Lola Pavitt, a graduating fifth-grader at PS110 (photo: ZED Images)

On May 17, 2021, Matthew Jensen greeted my son at the entry to PS110 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and took his temperature, as he did every day during covid. The following afternoon, word started spreading at the playground that Mr. Jensen had died. Kids were saying that this was impossible: he’d just been in their classroom cracking jokes and doing his Donald Duck impersonation the day before. I had the wretched task of explaining to my children that it was true. That their teacher had been violently killed by a speeding car a block from their bedroom while they slept. 

In the days following the crash a pattern of conversation emerged among our community; shock, grief, and then questioning: “Why is McGuinness Boulevard so dangerous? Why is our community tolerating it?” These questions became the foundation of the Make McGuinness Safe coalition. In response to Mr. Jensen’s death — the third death on the boulevard in eight years — we held a rally to raise awareness and hold the City to account. Within weeks, the de Blasio administration announced an allocation of $39 million for a comprehensive redesign of McGuinness Boulevard.

I am a mother, an educator, an architect, a small-business owner, and now a community organizer. I am hardly the first mother to advocate for safety on McGuinness. The archives of the Greenpoint Weekly Star document decades of resistance to the repercussions of the widening of Oakland Street (later renamed McGuinness Boulevard). According to one article from October 1956, “residents drew up a 200-name petition. . .blasting the route as an extreme hazard and a ‘speedway’ for all types of motor vehicles. . .A survey at the time revealed that if no action was taken by the proper authorities, a human roadblock by mothers and housewives might be formed.”

The first person to die on the street was a three-year-old boy named Jimmy Bataglia. Our current fight for a safer McGuinness Boulevard fits firmly within its treacherous history. Matt’s death was our breaking point. 

For two long years, committed volunteers have spent hundreds of hours canvassing for Make McGuinness Safe petition signatures at local farmer’s markets. We’ve held teach-ins and given presentations at our Community Board. We’ve gained the support of 100 local businesses and every single elected official representing Greenpoint at the city, state, and federal levels. Our coalition has evolved to incorporate what we’ve learned from thousands of conversations with neighbors, families, and local businesses. 

Universally, what people want to see is a slower, safer, local street. We have worked with traffic engineers, transportation advocates, and urban planners to establish a design that will achieve this. The foundation of this plan rests on the removal of two automobile travel lanes, transforming this 4-lane highway into a 2-lane local street. The space gained will be reallocated to parking-protected bike lanes, filling a critical gap in the bike lane network. 

The knee-jerk reaction to the removal of two vehicle lanes is often, “Where will the traffic go?” But the facts are with us. According to DOT traffic studies, 30-50% of the vehicles on McGuinness Boulevard are using the road exactly as Robert Moses intended: as a shortcut between the BQE and the LIE, even though it only shaves about 90 seconds of travel time. These are not local drivers, local deliveries, or local pickups. We’ve explained to our neighbors that reducing the capacity of the road will reduce the number of vehicles cutting through the neighborhood. Nearly anyone who is willing to listen signs on, and conversation by conversation we’ve amassed over 5,600 supporters.

You can imagine the celebration that followed DOT’s public presentation in May of a design for McGuinness that largely reflects our community plan, with an implementation date of summer 2023. Fueled by a most unthinkable tragedy, we secured the funding, support, and approval of a plan that will make Greenpoint safer for generations to come.

Yet now, at the eleventh hour, despite a comprehensive engagement process and DOT’s multiple traffic studies, it seems that powerful special interests are trying to undermine the McGuinness Boulevard plan. 

The grassroots, deep, local passion that fuels the Make McGuinness Safe coalition cannot be swayed. We believe in facts. We believe in data. And we believe in Mayor Adams. We believe in his record as a champion of safer streets. We believe that he will be the Mayor who will help us take back McGuinness after years of death, danger, tragedy, and trauma. And when we do this, together, we will never know the names of all the lives that have been saved. 

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Bronwyn Breitner is a parent and Coordinator for Make McGuinness Safe. On Twitter @mcguinness_safe.