Brooklyn Bridge Access to Get World Cup Glow Up: Mamdani

The World Cup is coming, the World Cup is coming! And whatever one’s sporting interest in the event might be, culturally and, the city hopes, economically, this will be a huge deal. The Brooklyn Bridge, meanwhile, has been a huge deal since even before its opening in May 1883 so why not tie the two together?

Such were the thoughts of Mayor Zohran Mamdani—a fervent soccer fan—and why, on March 27, 2026, revamping bike and pedestrian access from Centre Street to a span between Manhattan and Brooklyn was linked to World Cup games being played in... New Jersey?

Speaking at Pier 17 and donning a Department of Transportation baseball cap, the Mayor explained, “Now, while DOT’s installation of dedicated bike lanes in 2021 transformed the experience of crossing the bridge, what we see is that pedestrians and cyclists are still forced into a chaotic bottleneck at the Manhattan entrance. And as we look forward in just a few months, as a massive number of tourists and visitors come to our city for the iconic World Cup, this disorder... [will] only grow worse.”

Like the Williamsburg Bridge “Zohramp,” he introduced in January, improving the Brooklyn Bridge entry points shouldn’t be a big deal but since the issue has been neglected for years, it allows Hizzoner to show he’s paying attention to little things.

From the 1990s cycling boom until the 2010s, the big issue was pedal bicyclists and pedestrians trying to cross bridge together. In the early mornings and in inclement weather, it was fine and even collegial. At other times, it was a death defying obstacle course.

Pedestrians were supposed to be the south side, bicyclists on the north. But many tourists didn’t heed the signs denoting this and on crowded days, there wasn’t enough room for pedestrians on “their” side. So, whether in ignorance or self-determination, pedestrians (and runners) stepped to the north side, where they were often greeted by aggressive shouts of “Bike Lane! Bike Lane! Bike Lane!” Sometimes whistles were blown, curses heard, blows were exchanged. Many collisions and near-collisions occurred.

Cautious bicyclists began to avoid the Brooklyn Bridge to take the Manhattan Bridge instead, which has a dedicated bicycle path on its north side. Though this was irksome for those trying to get south of City Hall or over to the Hudson River greenway via Chambers Street, the trade-off in safety and sanity was worth it.

Then came e-bikes, mopeds, scooters and other fast speeding “micromobility” devices. The great deception of transportation “advocates” is that any of these vehicles, save the carefully ridden cargo-type e-bikes used by kid-carrying parents are natural allies to pedal bicyclists. Tellingly, perhaps, a DOT rendering of the new Brooklyn Bridge design omits such vehicles—as did the images accompanying the DOT’s Greater Greenways plan issued in 2025 under Mayor Adams.

A Bicycle Lane Built for Whom?

The dedicated bike lanes of yesterday are the motorized vehicle— delivery or otherwise— autobahns of today, meaning there is no place a pedal bicylist is safe from speeding, often reckless traffic. While the Adams adminstration made fitful efforts to address these issues, it often ran into objections from the bike advocate groups. Witness the fate of Priscilla’s Law, or the manufactured “outrage” over 15 mph CitiBike limits—while illegal scooter, moped or souped-up e-bikes go 25-30+ mph wth little in the way of enforcement.

The dedicated bike lane of the Brooklyn Bridge, which replaced a car lane on the span’s Manhattan-bound side in 2021, never had an idyllic period. While wider than the now perilious Manhattan Bridge path, the stress of riding with fast speeding motor vehicles remains.

The street-level Brooklyn Bridge bike lane had side effect. Absent the bike, moped and scooter chaos above, that space was commandeered by illegal vendors, the likes of which were never previously allowed there, nor was it ever suggested they should be. From a makeshift illegal cocktail lounge to the panorama photographers BLASTING the same Jay-Z song all day every day, Our Town Downtown has reported on the bridge’s vendor problems.

A Plan to Fight the Chaos

If the very concept of “bicycle lanes” remains in dispute, Mamdani’s characterization of the Brooklyn Bridge as “chaotic” can’t be faulted. Indeed, while Hizzoner was speaking narrowly of his Centre Street plan, his words could be applied to pedal bicylists battling motor vehicles in the erstwhile bike lanes generally:

“This is an experience, frankly, that too many New Yorkers have had when they’re looking to take the healthiest way to cross this bridge; it’s one that comes at the expense of their peace of mind, of their sanity, and sometimes even of their safety.”

Also speaking were DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn; Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal; Council Member Christopher Marte; Transportation Alternatives Director Ben Furnas; and World Cup Czar Maya Handa; among others.

Asked if he had any World Cup predictions, Hizzoner answered, “As an obsessed soccer fan, I was at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, and I was born in Uganda in East Africa; was rooting for Ghana as they played Uruguay in the quarterfinals. I was at the game. It would be the first time that an African nation had ever reached the semifinals. And beyond Luis Suárez’s violations of the laws of the game, the most difficult thing was not just crying in that stadium.”

The Mayor went on, discursively, but didn’t answer the prediction question—perhaps because the final brackets hadn’t yet been made. One thing’s for certainly, it won’t be Italy, who days later, failed to make the tournament, again. This wasn’t a loss just for Azurri, but Manhattan’s Little Italy and the historically Italian neighborhoods of Brooklyn also, including nearby Carroll Gardens and Red Hook.

Manhattanites considering a World Cup-themed journey to Brooklyn might wish to root for France or Haiti instead.