Update Jan 6, 2026: This story has been updated with an additional quote from Emily Gallagher.
The city will finish the redesign of McGuinness Boulevard, new mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Saturday.
The mayor visited Greenpoint this weekend to deliver the news. Joining him included dozens of street safety activists, community members, and elected officials, as well as the new DOT commissioner, Mike Flynn.
“For too long, critical street safety projects have been delayed or shelved because of political considerations and backroom deal-making rather than the needs of New Yorkers. Those days are over,” said Mamdani, nodding to the project’s initial cancellation due to an apparent bribery scheme between the Adams administration and a pair of local business owners.
The redesign will adhere to the New York City Department of Transportation’s (DOT) original plan, reducing one lane of traffic in either direction and adding a lane of parking and a bike lane. While the redesign has already been implemented from Meeker Avenue to Calyer Street, the announcement now extends the measures to the Pulaski Bridge.
Mamdani visited the neighborhood in August and pledged to complete the redesign if elected mayor, calling it a day-one priority. Local elected officials lauded this weekend’s decision.
“Today’s announcement is a victory for the local advocates and community members who fought for decades to make McGuinness safe,” said Assembly Member Emily Gallagher. “It reflects a sense of urgency and a promise kept by Mayor Mamdani, and it is a reminder of what is possible when government works for the people it serves.”
To people who oppose the road diet on McGuinness Boulevard, she urged people to look at the data.
“From Calyer to Meeker, the information we’ve gathered shows that crashes have plummeted. We are in a much safer environment now and that data is publicly available from the DOT,” she told Greenpointers. “Additionally, when they’ve timed the travel from point to point of the road diet area, it’s only slowed down by one minute…If there are still problems after we let this settle in, I am here to continue to work and make this more safe and easier for all of the constituents.”
“I am grateful that the Mayor has made McGuinness a week one priority and that this is just the beginning of transformational street safety improvements across every neighborhood in New York City,” said City Council Member Lincoln Restler.
Indeed, the McGuinness decision could spark a revival of dashed street-safety projects. The Adams administration quashed a number of such projects during its tenure, such as the Fordham Road bus lane redesign. Commissioner Flynn told Streetsblog that looking into these projects was an “early priority.”
Though Eric Adams supported bike lanes as Brooklyn Borough President, he changed his tune as mayor, largely at the behest of his closest advisor, Ingrid Lewis-Martin. Authorities recently indicted Lewis-Martin on several bribery charges, including a scheme to scuttle the redesign. Gina and Tony Argento of Broadway Stages, Greenpoint’s biggest landowners, allegedly paid Lewis-Martin to intervene, also giving her a cameo role on a TV show; they have denied any wrongdoing.
When reached for comment by the New York Times, Lewis-Martin said “that hundreds of community members opposed the original redesign, and that support for the project was artificially inflated.”
While the former is certainly true, the latter assertion remains a conspiratorial talking point that puts Lewis-Martin at odds with the city’s own findings. The DOT spent two years collecting data and hosting workshops, and crafted the redesign with community input. Make McGuinness Safe, the neighborhood group advocating for the redesign, touts 10,000 supporters (an opposing group, Keep McGuinness Moving, has about 6,700). However, THE CITY identified that two-thirds of the businesses listed on a website as Keep McGuinness Moving supporters were actually LLCs with ties to Broadway Stages and the Argentos.
The news marks the end of a long, tumultuous path to completing the redesign. Community members rallied for changes in 2021 after the tragic hit-and-run death of Matthew Jensen, a local teacher. The de Blasio administration greenlit the project, and the Adams administration was set to implement it starting in 2023 before directing the DOT to go back to the drawing board. The Adams administration then reversed course again and announced that a truncated version of the redesign would go through in 2024 (not long after authorities had subpoenaed Lewis-Martin in an unrelated corruption case).
Mamdani told the crowd that work will begin once the weather warms up, as some of the materials can’t be used in the cold.
What a dumb idea leave it the way it was originally ,people need to learn to cross at the corners and if your drunk make sure you friggen wait for the damm light
McGuinness Blvd is now more dangerous than before. People are getting hit by bikes when stepping off the curb. The one lane is horrible and the parked cars have to get out into traffic. Horrible, Horrible Design
Whoop de f***ing doo!
Horrible
Mamdani has already done more for me as mayor than the past 3 administrations. Amazing when govt actually does what people want.
Very excited about this.
This is comical to me. Where’s the data showing how many cyclists now hit pedestrians going up/down the st the wrong way? Still riding on the sidewalk? Going against traffic lights? I can legit set up my camera and show NO cyclists for the MAJORITY of time on McGuinness. How did so many ppl survive McGuinness before the “road diet”? It is ableism and elitism at its finest and it’s a shame he’s taking up for this first. I thought he had an actual sack ready to enact real change. Instead his focus is on…bicycles. Another waste of votes