A bus lane running along one of the city’s busiest streets, Madison Avenue, will be expanded another 19 blocks by the end of the year in line with Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s promise to make buses “fast and free,” the Department of Transportation commissioner announced Sunday.
Mike Flynn, the DOT veteran who was named to the Mamdani administration on New Year’s Eve, revealed the plan to expand the existing Madison Avenue bus lane from 42nd Street to 23rd Street alongside Deputy Mayor Julia Kerson on Sunday afternoon.
“When Mayor Mamdani asked me to serve as his transportation commissioner, he challenged me to make New York City streets the envy of the world, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We’re going to achieve it by thinking big, focusing on New Yorkers’ day to day lives, and acting with urgency,” Flynn boasted.
Kerson highlighted Mamdani’s “top priorities,” including “making buses fast and free” for all New Yorkers. She said that Madison Avenue is one of the most congested streets in the city, with “92,000 bus riders [using] this corridor every day.”
Flynn told The Post that the “same configuration” currently on Madison Avenue — two bus lanes on the east side of the street plus one general traffic lane and a flexible parking lane — will be extended from 42nd Street south to 23rd Street.
Kerson bashed the current average bus speed, which she said crawls at “about four to five miles per hour” and can have disastrous ripple effects on commuters’ days.
“That’s not just frustrating, it can mean missing a shift at work, arriving late to a doctor’s appointment, or your kid being the last one to get picked up after school,” Kerson said.
The duo’s plan piggybacks on a proposal made by the DOT that was quietly delayed due to “interference” from former Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, Kerson alleged. She said the Mamdani administration will prioritize meeting the “painting season” that Adams’ team missed and assured the project will be completed in 2026.
Flynn could not provide a specific timeline for the project, but noted that they’ll require “good weather conditions” for the paint to stick and dry.
“The plan is to have it done this year,” he assured.
Borough President Brad Will praised the “stretch of the amazing central business district” to the “vibrant neighborhood that surrounds Madison Avenue.”
“The central business district is the busiest and the largest in the entire world and if you think about how important it is to the local economy, to driving so many businesses into success, small business and others, we need better mass transit,” Will said.
The neighborhoods dotted along the Midtown Manhattan stretch of Madison Avenue include Murray Hill and NoMad — where Amazon founder Jeff Bezos splits his time in his multi-million dollar “mansion in the sky.”
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