Streetsblog New York City

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.

The Cuomo administration’s latest thinking on the new Tappan Zee Bridge, contained in the draft environmental impact statement it released yesterday, reinforces the state’s commitment to building a sprawl-inducing, highway-only bridge. The document not only dismisses bus rapid transit, but also clears the way for an enormous expansion of automobile capacity and makes a mockery of New York’s statewide smart growth law. We’ll be breaking down the DEIS in a series of posts today.

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.

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With impressive urgency, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has spent his first months in office retooling and reconfiguring how the “City That Works” works. Emanuel’s energy is evident in changes from beat-cop deployment to the push for a longer school day, but perhaps the mayor’s most tangible efforts can be seen in his ambitious transportation agenda.

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.

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Despite widespread opposition, Governor Andrew Cuomo is plowing forward with plans to build a new Tappan Zee Bridge without transit. Even so, there’s still no plan for how to pay for the bridge. Cuomo has proposed that union pension funds put up some of the money, but there’s been no explanation of how those pension funds would be paid back.

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.

“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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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Speaking this morning at the launch of weekday Select Bus Service along 34th Street, Mayor Bloomberg, Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and New York City Transit President Thomas Prendergast released the latest stats documenting the effect of Select Bus Service improvements along First and Second Avenues.

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.”

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.

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.