Major Redesign Coming To Brooklyn Street After Deadly Crashes

SUNSET PARK— A 2.1-mile stretch of Third Avenue in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park will get protected bike lanes, fewer car lanes and shorter pedestrian crossings under a redesign by the New York City Department of Transportation.

The project, which Mayor Zohran Mamdani will announce Wednesday afternoon, follows the death of Jiayi Zheng, a 28-year-old nurse killed by a hit-and-run driver while walking home from her shift at NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn in August. The crash occurred at Third Avenue and 55th Street, one block from the hospital.

The redesign will cover Third Avenue from 62nd Street to 20th Street, where the roadway runs beneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

The avenue currently spans about 50 yards at some points and carries six to eight lanes of traffic.

The new layout will reduce car traffic to four lanes and add two protected bike lanes in each direction.

Parking lanes on both sides of the avenue will remain.

New pedestrian islands at intersections will give people shorter distances to cross.

The City plans to begin work between 62nd and 43rd streets in 2027 and add bike lanes to 60th Street between Second and Fourth avenues.

Construction on the remaining stretch, from 43rd to 20th streets, is scheduled to begin in 2028.

The redesign advances a project that stalled under former Mayor Eric Adams. His administration presented several safety proposals to the local community board but did not move forward with any of them.

The push for a redesign intensified in October, when more than 270 Sunset Park residents signed a public letter demanding immediate safety improvements and a timeline for the long-delayed project.

At a safety walk on Oct. 18, community members and elected officials marched from Martin Luther Playground to 60th Street, calling for better lighting, high-visibility crosswalks and curb extensions while urging the City to implement a comprehensive redesign.

“You know it, I know it, and everybody in Sunset Park knows it, too: Third Avenue is a death trap,” State Sen. Andrew Gounardes said.

17 people have died in crashes along the Third Avenue corridor over the past decade, according to the transportation department.

More than half were pedestrians or cyclists.

Last year, a hit-and-run driver killed two older pedestrians just blocks from where Zheng died.

In 2020, Clara Kang, a 31-year-old nurse at NYU Langone, died after a motorcyclist struck her while she rode her bicycle on Third Avenue following an overnight shift.

After Kang’s death, the City lowered the speed limit along the corridor to 25 miles per hour, but did not pursue a broader redesign.