New Plan Announced to Limit Traffic Around Grand Army Plaza

by Ethan Stark-Miller, amNY

Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants to transform Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza by advancing a plan to eliminate car traffic between the entrance to Prospect Park and the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch across from it, his office announced on Monday.

Under the proposal, the road to the arch’s south side, which currently connects Union Street to the west with Eastern Parkway and Flatbush Avenue to the east, would be turned into a pedestrian plaza. Grand Army would no longer be a traffic circle, with vehicles instead having to travel around the arch’s northern side in order to get from east to west and vice versa.

The undertaking will also include a host of new pedestrian safety features and enhanced bicycle infrastructure.

“Grand Army Plaza is the gateway to Brooklyn’s backyard, Prospect Park — and it should welcome New Yorkers with street design that puts safety first,” Mamdani said. “Anyone who’s tried to cross here knows how dangerous and chaotic the streets can be. This redesign is long overdue and will provide a sense of ease and enjoyment to one of Brooklyn’s most important public spaces.”

However, city Department of Transportation spokesperson Vincent Barone said he could not provide a cost estimate and timeline for the project as the agency is still working to finalize its design.

Impact of Mamdani’s vision for Grand Army Plaza

The proposal is aimed at boosting public space in one of the borough’s most popular destinations, while also doing away with a hazardous stretch of road that often brings drivers into contact with large crowds and cyclists. The streets inside Grand Army Plaza have seen 135 crashes that have injured 221 people — including 26 cyclists, 20 pedestrians, and 121 motorists — over the past decade, according to NYC Crashmapper.

The plan is also intended to speed up bus service along the B41 and B6 bus routes, which combined serve nearly 33,000 daily riders.

DOT will work toward that goal using feedback it gathers from public workshops it is hosting in-person and virtually later this month. The agency will also use an online survey to collect community input, which it will post the day of the workshops and will keep live through May 31.

The redesign was first considered by the former Mayor Eric Adams’ administration in late 2022, when it held a series of public outreach events. Community feedback gathered from a 2024 survey indicated that 85 percent of the 3,600 respondents supported a plan that would connect the arch with the park entrance, according to the mayor’s office.

“Every time NYC DOT has provided more space to pedestrians at the park, it’s been an instant success, and it becomes impossible to think of how the space could have functioned before,” said DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn in a statement.

Grand Army not only sits at the nexus of several major thoroughfares and serves as the northern entrance to Prospect Park, but it is also the site of the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Branch and home to a weekly farmer’s market.

The revamp would also realize the original vision of the plaza’s designers, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux; they had wanted the plaza to be a grand entrance to Prospect Park. But the introduction of the automobile in the early 20th century foiled that vision, and the plaza has been divided by traffic lanes ever since.

Mamdani’s announcement would also fulfill a long-sought dream of transportation and community advocates to reduce vehicular traffic in Grand Army Plaza.

“Right now, you have to cross four lanes of traffic to get from the vegetables to the bread during the farmers market,” said Ben Furnas, executive director of the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, in a recent interview with amNewYork.

“People from all over Brooklyn come to Grand Army Plaza,” he added. “It’s like the crossroads of so many different neighborhoods and communities in Brooklyn, and it’s a great opportunity for it to be the model for what great pedestrian space could look like through the city.”

Editor’s note: A version of this story originally ran in amNY. Click here to see the original story.

Related Stories

• Restoration of Grand Army Plaza Arch Gives Public Access to the Evocative Interior
• Prospect Park Alliance Kicks Off Restoration of Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch
• City Mulls Car-Free Redesign for Grand Army Plaza to Boost Pedestrian Safety

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