The B41 was ranked the 10th busiest route in the city and carried over 4.4 million riders last year, according to the MTA. (Credit: Allie Moustakis)
Eleven days, 21 hours and 50 minutes. That’s approximately how long Abigail Finkelman spent riding the B41 last year — commuting from her home in Flatbush to her office in Downtown Brooklyn and back during a bus trip that typically lasts a little more than half an hour each way.
That is about an hour less per ride than the commute used to take, thanks to dedicated bus lanes that the Department of Transportation (DOT) established in 2023 along Livingston Street in Downtown Brooklyn, stretching from Boerum Place to Flatbush Avenue.
While those lanes were “a game changer” for Finkelman, a lawyer, the portion of her commute along Flatbush Avenue remains sluggish.
At rush hour, B41 buses heading north on Flatbush Avenue move at walking speed, under four miles per hour, turning a one-mile stretch into a 15-minute crawl, the DOT said in a news release. The route, the 10th busiest in the city last year, carried more than 4.4 million riders, according to Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) ridership data.
To address delays, the city is now targeting Flatbush Avenue itself, which serves 132,000 daily bus riders across 12 routes. The DOT began the first phase of a yearlong redesign in September, with plans to add center-running bus lanes from Livingston Street to Grand Army Plaza. The full project is expected to be completed by fall 2026.
The redesign will add center-running bus lanes in both directions, separated from traffic by six concrete boarding islands. One lane for general traffic and a parking lane will remain in each direction.
The plan also includes over 14,000 square feet of pedestrian space, 11 business loading zones, up to 14 bike parking areas and minor rerouting of the B63 and B69.
“These new bus lanes will speed up bus service and make the street safer for everyone,” Ydanis Rodriguez, DOT commissioner, said in the release.
Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director at Riders Alliance, an advocacy group focused on equitable public transit, said Flatbush Avenue’s redesign is a “big victory” for bus riders — many of whom are working-class New Yorkers whose time is often undervalued.
“It’s too easy to write off bus riders and say, ‘well, they don’t make much money, so their time isn’t valuable,’” Pearlstein said. “But in fact, it’s people who don’t make much money whose time is most valuable because they can’t pay other people to do their stuff for them… They got to do it themselves.”
To help build support for the project, Riders Alliance partnered with the Pratt Center for Community Development in 2024 to survey 1,800 riders about their commutes. The findings showed that Flatbush Avenue buses primarily serve Black, women and low-income riders living in or around Flatbush.
Nearly three-quarters of respondents reported household incomes below $80,000 and half earned less than $50,000 a year. About 59 percent identified as Black, 15 percent as Hispanic and 72 percent as women.
Pearlstein said the survey helped demonstrate that improving bus service on Flatbush Avenue is about equity as much as mobility. Still, projects like this shouldn’t require such an extensive organizing effort to get off the ground, he said.
“Our hope is that we won’t always need to put that great amount of effort and resources into an individual project like this,” Pearlstein said.
Jammed-up traffic is part of a larger citywide problem. New York ranked second in congestion in the world, behind Istanbul, Turkey, according to a 2024 Global Traffic Scorecard from INRIX Inc., a traffic data analysis firm. The city’s gridlock is fueled by too many cars on narrow streets, a surplus in ride-hail vehicles and crowded intersections that routinely bottleneck major corridors.
As a result, buses are trapped in that gridlock with citywide average bus speeds dropping from 8.22 miles per hour in 2015 to 8.17 miles per hour in 2024, data from the MTA and Comptroller’s Office shows.
For commuters like Finkelman, changes on the B41 can’t come soon enough.
“Sometimes you’re just sitting there forever, inching along,” she said, referencing the Atlantic Avenue-Barclays stretch of Flatbush Avenue. “If that part had a bus lane, it would be a tremendous improvement.”
Despite the stop-and-go traffic, she’d rather take the bus than the subway because it’s typically less crowded during rush hour and staying above ground lets her stay connected in case she needs to send a quick email.
Other riders like Robin McClary remain skeptical. A Fort Greene resident who’s lived just off of Flatbush Avenue for more than 30 years, McClary said she occasionally rides the B41 to run errands and prefers it over the subway.
“Besides the traffic, it’s a very easy experience,” McClary said while waiting for the bus as bumper-to-bumper cars honked nearby. She worries that removing general traffic lanes will lead to more chaos on an already busy street.
“It’ll make things much worse because most cars will ignore the fact that there are bus lanes, and they’ll drive in a bus lane. So, traffic is going to be even more tied up,” she said.
In New York, unauthorized vehicles that drive, park or stand in a bus lane during operation are subject to fines ranging from $50 to $250. The DOT hasn’t said whether camera enforcement will be part of this project, but said it will monitor traffic changes as part of the rollout.
Right now, buses are often forced to pick up and drop off riders several feet from stops due to idle and parked cars. This won’t be an issue with center-running bus lanes, Pearlstein said.
“People don’t park in the middle of the street. That’s one place where even New York drivers aren’t brave enough to park,” he said.
If more drivers start using the lanes illegally, Riders Alliance will advocate for physical barriers to make them, as he put it, “New Yorker-proof.”
With fewer lanes for cars, the DOT hopes more people will shift to buses and local car trips will disperse to nearby streets. About 40 percent of households along Flatbush Avenue have access to a personal vehicle, according to the DOT.
Pearlstein, who grew up just a few blocks from Flatbush Avenue, called the street “the spine of Brooklyn” and sees the redesign as a chance to change how the city thinks about public transit infrastructure.
“A million people live within walking distance of Flatbush Avenue. A lot of people are going to see center-running bus lanes. They’re going to see pedestrian boarding islands, and they’re going to get used to the idea that our bus service needs to be a lot more visible in order to be a lot faster.”
The second phase of the redesign, which will include concrete and signal construction, is scheduled to begin in spring 2026.
About the author(s)
Allie Moustakis is an M.S. student at the Columbia Journalism School, covering culture and social issues in New York City.