The Navy gained ownership of the field in 1941 after leasing space there for several years. Accessibility Flatbush Avenue was widened and straightened to create a more direct route into Manhattan. In 1937, the avenue was extended south to the Marine Parkway–Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge, which in turn connected to the Rockaways. However, this had more to do with the expansion of Marine Park and Jacob Riis Park. The same year, a bus route to the subway, the current Q35 route to the Flatbush Avenue–Brooklyn College station, was established in order to create a faster connection to Manhattan. However, the Q35 bus only started making stops at Bennett Field in 1940. Bennett Field's usefulness was debilitated by its poor location in outer Brooklyn. There were no limited-access roads between Manhattan and the airport, and the only direct route from Manhattan to Bennett Field was Flatbush Avenue, a congested street with local traffic throughout its length. This was exacerbated by the fact that the bus-to-subway connection did not occur until 1940. The Belt Parkway, which was constructed between 1934 and 1940, provided a limited-access connection to Manhattan for cars. However, commercial traffic could still only use Flatbush Avenue since commercial vehicles were banned from parkways in New York. Airmail terminal proposals During the 1930s, commercial air traffic at airports nationwide was low because few people could afford plane tickets, and airmail made up the majority of air traffic in the United States. Officials believed that "all aviation activity in the New York area" should be located at Floyd Bennett Field. LaGuardia pushed for Floyd Bennett Field to replace Newark Airport in Newark, New Jersey as the city's de facto main air terminal, including designs and plans to shuttle passengers to and from Manhattan in flying boats. However, Newark Airport turned out to be adequately equipped to handle commercial traffic. In the early days of commercial aviation, the bulk of profits was provided by freight instead of passengers. As airmail was a major fraction of air freight at the time, airports having contracts with the United States Post Office Department attracted commercial airlines, and the Post Office Department had already designated Newark Airport as New York City's airmail terminal. In order to try and compete, an expansion of the city's pneumatic tube mail system was planned between Floyd Bennett Field and the main post office in Brooklyn, with a branch of the