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Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced last week that a long-overdue redesign of the Brooklyn Bridge's Manhattan entrance will begin this spring, with completion targeted for June, just in time for the influx of visitors expected during this summer’s World Cup.
The largest change is that cyclists and pedestrians will soon have fully separate entrances to the bridge on the Manhattan side. A new dedicated bike connection will run along Centre Street, getting rid of the current free-for-all where bikes and foot traffic must weave around each other before even getting onto the bridge.
That bottleneck, as it exists today, is one of the busiest pedestrian-cyclist pinch points in the city. On an average day, the city says nearly 30,000 pedestrians and more than 5,600 cyclists cross the bridge. And those numbers have been climbing, especially since 2021, when the city created a protected two-way bike lane on the bridge’s roadway, which has more than doubled the daily cycling volumes.
But while the bridge itself got a major upgrade, its Manhattan entrance didn’t quite keep up—until now.
“Separating bike and pedestrian traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge has been an unmitigated success. But cyclists and pedestrians are still forced to navigate around each other as they enter and exit the bridge in Manhattan, said NYC DOT commissioner Mike Flynn in a press release. “This redesign will build on the success of the bridge’s protected bike lane and greatly improve the experience for pedestrians and cyclists visiting the Brooklyn Bridge.”
As part of the redesign, the city will also double the width of the southern crosswalk connecting the bridge to City Hall Park, giving pedestrians more breathing room close to the street. The end project will create a neater, more intuitive flow—and ideally one with less dodging, fewer near-misses and minimal chaos.
City officials say the project is both a practical fix and an example of the broader street upgrades tied to the World Cup. Additional improvements are planned across Manhattan, including widened sidewalks and expanded bike lanes along busy streets like Ninth Avenue and Lafayette Street.
Still, the Brooklyn Bridge entrance may be the most visible test case, as one of the city’s most visited landmarks, which draws more than 10 million people a year. If there’s anywhere to prove that safer, more organized streets can actually work at scale, it’s here.