In every community district along the proposed Nostrand Avenue bus rapid transit corridor, fewer Brooklynites are driving to work compared to the beginning of the last decade...

Brooklyn commuters — already some of the biggest transit riders in the country — are opting for transit at ever higher rates. New numbers from the Center for the Study of Brooklyn at Brooklyn College, first highlighted by City Limits’ Brooklyn Bureau, crunch Census data to reveal the evolving commuting patterns in the borough’s 18 community board districts. (To see the citywide breakdown of these numbers by state legislative district, check out Streetsblog’s prior coverage.)

Given the weight that community boards exert over street designs like new bus lanes or bike lanes, the figures are a valuable resource as Brooklyn neighborhoods consider projects to improve surface transit and street safety.

Take plans for Select Bus Service along Nostrand Avenue, set to launch this year. Though the improved bus service will speed up the commute for the B44′s 41,000 daily riders with dedicated bus lanes, off-board fare payment, and bus bulbs, at least one community board along the route has voted against the proposal. “Why would you even take the bus?” one Community Board 15 member asked.

At debates like those, marshaling facts about the district that the community board is supposed to represent can be valuable. Of all the community boards along Nostrand, CB 15 represents the fewest transit riders, the Brooklyn College data shows. But even there, more commuters take transit than drive, and the gap is growing. Between 2007 and 2009, 47.8 percent of CB 15 residents rode transit to work; during the same period, only 38.7 percent drove. In 2000, 46.1 percent took transit while 44.3 percent took their car.

The story is the same up and down Nostrand Avenue. In every community district, driving is down (below 17 percent of commuters in both Greenpoint/Williamsburg and Crown Heights). In all but one, transit is on the rise, and in every district, more commuters use transit than any other mode.

When the Nostrand SBS launches this summer, there’s sure to be a fresh round of griping about lost parking spaces and less space for private car travel. When that happens, this Census data should serve as a valuable reality check.

...while transit use is up everywhere except community district 9.

The Cuomo administration doesn't envision advancing transit on the Tappan Zee in the foreseeable future. Photo: Angel Franco/Newsday

The release of the DEIS presents three new obstacles for bus service across the Tappan Zee:

• The Cuomo administration has stopped planning for bus service while it moves forward with a highway-only bridge.
• The state has significantly inflated its cost estimates for BRT without a clear explanation.
• Some elected officials who have supported transit now seem willing to go along with the Cuomo plan for the bridge.

While the Cuomo administration continues to tout the fact that its plans for the new Tappan Zee Bridge do not preclude the construction of transit at some later date, the DEIS makes clear that the date in question will be significantly later, if it ever comes to pass at all. “The previous corridor project has been rescinded and the State Sponsors do not intend on advancing it in the foreseeable future,” the document states.

The state will not continue to study or plan transit improvements, the DEIS reveals. A Tappan Zee transit project won’t continue along some parallel, slower track; under Cuomo, it isn’t moving forward at all.

In justifying the elimination of transit, the DEIS presents new cost estimates for transit far out of line with previous calculations. In 2009, a state report [PDF] pegged the cost of building a full BRT corridor at $897 million, with the system running in HOT lanes in Rockland and on a mix of dedicated lanes and a separate busway in Westchester. The more expensive alternative, which entailed building separated busways through Westchester, was estimated to cost $2.5 billion.

Now, estimates in the DEIS say the first design will cost $4.6 billion and the second $5.3 billion. The document provides no explanation for the dramatic increase in projected costs, and the state has not responded to Streetsblog’s inquiries regarding the matter. One possible explanation, though, is that the state is calculating the cost of both transit improvements and construction projects on the I-287 roadway, and then attributing the total entirely to transit.

In releasing the DEIS, the state DOT and Thruway Authority put out a press release filled, as is usual, with supportive quotes from elected officials and interest groups. Though the pro-transit coalition is growing rapidly — 14 Westchester municipalities signed on in support of transit just yesterday — the press release includes a political setback for a multi-modal Tappan Zee as well.

State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Member Kenneth Zembrowski, both of whom had signed on to a December letter demanding transit on the new Tappan Zee Bridge from the start, were each quoted applauding the DEIS for moving the project forward. “While the mass transit component of a new Tappan Zee Bridge is important, it obviously cannot eclipse the need to provide stability to our infrastructure, a boost to the economy and much needed jobs,” said Stewart-Cousins.

In a better sign for transit, county executives Rob Astorino and C. Scott Vanderhoef were conspicuously absent from the state’s press release. Both elected officials have demanded transit across the bridge, and it looks like Cuomo couldn’t pick them off for this media moment. If New York is going to overcome the Cuomo administration’s shortsighted decision to build a Tappan Zee without transit, these two county leaders may have to lead the charge.

With Mayor Rahm Emanuel signaling a commitment to high-performance bus rapid transit, the Chicago-based nonprofit Metropolitan Planning Council envisions a 95-mile BRT network that would carry an additional 71,000 daily riders.

With Chicago DOT Commissioner Gabe Klein at his side, Emanuel has already implemented the city’s first protected bike lanes as part of a plan to add 100 miles of bike lanes within four years, announced a $1 billion upgrade to the Chicago Transit Authority’s Red Line, and passed a $2 “congestion fee” on downtown parking garages that will go towards the creation of a CTA Green Line stop that serves McCormick Place – the nation’s largest convention center – and a downtown circulator bus route being billed as bus rapid transit.

The circulator could be an interesting harbinger of Emanuel’s bus policy and how far he will go with BRT. He has stated that BRT projects in Chicago will include “dedicated bus lanes, signal preemption, pre-paid boarding or on-board fare verification, multiple entry and exit points on the buses, limited stops, and at-grade boarding.” As it’s proposed now — with off-board fare payment and signal priority — the downtown circulator is a step in this direction. But it has yet to be seen whether Chicago will commit to high-performance BRT that sets a precedent for other American cities.

From Boston to Kansas City, U.S. cities tend to implement “BRT-lite,” where the actual benefits fall well short of expectations. Most of this disconnect is due to poor marketing by transit agencies trying to drum up excitement for projects that don’t meet true BRT standards. When the projects deliver less than promised, the reputation of BRT as an effective transit solution suffers.

Chicago has a chance to change this perception and serve as a model for cities nationwide by building a “gold-standard” BRT system, based on the rating system established by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. Budgets may be tight, but as Emanuel is showing with his funding plan for the downtown circulator, he’s not afraid to raise new revenues. And BRT’s lower construction costs relative to rail may make it the most realistic way for Chicago to move ahead on expanding its transit network.

Stepping into the mix is Amalgamated Transit Union International President Larry Hanley, a former Staten Island bus driver who now leads an 190,000-member union, the largest transit union in the country. In a letter sent out last week to leaders of other major unions, Hanley urged his colleagues to use their influence to ensure that mass transit, and bus rapid transit in particular, is included on the Tappan Zee. His audience is especially relevant in this case, given that Cuomo is relying on these unions to finance the bridge’s construction.

Larry Hanley of the Amalgamated Transit Union. Photo: ATU

“We think that those unions ought to join us in speaking out for people who are transit-dependent,” Hanley told Streetsblog. In addition to helping working people, he argued, union support for a transit option would also help New York City thrive. “Anybody who has ever read The Power Broker understands the harm brought to cities as a consequence of not including mass transit in significant highway projects like this,” he said.

Hanley said that he’ll be reaching out directly to individual unions over the next weeks. His letter went out to officials including teachers union president Michael Mulgrew and SEIU Local 1199 president George Gresham.

In comments to Streetsblog, Hanley also blasted Andrew Cuomo and the state government for not adequately funding mass transit. “The political class of this country is allowing mass transit to die a slow death,” he said. “It’s a really short-sighted view in a state where we have the most transit riders in the country.”

Though Cuomo has promised to make the MTA whole for every dollar lost due to his $320 million payroll tax cut, Hanley said he doubted that money would come through year after year. “In my 30-year-plus history of transit in New York City, it’s been rare to see elected officials fulfill their promises to transit once they’ve made them,” he said. If Albany ever yanks away the promised funding, Cuomo’s payroll tax cut could force fare hikes and service cuts that make the austerity measures of the last few years look tame.

Hanley and the ATU also signed onto the press statement released last week expressing disappointment in the governor for allowing the transit lockbox bill to be eviscerated. The lockbox would have been “a step in the direction of trying to protect mandated funding,” Hanley said, but Cuomo “did not see fit to allow it to go through intact.”

The final Cuomo transit policy that Hanley touched on was the governor’s decision not to fund the last three years of the MTA’s capital program, a decision he said would hurt transit for years to come. The MTA was “put in a position where they had to borrow huge amounts of money just to keep their rolling stock in repair,” said Hanley. “There has been an abdication, a long-term abdication from New York’s political structure.”

The Bronx's second Select Bus Service route is planned for Webster Avenue, marked as #1 on this map of high-priority routes for bus improvements. Image: NYC DOT/MTA

A new crop of bus routes is moving into the pipeline for implementation as Select Bus Service. The MTA and NYC DOT are in the initial stages of bringing SBS to the Bronx’s Webster Avenue, where the most unreliable bus in the borough runs, and to Brooklyn’s Utica Avenue, the second-busiest bus route in the city.

The innovations of SBS — pre-paid boarding, dedicated bus lanes, priority at traffic signals — have sped buses and attracted new riders on Fordham Road, First and Second Avenues, and 34th Street. And they can work on bus lines all over the city. So as the first round of SBS implementation comes to a close (lines on Nostrand Avenue and Hylan Boulevard are scheduled for completion in the next year or two), the development of new routes is a welcome signal that the MTA and NYC DOT are committed to bringing bus improvements to more New Yorkers.

The city’s first Select Bus Service line launched on Fordham Road in the Bronx in 2008, and it’s been a smashing success. Bus speeds increased by 20 percent and ridership by 30 percent. So expanding SBS to more routes in the borough is a no-brainer. The choice of the Bx41 for the upgrade was first reported in the Daily News yesterday.

“There was a lot of support in the Bronx for doing a route along Webster Avenue,” an MTA spokesperson told Streetsblog. “This would be a full-fledged SBS route with all the features offered by the Bx12 and the M15.”

Running down Webster, the Bx41 has relatively high ridership — 7.6 million annual riders — but was ranked the most unreliable bus in the borough this year by the Straphangers Campaign. Perhaps in part because of all that bus bunching, ridership on the route has been in free fall. The Bx41 saw one million fewer trips in 2010 than in 2009, according to the MTA.

There’s no roll-out date for the Bx41 yet, according to the MTA, and any eventual route will need to go through a public review process.

Though there’s no mention of Webster Avenue on the joint NYC DOT/MTA website dedicated to SBS, there is a new page on that site marking the start of planning for bus improvements along Brooklyn’s Utica Avenue.

Both Webster and Utica Avenues were identified as targets for bus improvements in a 2009 joint DOT/MTA study mapping out potential routs for the second phase of Select Bus Service. Each was considered an “underserved area”: a corridor that was far from the subway yet densely developed.

Along Utica, it’s not yet clear what shape the bus improvements would take. DOT started conducting a study on both transit and traffic safety conditions this October — in addition to carrying 16 million annual bus riders, Utica is also one of Brooklyn’s most dangerous streets — and the study will be complete this spring, according to the website. The study only covers a stretch of Utica a bit longer than a mile, however, between St. John’s Place and Church Avenue. Once the study is complete, DOT will develop a menu of options to improve safety and transit service and present them to the public.

A map produced by the Pratt Center (PDF) shows neighborhoods with a high concentration of low-income commuters with long commutes.

Much progress has been made in the five years since Scott Stringer’s first transportation conference, but many transit riders are still wandering in the “transportation deserts” that were the focus of one afternoon panel at the Manhattan borough president’s follow-up event, Transportation 2030, this past Friday.

Transportation deserts include neighborhoods from City Island in the Bronx to Mill Basin in Brooklyn to the North Shore of Staten Island. They are places where would-be transit riders face hour-plus commutes, multiple transfers or having to pay multiple fares. As panelist Elena Conte of the Pratt Center for Community Development put it, “It’s not just about deserts, its about being near a station that takes you somewhere you need to go in a timely fashion and is accessible even if you are older, or mobility challenged or traveling with small children.”

The city’s transportation network was planned to get commuters into and out of Manhattan. But as the Center for an Urban Future brought home in their recent report, “Behind the Curb,” there has been a huge jump in the number of residents who both live and work outside Manhattan over the past twenty years, leaving many New Yorkers without time- and cost-competitive transit options. Panelist and CUF Executive Director Jonathan Bowles said that this is due in part to the growth in the health care and education sectors, which have large campuses in the outer boroughs, sometimes in the middle of transportation deserts. Inadequate transit hinders the ability of these institutions to draw and retain top-notch talent and limits the economic development potential in large areas of the city.

Tamisha Chevis of Rochdale Village Community In Action For Better Express Bus Service noted these deserts also pose a major hardship for working class New Yorkers. Members of her organization “just want to be able to get to work,” she said. “We have decent jobs; we just want to be able to keep them, so we can feed our families.” According to research by the Pratt Center, nearly two-thirds of the 750,000 New Yorkers whose commute to work takes over an hour have family incomes under $35,000.

The Pratt Center and CUF both support the expansion of Select Bus Service or a more robust Bus Rapid Transit system as an efficient and cost-effective way to serve these trips. But as Conte and Bowles pointed out, the MTA often fails to consider the bigger picture of how to optimize service across local bus routes, SBS lines and the subway to minimize delays, transfers and paying multiple fares.

For example, New York City Transit for years has resisted calls to have buses run over the bridges, which would provide riders from Brooklyn and Queens a one-seat ride instead of forcing a transfer at the edge of a borough. The MTA seems stuck tweaking (or cutting) existing services instead of innovating and adapting to new commuting patterns. Governor Cuomo or the next mayor could convene a taskforce including leaders of outer borough hospitals and colleges to get their input on how transit could better serve their employees’ needs and inject some fresh ideas into the planning process. Of course, it would also be helpful if Albany was willing to commit to creative ways of funding transit expansion such as road pricing.

Another panelist, Hopstop.com President and CEO Joe Meyer, suggested that private companies like his share more data with the MTA to assist with their bus route planning. With tens of thousands of daily users, Hopstop’s data would give transit agencies another window into where people want to go and how long it takes them to get to those destinations today, revealing where services changes would be useful. NYC DOT has begun to work with the TLC to harvest private sector data on taxi trips and speed to better understand congestion patterns. DOT notes: “The methodology also helps augment the limited use of commuting-based Census data, which looks only at trips to work, which comprise only 18% of all trips, and not shopping, leisure or other trips.” Imagine if NYCT was able to use data from HopStop, Google, or even dollar vans to understand trips in parts of the city where the informal sector is filling in some pretty big transit gaps. All this data could be used for their route planning process.

Meyer said he has offered his data to the MTA in the past but the agency has not been interested. Unfortunately it seemed like no one from the MTA was in the room, or perhaps at the conference, to hear these ideas or offer up ones of their own.

More passengers are taking the M15 along First and Second Avenues, where Select Bus Service launched last year, while overall ridership in Manhattan is down. Image: NYCDOT/MTA

Yesterday, we reported on the impressive gains in speed and ridership along the First and Second Avenue Select Bus Service route. Since then, NYC DOT and the MTA released their official progress report on the project. It’s full of graphics that show the boost for bus riders even more clearly.

Along the full M15 route, Select Bus Service shaves nearly seven minutes off the time spent at bus stops and five minutes off the time stuck in traffic. Image: NYCDOT/MTA

Select Bus Service cut the length of a full trip down the M15 route by 12 minutes. Seven of those minutes were saved at bus stops thanks to faster, all-door boarding, while five were thanks to dedicated, camera-enforced lanes keeping buses clear of traffic.

Those improvements have attracted about 10,000 more daily riders to the SBS than the old M15 limited, while ridership on the M15 local is down about 5,000. All told, it comes out to a nine percent increase in ridership on the corridor, suggesting the SBS buses are picking up some former M15 local riders as well as thousands of New Yorkers who didn’t care to wait for the old limited.

Ridership is actually down slightly on the local, with Select Bus Service is far more popular than the limited was. Image: NYCDOT/MTA

All-door boarding is one of the features speeding up buses on the East Side and, as of yesterday, 34th Street. Photo: Noah Kazis

On the East Side, travel times improved 18 percent thanks to the SBS upgrades that went into effect a year ago, according to the city. Much of that speed increase comes from off-board fare payment: With passengers boarding at any door and no longer dipping their Metrocards, the amount of time buses sit idling is down 36. The enhancements also include dedicated bus lanes enforced with automated cameras.

Quicker trips are attracting new riders. Along First and Second Avenue, total ridership is up nine percent, especially impressive since overall Manhattan bus ridership has been declining.

Those numbers are up slightly from April, when preliminary data showed a 15 percent improvement in travel times and an eight percent boost in ridership.

Similar jumps in speed and ridership are expected for Midtown bus riders. Since bus lanes were installed along 34th Street in 2008, ridership has increased by five percent, according to MTA Department of Buses Senior Vice President Darryl Irick. Improved boarding, he predicted, would boost ridership along the routes by another five to ten percent.

While NYC still lacks full Bus Rapid Transit, these improvements are making a real difference for tens of thousands of riders every day and attracting thousands more.

“Select Bus Service is proving to be a success wherever we install it,” Bloomberg said in a press release. “Travel times go down, ridership increases and safety improves with Select Bus Service. We expect to see the same positive results here on 34th Street and we will continue to look for more opportunities to expand this great service. We all know that when mass transit works well, more people use the service, which helps to free up our streets – a boost for our economy and our environment.”

Select Bus Service fare machines sit in front of Macy's Christmas decorations, ready to be turned on this Sunday. Photo: Noah Kazis

It’s no physically separated transitway, but bus riders can still get excited about the launch of Select Bus Service along 34th Street this Sunday.

Additional SBS features should significantly speed trips along.34th Street, which already has dedicated lanes for the heavy crosstown bus traffic. By taking care of fare payment before riders board and allowing them to enter and exit using all doors, SBS should cut the time buses sit at the curb and keep people in motion, especially at super-crowded stops like Penn Station. Also going into effect this weekend is an expanded camera enforcement program to ensure that the bus lanes stay clear of traffic.

Additional bus improvements are scheduled to be installed in 2012, including transit signal priority to give buses more green time. Bus bulbs installed next year will improve pedestrian safety, add some room to 34th Street’s packed sidewalks, and keep bus drivers from needing to pull over to the curb.

Plans for a more robust transit and pedestrian redesign, which would have physically separated buses from traffic and built a pedestrian plaza across between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, was scuttled due to opposition from major property owners along the street.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to use a parking surtax downtown to pay for transit.

In last winter’s Chicago mayoral election, all the leading candidates made ambitious promises to increase funding for the city’s struggling transit agency. Now, with a proposed $2 “congestion fee” — really a downtown surcharge on the city’s parking tax — Emanuel plans to make drivers pay their fair share and use the proceeds to build a new rail station and the city’s first bus rapid transit line.

Under Emanuel’s plan, anyone parking in a downtown lot or garage would be required to pay an additional $2 on top of the existing parking tax. Drivers parking on the street or in residential garages wouldn’t be taxed, though according to the Chicago Tribune, some transportation advocates want to see the fee extended to downtown meters. According to the Sun-Times, the fee would raise roughly $28 million.

Emanuel and his transportation commissioner, Gabe Klein, want to use that revenue to complete two important transit projects. A new Green Line station at McCormick Place would allow for transit-oriented development in a fast-growing part of the city. A bus rapid transit system with dedicated, camera-enforced lanes, priority at traffic signals and off-board fare payment will be put into place for a new downtown circulator route.

An earlier version of the same plan was put forward by Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2008, with parking fees that would have gone up to $8 a day to fund an even wider BRT system, but opposition kept that plan from being enacted before a federal deadline passed.

For New Yorkers, the substance of Emanuel’s plan isn’t groundbreaking. The Chicago BRT line looks like it will have roughly the same features as New York City’s Select Bus Service, and New York already charges an 8 percent surtax on parking in Manhattan; with daily parking rates in Midtown averaging $41, that works out to about $3.25.

The politics of the proposal, however, look awfully foreign. The parking fee isn’t paying for the rail station or bus line on its own (the Green Line station alone will cost $50 million). Putting the two together is, as the Sun-Times reported, a political strategy to build support for Emanuel’s budget. In other words, “Rahmbo,” the hard-nosed operative who once plunged a steak knife into a table while shouting the names of his political enemies, thinks that pairing higher costs for drivers with improved transit is a political winner.

That’s not something you’re likely to see in New York City, despite a significantly lower rate of car ownership. Though a number of pols are ahead of the city when it comes to supporting full-featured BRT, many segments of the political class are more likely to complain that a bus lane eliminates highly subsidized on-street parking.

All the alternatives currently being studied for the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement include both commuter rail and bus rapid transit. Advocates are concerned that the state may try to delay construction of the transit components, however. Image: Tappan Zee environmental review website

For nine years, the state of New York has been studying how to replace the aging Tappan Zee Bridge. The bridge, which is more than 50 years old, requires ever more expensive repairs to stay structurally sound and was never intended to carry the volume of traffic that pours over it every day. Since 2002, an extensive public process has led to the development of four alternative plans for the Tappan Zee and the I-287 corridor. Each of them would rebuild the bridge, widen the roadway and include both a new Metro-North commuter rail line and bus rapid transit service across the bridge.

Even after the extensive public process and environmental review, however, those transit components could end up on the scrap heap.

The Obama administration selected the Tappan Zee replacement today as one of 14 major infrastructure projects for federal fast-tracking. A report from Gannett’s Albany bureau refers to the project as “replacing the Tappan Zee Bridge, along with the option of adding bus rapid transit and passenger rail.” Gannett’s report suggests that the state may have decided to build the bridge with room for transit to be added later, rather than constructing the transit components at the same time as the roadway. This would run against the four alternatives that have already been vetted, all of which include transit in the initial construction of the bridge.

If Governor Andrew Cuomo is considering postponing the construction of the transit components, New Yorkers would be left with a major highway expansion that skirted the entire public review process. The governor’s office has not responded to Streetsblog’s inquiry about transit on the Tappan Zee.

Including transit on the bridge has run into some local political resistance lately. This July, Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino called for the removal of transit from the plans for the bridge in order to lower costs and speed up construction. As the Tri-State Transportation Campaign reported at the time, the bridge and highway components of the project are projected to cost $8.3 billion. Building the bridge with rail would add $6.7 billion, while the bus system would cost around $1 billion. Astorino’s office told Streetsblog that they hadn’t heard that the transit component had been postponed and that it was too early for any design to have been selected.

Transportation and environmental advocates called for Cuomo to commit to building transit at the same time as the highway is rebuilt, even if only the bus service is installed to start.

“If transit isn’t added now, we worry it never will be,” said Kate Slevin, Tri-State’s executive director.

“This raises concerns that the state may be missing a once in a lifetime opportunity to reduce traffic and greenhouse gas emissions and create a transit backbone for future development in the Hudson Valley.” Slevin noted that past promises to add transit to bridges at a later date — a similar pledge was made for the George Washington Bridge — rarely materialized.

“Clearly, the Tappan Zee Bridge needs replacing — and the sooner, the better. But let’s not forget that a key reason for the bridge’s poor condition is overuse, partly because there are few attractive mass transit alternatives to driving,” added Dan Hendrick, the communications director for the New York League of Conservation Voters. “Commuters and local residents have been calling for mass transit to be added to the bridge for decades, and bus rapid transit represents exactly the kind of smart, sustainable infrastructure investments that will help New York’s environment and economy. We strongly encourage the Obama and Cuomo administrations to sharpen their pencils and ensure that bus rapid transit keeps pace with the roadway replacement on the new Tappan Zee Bridge.”

According to the state’s own website, the transit components are included in order to “help minimize corridor travel delay, reduce travel times, provide travel choices, improve local and regional mobility, foster economic growth and improve air quality.”

Added Slevin: “Since 2002, hundreds of residents, civic leaders, and local elected officials have worked together to develop a list of alternatives for a bridge replacement. There has consistently been support for transit to be included as part of the project, which is why all five options currently being studied in the state environmental review (except the ‘No Build’ alternative) include transit. None of those alternatives studied by the State Department of Transportation included a bridge replacement without a transit component.”

Streetsblog Capitol Hill reported earlier today that the Obama fast-track process seems to favor road maintenance and transit projects rather than wider highways, and that it won’t skirt environmental reviews. If the Tappan Zee project includes a transit component, it’s a good fit for such a program. If Cuomo decides to drop transit, however, the Tappan Zee will be exactly the kind of sprawl-generating boondoggle that Obama is trying to avoid.

Bus bulbs will improve bus service and the pedestrian experience along Nostrand Avenue as part of the new SBS service. Image: NYC DOT/MTA.

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.

Moreover, there’s a lot of room to add parking in other ways. On much of Nostrand and its cross streets, parking is currently free. The installation of meters will encourage drivers to move on once done shopping, freeing up space for others. The use of Muni-Meters will also allow more vehicles to park in the same area. Finally, loading zones and delivery windows will ensure that trucks have space at the curb rather than being forced to resort to double-parking. DOT’s presentation didn’t do the math, but it’s possible the neighborhood could actually gain parking capacity despite the rush hour restrictions.

Community boards will continue to weigh in through next week. If the plan goes forward, Select Bus Service will be up and operating on Nostrand Avenue next fall.

The route for proposed Hylan Boulevard Select Bus Service. Bus lanes are planned for the highlighted areas, where congestion is worst. Image: MTA/DOT

When it comes to Staten Island, the Department of Transportation and MTA are considering a different model for Select Bus Service.

The service planned for Hylan Boulevard will provide dedicated bus lanes for less of the route than on existing SBS lines, but high-tech features like transit-friendly traffic lights and even a possible pilot of smart card fare payment technology will be included.

Bus service along Hylan Boulevard is an essential lifeline for transit riders on Staten Island. Sixteen thousand local bus riders travel on the street every weekday, as do another 15,000 express bus riders. One-third of all Staten Island bus commuters live along the corridor. Those numbers might be even higher if transit service weren’t so slow. Almost three-quarters of transit commuters in the area have trips longer than an hour.

A final plan hasn’t been prepared for the new bus service, but DOT and the MTA presented the basic concept at a public meeting last Thursday [PDF]. The project is scheduled to be implemented in 2012 or 2013.

Unlike on the existing Select Bus Service routes on Fordham Road and First and Second Avenue, DOT is not planning to paint dedicated bus lanes along most of the route. Instead, they’re installing bus lanes in the three most congested areas: a roughly two-mile stretch toward the northern end of the route; the area where the S79 bus turns off Hylan and toward the Staten Island Mall; and near the entrance to the mall itself.

The Staten Island service will have a number of features not found in Manhattan and the Bronx, however. “Advance signals” will allow buses to stop a little further forward at an intersection than private vehicles. Currently, buses stopped at the curb and cars trying to turn right have to weave past each other; with advance signals, there’s room to separate the movements, speeding up traffic. The advance signal could also let buses jump to the front of the queue at certain red lights.

Another feature, transit signal priority, holds green lights a few extra seconds when a bus is approaching, giving precedence to vehicles carrying dozens of people rather than one or two. When tested out on Staten Island’s Victory Boulevard, it shaved ten percent of the time off bus trips (and five percent of the time off private automobile trips). This spring’s update of PlaNYC promised that eleven bus routes across the city will get transit signal priority. Hylan Boulevard will be one of them.

Advance signals let buses stop closer to the intersection than cars, allowing everyone to switch lanes more easily. Image: MTA/DOT

Perhaps even more intriguing, Hylan Boulevard might be the site for a pilot of the MTA’s long-awaited smart card fare payment system. Nothing’s been finalized yet, said a DOT spokesperson, but the pilot might start on the Hylan Boulevard SBS when it launches.

Real-time arrival information is also coming to all Staten Island buses by the end of the year, including Hylan Boulevard.

The MTA will replace the local S79 service with the Select Bus Service, which will stop less frequently in order to move faster. The S54 and S78 local buses, which run along the S79 route, will pick up the slack for the local, with service adjusted as necessary.

At the same time as it improves the bus service, DOT will also be using the corridor redesign as an opportunity to improve pedestrian safety. Along the route, DOT plans to extend existing medians into the crosswalk to create pedestrian refuges, and to add pedestrian ramps and sidewalks near bus stops that currently lack them.

Some bus stops will also be relocated to improve safety. The Brooklyn-bound bus stop at Richmond and Yukon Avenues, for example, might be moved from the side of the road to the center pedestrian island, a DOT representative said. Since the right side of the street has neither buildings nor a sidewalk, moving the stop to the median would allow for a better waiting area and reduce crossing distances for bus riders, who currently must cross the entire street.

Three years ago Streetfilms brought you a comprehensive look at Bogotá, Colombia’s TransMilenio, the world’s most advanced Bus Rapid Transit system. TransMilenio changed the way Bogotá residents think about public transportation, becoming indispensable to the 1.7 million people who use the system daily. If anything, the bus network became a victim of its own success, handling more passengers and crowding than its planners anticipated. Today, ten years after TransMilenio launched, we revisit this groundbreaking transit system and examine how it must improve as it matures.

The Strip Express helps make Las Vegas's BRT system one of the country's best. Photo courtesy of ITDP

When you think of Las Vegas, the first thing that pops into your head is efficient transit, right? Well, maybe not the first thing. But according to ITDP’s report, Las Vegas has one of the top five BRT systems in the country.

Las Vegas is one of the few U.S. cities with a whole network of BRT, as opposed to just a single corridor. And while the Strip Downtown Express (SDX) is the most advanced BRT route in the network, the fact that the city is creating a network elevates its status among U.S. BRT systems.

The network presently includes two BRT routes (with another two under construction), along with two express bus routes that incorporate some BRT elements. The network serves both the city and nearby suburbs, and is good news for a metropolitan area that was especially hard hit by the recession.

In a sprawling region where the recession and rising gas prices hit many commuters hard, growing numbers of people are opting for fast, reliable, and affordable bus service. The BRT network, built at a fraction of the cost of other alternatives like light rail or the city’s problem-plagued monorail, also appeals to savvy politicians looking to deliver both quality and value for their constituents.

Las Vegas’s Bus Rapid Transit program began with the Metropolitan Area Express (MAX), which opened in 2004. The MAX offers many standard BRT features including off-board fare collection, special buses, and stations with at-level boarding at most stops. It has 4.5 miles of dedicated lanes (out of a total route of 7.5 miles), which are aligned by the curb and shared with right-turning traffic. The MAX corridor is also shared by the Route 113 buses, which essentially serve as a “local” to the MAX’s more express service.

Public outreach and a strong marketing campaign created a receptive environment for the MAX, and the initial success of the system increased public support. Early studies reported 40 percent of riders saved at least 15 minutes with the new service, and over 60 percent were saving 10 minutes or more.

MAX’s success allowed Las Vegas to move ahead with the even more ambitious Strip Downtown Express (SDX), which has all of the elements of MAX plus a central-median, dedicated right-of-way for 2.25 miles (of a total nine-mile route). The SDX connects the Strip and Downtown and it shares its infrastructure with the Deuce, which makes more frequent stops.

The SDX has won riders over with improved service, but also with a scaled-up look and feel. “I’d say it’s a train on tires,” said Jacob Snow, general manager of the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada (RTC). The buses are quieter and sleeker than regular buses, and they stop at attractive stations, built with art and architectural features that celebrate the local landscape.

But even MAX’s success could not give the RTC enough political power to secure dedicated BRT lanes on the Strip, largely because casino owners were loathe to make it easier for guests to leave. In fact the RTC had to fight for buses to run on the Strip at all. As a result, the SDX operates in mixed traffic on the Strip, despite the fact it is one of the most congested routes in all of Las Vegas.

This year the SDX will be joined by the Boulder Highway Express, with a 15-mile route connecting Las Vegas and Henderson, and dedicated curbside lanes in downtown Las Vegas. The system will have at-level platform boarding, pre-boarding fare collection, and high-quality station design. And the RTC has already broken ground on the Sahara Express, which will also operate on a dedicated curbside lane for much of its route and connect with the Deuce on the Strip, the SDX, and the Boulder Highway Express routes. The Sahara Express is being constructed at a cost of $40 million, $34.4 million of which is covered by a U.S. DOT TIGER grant.

While some residents continue to call for light rail, the BRT system is delivering results today, saving commuters time and money, reducing traffic congestion in and around Las Vegas, and creating upwards of 500 jobs as the network expands.

Dani Simons is director of communications at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.

Read ITDP’s full report: Recapturing Global Leadership in Bus Rapid Transit.

Cleveland's HealthLine. Photo courtesy of ITDP

Last month the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy released its report, “Recapturing Global Leadership in Bus Rapid Transit” [PDF], which proposed a LEED-like rating system for bus rapid transit projects and laid out a strategy for American cities to build systems as good as the world’s best BRT. While more than 20 American bus projects have claimed the BRT mantle at various times, the ITDP report named just five American cities with bus corridors that made the grade and earned the title “True BRT.” Streetsblog is pleased to publish a series of case studies from ITDP examining these innovative transit projects. We started with Pittsburgh and today, we focus on Cleveland.

Cleveland doesn’t often get recognition for being a leader in innovative transportation – but maybe it should. A recent report from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) awarded Cleveland the highest rating of any American BRT system.

Cleveland’s first BRT line opened in 2008. The HealthLine stretches 6.8 miles along Euclid Avenue, connecting the city’s main employment centers, including downtown Cleveland, the Cleveland Clinic, and University Hospital, coming within a half mile of more than 200,000 employees and 58,000 households. In just three years, ridership has increased more than 60 percent over the bus routes that formerly ran along the corridor. This promotional video shows how the HealthLine mimics light rail for a better passenger experience.

The BRT, and the streetscape improvements that were added as part of the construction, have helped spur new developments along the corridor. By the time the system opened, over $4.3 billion had been invested or pledged along the route in the form of rehabilitations of old buildings into housing and retail centers, as well as major expansions of nearby university, museum, and hospital infrastructure.

The HealthLine includes BRT best-practice features like off-board fare collection, median-aligned bus-only lanes, and at-level passenger boarding. Passengers have reported average time savings of twelve minutes, and average speeds along the corridor have increased 34 percent over previous service. Riders can travel from downtown’s Public Square to University Circle, four miles away, in a swift 20 minutes.

The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (RTA), which operates the HealthLine, is the nation’s thirteenth largest public-transit system. The RTA has done an impressive job at winning customer satisfaction and communicating with the public. Just six months after the HealthLine opened, the RTA reported a 90 percent approval rating by riders; 92 percent said the service was reliable and 94 percent said the trips are on time.

The HealthLine was the nation’s first federally-funded BRT system, receiving $82.2 million from the FTA in the form of a New Starts grant. Combined with state and local sources, the project totaled $200 million for buses, station infrastructure and streetscape and roadway improvements along the corridor, including the planting of 1,500 new trees.

An $85 monthly pass gets you unlimited rides for one calendar month on all rapid routes and regular buses. “With the recent surge in gas prices, even more people are trying RTA and the HealthLine and discovering the benefits of riding RTA,” said RTA CEO and President Joe Calabrese. With gasoline prices hovering around four dollars per gallon in northeast Ohio and elsewhere in the U.S., saving on transportation becomes a higher priority. Kionte Watkins, who was surprised with a free one-year pass for being the ten millionth rider, commented that she “started taking RTA a month ago to save money on gas and parking and I really love it.”

Holly LaDue is a publications consultant for ITDP. You can read more about the future of BRT in the United States at www.itdp.org.

Pittsburgh's East Busway serves 15 bus routes and more than 25,000 riders daily. Photo: ITDP

Last month the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy released its report, “Recapturing Global Leadership in Bus Rapid Transit” [PDF], which proposed a LEED-like rating system for bus rapid transit projects and laid out a strategy for American cities to build systems as good as the world’s best BRT. While more than 20 American bus projects have claimed the BRT mantle at various times, the ITDP report named just five American cities with bus corridors that made the grade and earned the title “True BRT.” Streetsblog is pleased to publish a series of case studies from ITDP examining these innovative transit projects, starting with the country’s first BRT routes, in Pittsburgh.

In recent years, Pittsburgh’s reputation has been rejuvenated. The former industrial hub is becoming an innovative model for urban re-development, and an attractive place to live and work.

Pittsburgh’s leadership on the urban sustainability front is not a recent phenomenon – in fact, it was the first city in the United States to implement elements of bus rapid transit, and it paved the way for more robust U.S. BRT systems.

In 1977, only three years after Curitiba, Brazil implemented the world’s first BRT system, Pittsburgh opened the South Busway, 4.3 miles of exclusive bus lanes, running though previously underserved areas of the city, from the western suburbs to the downtown. The city was concerned about worsening traffic congestion, and, lacking the funds to rehabilitate the city’s streetcar lines, took inspiration from Curitiba and created the South Busway. Funding for the system came from U.S. DOT, the state of Pennsylvania and Allegheny County. The Port Authority of Allegheny County, a county-owned, state-funded agency, operates the system.

The success of the South Busway helped the city leverage funding for the expansion of the network, and in 1983, the Martin Luther King, Jr. East Busway opened. The East Busway began as a 6.8 mile network, with an additional 2.3 miles added in 2003, connecting the eastern suburbs with downtown. Fifteen bus routes run along its corridor. Its current weekday ridership is 25,600, with annual ridership close to 7 million.

The East Busway built on the success of its predecessor and offered fundamental BRT features including a dedicated busway, service as frequent as every two minutes during peak period, signal prioritization, and direct service operations (more on that soon). However, there is no off-board fare collection. Instead, passengers pay upon entrance for in-bound trips and upon exit for outbound trips, which helps reduce delays in service because of fare collection.

Pittsburgh is currently the only BRT system in the United States that operates a direct service model, meaning that local, limited and express services share the East Busway, accommodating a wide variety of transit needs. As the buses serving suburban routes enter the main corridors, they transfer onto the dedicated bus lanes via connection ramps, making transfer-free trips for passengers. The BRT buses can also exit the busway and use city streets to deliver passengers to destinations.

Today Pittsburgh is moving ahead with expansions and improvements to its BRT network. A new proposed route – downtown to Oakland – is a dense corridor packed with housing, employment centers, universities and businesses. All told, 110,000 people work along the route. The city’s transit agency estimates 68,000 riders a day will use the new route, or 24 percent of the Port Authority’s current total ridership.

In creating its existing busways, the Port Authority did not have to re-purpose car lanes for the BRT, an issue that has generated anti-BRT sentiment among residents in cities like Eugene and Los Angeles. Plans to re-purpose on-street lanes to grow the BRT system in Pittsburgh will almost certainly encounter similar resistance, but the public’s familiarity with the East Busway and South Busway should help overcome such obstacles.

Stephanie Lotshaw is a program associate at ITDP. You can read more about the future of BRT in the United States at www.itdp.org.

In ITDP's BRT rating system, the SDX route in Las Vegas eked out a bronze-standard rating, one of only five American routes to pass the threshold of "true BRT." Image: ITDP

Attempts by U.S. cities to build Bus Rapid Transit systems tend to get stymied by a Catch-22: Most Americans have no experience riding great BRT, so mustering the political will to build full-fledged systems — and reallocate the necessary street space from cars to buses — is often fiendishly difficult. The results — incremental bus improvements sold to the public as BRT — are too watered down to showcase the full extent to which bus-based systems can attract riders and get people to switch from driving to transit.

In Boston, for instance, bus speeds for one route on the Silver Line Waterfront corridor actually decreased despite the project’s $619 million pricetag. Meanwhile, cities in Latin America, Asia, and Africa are rolling out new, high-capacity BRT systems at a rapid clip, leaving American transit networks behind.

Cities can get away with calling half-measures “BRT” in part because there are no standards in place to define what truly qualifies as BRT. If all it takes is pre-paid boarding and longer spacing between stops, then the term loses meaning. In a new report, “Recapturing Global Leadership in Bus Rapid Transit” [PDF], the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy sets out to fill this void with BRT standards that American cities can shoot for.

ITDP is proposing a scoring system to grade bus-based transit corridors, which would work much like the LEED certification system for green buildings. The authors say their scorecard has yet to be perfected, but it already spits out results that make intuitive sense — like the fact that no U.S. city has ever built a first-rate BRT corridor. While American attempts to build bus rapid transit systems have shaved travel times and attracted new riders to transit, ITDP concludes that every single one has failed to meet the highest standards for BRT design.

“Based on what we’ve seen in our work in cities around the world, we think there’s still more that could be done,” ITDP director Walter Hook said in a statement accompanying the report. “Getting at least one truly world-class BRT system built in the U.S. could inspire cities around the country to rethink the way they use buses in the fight against increasing traffic congestion and rising fuel prices.”

More than 20 American bus projects have claimed the BRT mantle, the authors report, but only five even qualify as true Bus Rapid Transit: Cleveland’s HealthLine, Los Angeles’s Orange Line, Pittsburgh’s East Busway, Eugene’s EmX, and Las Vegas’s SDX. Those corridors all distinguished themselves by running buses in the center of the roadbed and physically separating them from regular traffic — two characteristics that factor heavily in ITDP’s 100-point scale.

Even the best American systems barely make the cut as “true BRT.” The top-rated bus line in the states, the HealthLine, scores a 63. That’s good enough for what ITDP calls the bronze-standard BRT rating, but far short of the gold-standard systems in Bogota (a 93) or Guangzhou (an 89) that use BRT infrastructure for several routes and carry tens of thousands of passengers per hour. Boston’s Silver Line and New York’s Select Bus Service, meanwhile, scored below the 50-point threshold ITDP has set for projects to qualify as BRT.

To break free from the BRT Catch-22 in the United States, some city will have to go out on a limb and build a gold-standard system that other American cities can look to as a model. With Rahm Emanuel’s recent pledge to build BRT with a full complement of features, Chicago might be that city. ITDP also identifies upcoming bus projects in the Bay Area and Montgomery County, Maryland as candidates to raise the standard for American BRT. (The full report goes into tremendous detail about the hurdles that stand in the way of building these projects as robustly as possible, including antiquated engineering guidelines that prioritize traffic flow.)

Once someone decides to build world-class BRT in the United States, it shouldn’t be long until Americans see what it can do. The ability to move quickly from design to implementation is one of the chief advantages of BRT. If an ambitious new Midwestern mayor set his mind to it, the nation’s first gold-standard BRT system could be up and running by 2014.

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.

It’s sad because it’s true.

When comedian Mark Malkoff set out to generate some publicity by racing the M42 on a child’s tricycle — and winning — he illustrated nicely the frustration and indignity endured by hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers every day.

In his smartly-produced video, you can see that, unlike a bus, Malkoff was easily able to pass stopped cabs and vehicles parked in the bus lane. And though Malkoff reportedly obeyed traffic signals, he of course didn’t need to stop for passengers. Regardless, it’s a sad comment on the state of transit service when it can be outperformed by most any other mode.

Sure, it’s a cute stunt, and notoriously slow buses are a ready-made punchline (“Take that, MTA!”). But the real joke is on New York transit riders, pranked not by the MTA, but by the NIMBYs and skyscraper moguls on 34th Street who just derailed their best chance to see how efficient crosstown bus service can be.

Think a Big Wheel would fare as well in Mexico City?