Wilting flowers serve as a memorial for Jiayi Zheng, a 28-year-old nurse at NYU Langone Brooklyn who was the victim of a hit and run. (Credit: Thisanka Siripala)
New York City’s first comprehensive redesign of truck routes since the 1970s kicked off on Oct. 4 and adds more than 40 miles of new routes across the five boroughs.
Brooklyn Community Board 7 in Sunset Park opposed plans to designate Second Avenue as a truck route between 29th and 58th streets. The new route will run parallel to existing truck routes on First and Third avenues.
Department of Transport Commissioner Mike Flynn said that truck routes “keep traffic off local streets and on designated corridors with the capacity to handle the safe movement of both people and freight.”
Yet, Sunset Park’s existing truck network already has a troubling safety record. It recorded 87 collisions between 2025 and mid-2026 — roughly five collisions a month, according to NYC Open Data.
“I think it’s just going to get worse. It’s gonna get more and more dangerous, and something needs to happen before something happens again,” said Sam Sierra, secretary of Brooklyn Community Board 7.
Neighbors Helping Neighbors community organizer Fabian Bravo has spent years navigating the precarious traffic conditions on Third Avenue while his son attended elementary school near 59th and Third Avenue.
“Every day either my wife or myself took our son across the avenue because it’s very dangerous,” Bravo said. “There’s not enough lighting at night, not enough security, not enough police.”
Bravo is wary of the new truck route. He is frustrated over the lack of truck rule enforcement on existing routes and has doubts whether the city will enforce rules on the new routes.
“The transportation agency and police should be present. Because when accidents happen, cars just leave,” he said.
Alexa Sledge, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, said the issue comes down to street design failure.
“The only way to make it less likely for future people to die is to make different design, infrastructure and policy choices to transform a deadly street into a safe one,” said Sledge.
The DOT has said that it plans to pursue street improvement projects on new truck routes as well as 600 additional roadway signs.
These safety measures are separate from the yearslong delayed traffic safety redesign proposal for Third Avenue, which Mayor Zohran Mamdani promised to revive on Aug. 26.
Bravo is determined to feel safe in his neighborhood. He urged Council Member Alexa Avilés and Assembly Member Marcela Mitaynes to follow up on the problem.
“First, they should hold community meetings so that we are heard. But more immediately the Department of Transport should have people there to monitor traffic,” he said.
Correction: this story has been updated to correct Department of Transport Commissioner Mike Flynn’s title.
About the author(s)
Thisanka Siripala is a Sri Lankan/Australian multimedia journalist who resides in Tokyo and New York City.