For three years a block of Downtown Brooklyn remained with a interrupted cycle track, provisional signage and new traffic lights covered by bags. Cyclists and activists had finished to nickname it “Crashland”. From Tuesday 1st September that stretch has been completed and now allows to travel on protected slopes 5.5 miles, almost nine kilometers, between Sunset Park and DUMBO.
The area is Ashland Place between Hanson Place and Lafayette Avenue, near the Atlantic Terminal and the Barclays Center. The Department of Transportation has transformed the block from a double-way road to a single-way and built a bidirectional protected cycle path on the eastern side. The new layout also reduces the distance pedestrians have to travel through the road.
It is a small intervention in size, but important for the Brooklyn cycling network. The only block was in fact the last stretch without protection along a path that connects Sunset Park to Downtown Brooklyn and DUMBO, from where you can continue towards the bridges of Brooklyn and Manhattan and connect to the slopes to North Brooklyn and Queens.
The story of “Crashland” began in 2022, when the DOT presented the project for a two-way protected track along Ashland Place. Much of the route was built in 2023 between Flushing Avenue and Lafayette Avenue, while the last block between Lafayette Avenue and Hanson Place was excluded.
The result was an intuitive route: arriving at the end of the protected track, cyclists headed south had to cross traffic from the opposite direction and continue in a shared space with cars and trucks. Meanwhile the lights already installed for the new trim remained covered and unused.
According to the data presented by the DOT, between September 2023 and the end of 2025 in the Ashland Place and Hanson Place area, 27 accidents were recorded, in which nine people were injured, five of them by bicycle. The incomplete section had the highest accident rate of the entire corridor.
Behind the stop there was also a political affair. The Municipality, announcing Tuesday the conclusion of the work, has attributed the delay to “interferences of the previous administration”, without entering into details. According to the reconstructions of Streetsblog and later of Curbed, in 2023 the administration of Eric Adams modified the project after the objections of the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Two Trees Management, a real estate company that owns a building with a garage on the block. BAM publicly expressed concerns about loading and unloading operations, while Two Trees wanted to maintain the dual sense of circulation.
For years local associations and political representatives have asked to complete the stretch. In February last, the Mamdani administration entered Ashland Place among four previously suspended mobility projects that would be restored. The DOT then presented the new plan in June and the work on the last block began in August.
The sacks covered the lights were removed on Tuesday. “Crashland is no more”, said State Senator Andrew Gounardes during the presentation of the project.
The city provides other interventions in the surrounding streets. The DOT plan includes a new two-way track on Lafayette Avenue to connect Ashland Place to Schermerhorn Street and the transformation of part of Hanson Place into a shared street, with more space for pedestrians and bicycles.
The completion of Ashland Place eliminates in the meantime a long interruption just one block that for three years had broken a protected path of almost nine kilometers through Brooklyn.
L’articolo In Brooklyn there is no longer “Crashland”: after three years the cycle path remained in half comes from IlNewyorkese.
