Streetsblog New York City

The first Select Bus Service route in Brooklyn is on track to start speeding bus trips next year, after Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and NYC Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan announced yesterday afternoon that the project has secured a $28 million federal grant.

The B44 route on Nostrand, Rogers, and Bedford Avenues, which runs between Sheepshead Bay and Williamsburg, is one of NYC’s most used but least reliable bus lines. Plagued by bus bunching, the B44 took home the Straphangers Campaign’s “Schleppie Award” in 2009 and consistently ranks as Brooklyn’s most unreliable route. After it’s converted to Select Bus Service, the B44 will feature off-board fare collection, dedicated bus lanes along most of the corridor, and 12 bus bulbs to improve speeds and cut down on the amount of time buses spend standing still.

The B44 links Brooklyn residents to Medgar Evers College, Brooklyn College, Kings County Hospital, and SUNY Downstate Hospital, as well as several subway lines. Weekday ridership currently stands at about 44,000 passengers. Not only will they see faster, more reliable service, but the improvements should attract more riders. Following SBS upgrades in Manhattan and the Bronx, more passengers started riding those routes, cutting against a citywide trend of declining bus ridership.

“I think everyone who saw Sandy from near or afar recognized the critical role buses played once the subway system went down, underscoring the value of these types of investments in our transportation infrastructure,” Sadik-Khan said in a press statement. “SBS continues to bring enhanced service to densely populated areas in need of transportation enhancements.”

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This spring, there was a glimmer of hope that Webster Avenue in the Bronx would get the first center-running bus-only lanes in New York. With NYC DOT and the MTA bringing Select Bus Service to Webster Avenue, the center-running option would have been the city’s boldest effort yet to implement high-quality bus rapid transit. While Select Bus Service is still in the works for Webster Avenue and bus trips are on track to improve, the project won’t include center-running lanes, which do more to keep buses moving smoothly through traffic than bus lanes next to the curb or the parking lane.

The decision was announced at the most recent Community Advisory Committee meeting about the project. Webster Avenue will instead get offset bus lanes, which should be familiar to anyone who uses SBS on First and Second Avenues in Manhattan. These bus lanes run next to the parking lane, with passengers boarding from sidewalk extensions that let the bus avoid merging over to the curb and back. (A third option, which was rejected, would have put the bus lanes curbside and eliminated on-street parking.)

Webster Avenue will also be getting Transit Signal Priority to hold green lights for approaching buses.

Center-running bus lanes would almost certainly have required dedicated signals for drivers making left turns. This change could have negatively affected the “Level of Service” projections for how many vehicles could move through a given intersection.

A DOT spokesperson said that Level of Service projections were not a factor in rejecting the center-running bus lanes, citing other reasons for the decision. Because local bus stops would remain curbside, DOT said, those buses would have had to constantly enter and exit the center-running lanes in order to benefit from them. In addition, dedicated left-turn signals would have reduced the amount of green light time for the bus lanes, and private vehicles would be have been prevented from making left turns at a number of intersections.

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Crosstown bus service on 34th Street runs faster, more frequently, and has attracted more riders since DOT and the MTA began phasing in Select Bus Service improvements four years ago. Compared to 2008, travel times for buses on 34th Street are down 23 percent, or 7.5 minutes along the full corridor. And according to an update released by DOT yesterday, ridership is up 12 percent, with weekday ridership regularly reaching 20,000 passengers. A quarter of riders say that they use the buses more often because of the service upgrades.

The gains outpace those made on some other SBS routes, in part because crosstown buses have the most room for improvement. In 2003 and 2004, the Straphangers Campaign awarded the M34 its “Pokey” award for slowest bus in New York.

Dedicated bus lanes first arrived on 34th Street in 2008. In November 2011, off-board fare collection, expanded bus lane camera enforcement, and new buses that match the blue SBS color scheme were added. Those changes improved the efficiency of the route to the point that the MTA was able to schedule 24 more bus runs a day, Monday through Saturday.

Originally, 34th Street was slated for a river-to-river traffic-separated busway featuring a block-long pedestrian plaza between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. That version of the project was scrapped after major real estate interests objected. It was replaced by DOT with a scaled-back proposal to run buses between the curb lane and the general traffic lane.

To get the buses away from the curb, where they currently have to deal with illegally-parked cars, DOT and the MTA are planning to build bus bulbs — sidewalk extensions where passengers wait for the bus. In early 2013, the route will also begin using articulated buses, like those seen on other SBS routes, that carry up to 85 passengers.

DNAinfo erroneously reported that the project has spent $36.5 million to achieve the benefits realized so far, but in fact, many of the improvements that have been budgeted for have yet to be built. Update: Since 2008, DOT and the MTA have spent about $4.3 million on bus lanes and off-board fare payment for 34th Street, according to a DOT spokesperson.

In the next two years, 13 bus bulb stations and three other curb extensions are scheduled for installation to further speed the boarding process. East of Lexington Avenue, construction is scheduled to begin in late 2013, and will last for up to two years. Two bus bulbs between 10th and 11th Avenues, constructed by the Hudson Yards Development Corporation, are scheduled for completion by summer 2013. The rest of 34th Street west of Lexington Avenue should see construction begin in spring 2013 and wrap up in early 2014.

Thanks to @J_uptown for tipping us off to this transit enhancement in the making (and providing the Seinfeld-inspired headline). The fresh sidewalk addition here is a bus bulb for Select Bus Service on First Avenue. When it’s in working order, bus drivers won’t have to pull over to the curb to pick up and drop off riders, and passengers waiting for the bus won’t have to share scarce sidewalk space with passersby. There are ten bus bulbs coming to the SBS route on First Avenue, and two slated for Second Avenue.

Also spotted around the corner: The staging area for the reconstruction of East Houston Street. This project is based on a 2006 plan from the Department of City Planning [PDF], and it includes a number of sidewalk extensions (and, when we last checked in on it in 2009, a buffered bike lane). We haven’t seen the final drawings, but the guys on the crew confirmed that the pedestrian island between Houston and First Street, which is to the left of the big jumble of materials, is going to be much bigger when this puppy wraps up.

With Select Bus Service speeding trips and boosting ridership on Fordham Road and First and Second Avenue, the next route slated for an upgrade is Brooklyn’s Nostrand Avenue. The B44 bus runs over nine miles from the Williamsburg Bridge to Sheepshead Bay. It attracts 41,000 riders a day, making it the seventh busiest route in the city, despite running at an average speed or seven or eight miles per hour and having the least reliable service in the borough. Last night, the Department of Transportation and MTA held an open house to present an updated design for the corridor [PDF], one of the final revisions before construction begins next year.

Nostrand Avenue SBS will, as in the Bronx and Manhattan, create dedicated bus lanes enforced by automated cameras and use high-capacity buses and off-board fare payment. With fewer stops, the bus will also spend more time in motion and less time starting and stopping.

The Nostrand project will add another new feature: bus bulbs. By extending the sidewalk out to the street, bus bulbs mean that drivers don’t have to pull to the curb and back into the lane, resulting in a smoother and speedier ride. A raised curb means more level boarding onto the bus, advantageous for the elderly and the mobility-impaired. The extra space also means that the bus stop won’t crowd the sidewalk.

DOT and the MTA made a few revisions to the plan under the new design. A station was added at Avenue D/Newkirk Avenue in response to community requests. Bus lanes were removed on Bedford Avenue between Fulton and DeKalb — the agencies said bus speeds were already high there but the bus lane would have interfered with the bike lane — but lanes were added to a congested section of Nostrand between Farragut Road and Avenue I.

In order to preserve the same number of motor vehicle lanes during rush hour, where a bus lane is being installed DOT proposes turning the left parking lane into a through lane during the morning and evening peaks. This shouldn’t have too much of an impact on local merchants. At Nostrand and Empire Boulevard, only 14 percent of shoppers had driven to the area (and not all had parked on Nostrand). Further south, at Glenwood Road, only 13 percent of shoppers had arrived in a car.

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With results like these, it’s hard to understand why the city isn’t rushing to complete the redesign of First and Second Avenue all the way up to 125th Street. According to DOT’s presentation to its community advisory council Wednesday night, both the bus improvements, which go the length of the corridor, and the protected bike lanes, which run from Houston to 34th, are improving safety and mobility for all New Yorkers. Here are the highlights:

• The new Select Bus Service is 15 percent faster than the old limited was. It goes 11 percent faster while moving, thanks to dedicated lanes enforced with cameras, and spends 36 percent less time at stops thanks to off-board fare payment.
• Those faster speeds mean that 4,000 more people ride the M15 every day, from a previous base of a bit more than 50,000 daily riders. That increase is even more impressive in the context of the overall decline in Manhattan bus ridership by 5 percent over the same period.
• Where the bike lane and pedestrian refuge islands were installed, the street is much safer. Injuries declined by 8.3 percent compared to an average of the three previous years.
• Riders are flocking to the new protected lanes. On First Avenue, there were more riders counted in December, January, and February with the lanes than in June without them. From June 2010 to April 2011, the count rose by 153 percent. On Second, where the base of riders was higher to start, the number of cyclists rose by 55 percent from June to April.
• All of this came without imposing a cost on motorists. Based on taxi data, traffic appears to actually be moving faster on Second Avenue than before the redesign, and at about the same speed on First. Traffic volumes, too, are basically the same: a little higher in some locations, a little lower elsewhere.

M15 riders can expect an even easier ride moving forward. Bus bulbs will be installed over the next two years eliminating the need for bus drivers to pull over to pick up passengers, and starting this fall, transit signal priority will give buses a few extra seconds of green below Houston.

“Consensus” and “process” were the buzzwords last night when NYC DOT presented its new concept for improving transit on 34th Street [PDF]. Gone was the plan for New York’s first physically separated busway — scuttled by local property owners and residents seeking drive-up curbside access. In its place was a package very similar to Select Bus Service on the East Side of Manhattan: bus lanes offset from the curb, off-board fare collection, camera enforcement, and bus bulbs to speed boarding and relieve sidewalk crowding.

The average bus speed on 34th Street is 4.5 mph, and DOT’s preliminary estimates suggest these improvements could improve speeds 15 to 25 percent.

City Council Member Dan Garodnick supplied one of the evening’s most apt remarks, calling the plan “a lot more modest than some earlier ideas, and I believe it is extremely promising.” (His East Side colleague on the Council, Rosie Mendez, also seemed to capture the spirit of the moment when she handed the mic back to transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and quipped, “There are some potholes that we need to cover up. I hit them on the way here.”)

The new plan, which DOT expects to hone and present in more detail this fall, may not be the groundbreaking project originally envisioned, but it still has a lot going for it. In addition to improving bus speeds, the project would add 18,000 square feet of pedestrian space to some of the most crowded sidewalks in the city. It also drastically increases the number of legal mid-day loading spaces along the corridor, from 55 to 355.

The details are still getting hashed out, but the general concept for 34th Street now looks like this:

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A couple weeks ago, we showed how the bus bulbs on Lower Broadway were being integrated with the sidewalk next to them. For drainage reasons, a small gap and a large fence had separated the two pedestrian spaces, but DOT capped the gap with a small grate and replaced the fence with benches. That work's now largely complete and Streetsblog reader Dave "Paco" Abraham sent along these pics of Soho pedestrians taking advantage of their new public space. There's a lot more breathing room on a stretch of sidewalk that's often packed and it looks like people appreciate it. 

This'll be our last post for the day, so see you on Tuesday and have a great Fourth of July.

Bus bulbs are one of the most versatile tools in the livable streets toolkit. By extending the sidewalk out into the street, you can send a calming signal to through traffic, spare buses the trouble of pulling to the curb every few blocks, and expand the amount of pedestrian space in one fell swoop.

But the bus bulbs along Lower Broadway haven't been living up to their full potential. In order to allow water to flow normally into drains, DOT had to leave a gap between the old sidewalk and the new bus bulb. Then they had to put up a fence along the sidewalk side of the bus bulb, presumably so no one would fall into the gap. What that left you with was an island of cement cut off from the busy sidewalks of SoHo, a waste of pedestrian space. 

It looks like that's a thing of the past, however. By installing a grate over the gutter, rain can fall where it needs to and pedestrians can safely cross between sidewalk and sidewalk extension. That means the fences are coming down and benches are going up.

Moving uptown, we've written about the disappointing plans for the Second Avenue, which will switch from a protected lane to a curbside lane between 14th and 23rd Streets. But that doesn't make it any less exciting to see the protected portion get striped. Here's your newest protected lane: 

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