Exclusive | Hipster NYC neighborhoods to get gentrified transit makeover at cost of seniors: Feels like Nazi Germany

Elderly residents of some of Brooklyn’s hottest neighborhoods are accusing the Mamdani administration of catering to hipster cyclists by taking over streets for bike lanes, saying it’s “like Nazi Germany in 1933.”The longtime Brooklynites claim that City Hall refuses to listen to their concerns over plans that would transform Dean and Bergen streets into more friendly pedestrian and bike areas because pols are more interested in pandering to the new wave of deep-pocketed young residents.“It’s like people of a certain age are no longer welcome in Brooklyn,’’ griped Betty Davis, 82, of Bedford-Stuyvesant.“I don’t think anybody realizes what it means for someone at 82 years old to have to walk an extra five blocks to get to their bus.“Anytime you deprive any group of people — especially working-class, elderly and handicapped people — of public transportation, that is more than just an issue of civil rights.That’s an issue of human rights,’’ she said.“As an elder, this feels like Nazi Germany in 1933.

What are you gonna do next? Kill me because I’m elderly?”Davis is one of the neighborhood’s many aging residents who use the B65 on a daily basis.The MTA first proposed shifting its route two blocks north onto Atlantic Avenue as part of the 2022 Brooklyn Bus Network Redesign Draft Plan in hopes of increasing speed and efficiency.But neighbors backed by their Community Board 8 made clear as far back as 2023 that aspects of the proposal seemed “counterproductive and arbitrary” for the neighborhood — which is deemed a “naturally occurring retirement center” — and did not address the route’s biggest chokehold areas.The bus redesign project is still in the workshop phase, but concerned residents were reinvigorated in their opposition this past spring when Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that Bergen and Dean streets would be even further transformed as they become absorbed by the “Bike Boulevard” project.The 10-mile cor...