus service on one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares.
The B41 bus remains a critical route across Flatbush Avenue, which spans nearly 10 miles from the Manhattan Bridge to Jamaica Bay. Tens of thousands of riders commute across the busy stretch of land each day, braving congestion from competing drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. The busy thoroughfare has been described as “Brooklyn’s spine” by Danny Pearlstein, the policy and communications director for Riders Alliance.
“Flatbush Avenue has been slated for bus service improvements for decades – but they haven’t happened yet,” Pearlstein said in an interview. “And now? An unprecedented coalition of riders and workers is coming together to span out up and down Brooklyn’s spine, talk to people about why we need to change and hold City Hall accountable for making the changes we need.”
Last month, the DOT announced that it would begin installing bus lanes on the busy street to help bring some sense of order to the traffic chaos. But it’s not enough to remedy the horrid commute, Pearlstein said.
Between September 2022 and September 2023, B41 buses ran an average of 6.8 mph, which was slower than the citywide average of 8.2 mph during that same time period, according to MTA statistics cited by the Riders Alliance.
“What we want to show the Adams’ administration – and DOT – is that there’s robust support for a very transformative remedy for slow bus service on Flatbush Avenue,” Pearlstein said. ”While they’ve put forward a number of options – they’ve done that in a number of different projects – we want to make sure that bus riders get the strong medicine that we need.”
A DOT spokesperson said the department looked forward to commuters' responses.
“By redesigning Flatbush Avenue, we can speed up bus service to improve the lives of bus riders currently stuck on one of the most congested corridors in Brooklyn—while also enhancing pedestrian safety," DOT spokesperson Mona Bruno said in an email. "We look forward to continued public outreach, design refinement, and completing our traffic analysis in consultation with the community.”
The participatory research action project will survey B41 commuters throughout the summer, with volunteer bus riders surveying fellow passengers and others living around Flatbush Avenue on the best ways to get public transit moving faster. The compiled data will then be analyzed and sent over to the DOT and other elected officials to try and achieve better bus service along Flatbush Avenue by late fall, Riders Alliance said.
Pearlstein said Tuesday’s rally is noteworthy in that it is the largest partnership from multiple labor unions to address the area’s slow bus service. In addition to the Riders Alliance, researchers from the Pratt Center for Community Development and other representatives from Transport Workers Union Local 100, Laborers Local 1010, Local 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, Flatbush Development Corporation will also be present.
Earlier this week, cyclists called on the DOT to fix congested bike lanes along Brooklyn’s Kent Avenue while others were hoping for better service on the NJ transit at Penn Station after a rough start to the summertime shuffle.
