Gary Reilly of First and Court also deserves credit for taking the idea and running with it. He also deserves some campaign contributions for his City Council race. But I can't find a link to donate online.

I can now:

http://www.garyreilly.org/

The entire bus system is based on the preceding trolley system, which was built by a series of private operators with different franchises at a time when the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel did not exist.

Virtually all changes in bus service since then have been for the benefit of private automobiles (one way avenues) cost savings (eliminating little-traveled routes) of those who did not want to ride the subway in the bad old days (express buses). The exception is limited stop service.

Changing bus route is very difficult, because of the "one white old lady on the bus" problem. As long as one exists, you cannot take away a bus route, and given that buses require much deeper subsidy than subways (even though the subways also pay for the ROW and stations) unless you are shifting things you cannot afford new service.

Any rethinking of bus routes by the MTA is generally just an excuse by pols to blast the agency. I think they've gotten religion and just stopped bothering.

I remember once in a meeting we actually just thought we were all wrong because we convinced ourselves that there MUST have been a bus and that we were all crazy; that the city and MTA couldn't be that dense to not have that connection.

The next meeting after that someone brought in a bus map and we discovered we were wrong. But we didn't even know where to go with it - we were working so hard on car-free PP it quickly lost steam.

The time is the problem. That's why the Red Hook to Downtown link and back is so brilliant (who thought of that one)?

You mean the tunnel bus? I brought it up back in October. I'd love to take credit for it, but according to several comments on a Brownstoner thread I wasn't the first to think of it.

Gary Reilly of First and Court also deserves credit for taking the idea and running with it. He also deserves some campaign contributions for his City Council race. But I can't find a link to donate online.

An unrelated argument against long bus routes is that the longer the route, the higher the chance that there will be some delay somewhere along the route, and once it happens, it will affect many more people. One advantage of the NYC bus system as it is currently laid out is that, say a water main break in Manhattan won't affect bus service in Brooklyn, while it may well delay a subway line that serves Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.

My idea for Queens was an express bus lane in the LIE in BOTH DIRECTIONS, with a new limited access ramp for buses only right into Queens Plaza for a subway transfer to a variety of lines to a variety of destinations.

That way, after picking up passengers, the bus could shoot in and shoot back to get more quickly.

That might be hard to do anywhere else.

It will be a condundrum if present trends accelerate, and those near the subway become wealthier than those farther out in general. Would the LIRR then need to be cheaper than the subway? Or would Manhattan businesses just have to pay low wage workers enough to cover the LIRR in order to attract them?

Why should this cost one-fifth as much as the X27? Are Myrtle Avenue residents more entitled to cheap BRT service than South Brooklyn residents?

The trouble is, if it crosses bridges, moves around Manhattan, and comes back, it will cost $6.00 per ride.