Advocates and community members living in Canarsie, Brooklyn rallied Sunday afternoon to urge Mayor Eric Adams to bring ferry service to the residential neighborhood.
In a 2017 press statement, Adams, then serving as Brooklyn borough president, said it was time to fully utilize the ferry system to be accessible to southern Brooklyn neighborhoods including Canarsie, in an effort to improve transit equity. Since that same year, the Canarsie Improvement Association collected more than 6,000 signatures from locals, yet advocates said they haven’t captured City Hall’s attention.
Jibreel Jalloh, founder and president of the Flossy Organization, which advocates for the Canarsie neighborhood, said adding the ferry stop is long overdue.
“You have a system that brings New Yorkers around the city in a fast and eco-friendly way. You have a working class Black community that’s yearning for more options to get around,” Jalloh said. “So why not put these two problems and create a solution?”
At the Sunday rally, advocates described the neighborhood as a “transit desert,” or an area that has limited access to public transportation. Advocates described this discrepancy as an equity issue.
According to demographic data from the NYU Furman Center, Canarsie is a majority Black neighborhood: 55.7% of the local population as of 2021.
Kashif Hussain, deputy public advocate for infrastructure and environmental justice, echoed that sentiment on Sunday.
“I stand here once again to remind those who are in power that Black and Brown communities continue to suffer from lack of resources and investment to improve affordable housing, equitable transportation and other infrastructure upgrades,” Hussain said.
Adrien Lesser, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office, said the ferry service is an important transit option and that City Hall welcomes advocacy.
“While we are not actively pursuing expansion options, our focus is on making our current service more accessible, equitable, and financially sustainable through the Adams administration’s Ferry Forward plan,” Lesser said.
The Ferry Forward plan, which was originally launched to make the ferry system more “equitable and accessible,” was adopted when Adams took office in 2022.
New strategies undertaken by the current administration, according to the New York City Economic Development Corporation website, have included expanding discount programs and increasing transparency. The program as it stands does not mention any stop additions to the current ferry routes.
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