Streetsblog New York City

Bus riders waited at least 15 minutes for this crowded B61 during the morning rush today. A practically empty B61 was bunched up right behind it. Photo: Ben Fried

Toward the end of a press conference at the corner of Fourth Avenue and 9th Street this morning, Council Member Brad Lander remarked that not a single B61 bus came by during the 15-minute event. This was only fitting, since Lander was unveiling a new report from his office that found most rush hour B61 buses don’t arrive within the guidelines established by the MTA.

During rush hours, the B61 is supposed to arrive every eight to ten minutes, but the service is anything but reliable, according to the report, “Next Bus Please.” Fully 57 percent of buses are either spaced at least three minutes farther apart than they’re supposed to be, or bunched at least three minutes tighter together. For straphangers this translates into long waits, crowded buses, and the frustration of watching an empty B61 pull up right as you’re boarding that jam-packed bus.

“It gets really packed every morning,” said Vian Hernandez, a senior at South Brooklyn Community High School in Red Hook, who transfers from the train to the B61 to get to school. “Sometimes it comes really late.”

The current B61 route is the byproduct of the 2010 MTA service cuts (themselves a byproduct of Albany budget raids, the mounting cost of MTA debt service, and the collapse of the real estate market). The line was extended east from Red Hook to Park Slope and Windsor Terrace, absorbing passengers who used to take the now-defunct B75 and B77. The nearby B37 and B71, which served parallel routes, were also eliminated, and the Smith-9th Street subway stop has been closed for maintenance since June, further increasing reliance on the B61.

A year and a half after the cuts took effect, the study from Lander, Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, and City Council Member Sara Gonzalez documents the strain on the riders who depend on this line, which is now the only bus or subway route that directly serves Red Hook.

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Bus ridership is down in Manhattan, but where Select Bus Service increased speeds on First and Second Avenue, New Yorkers are riding more than ever. Image: NYCDOT/MTA

Want to understand why more Manhattanites don’t ride the bus? Look no further than this year’s Pokey awards, given out annually by the Straphangers Campaign. Manhattan buses, as usual, top the list of the year’s slowest service.

The Pokey this year goes to the M50 crosstown bus, which averaged a mere 3.5 miles per hour at noon (imagine it at rush hour!). The 14 slowest lines are all in Manhattan, with the Bronx’s Bx19, which runs down Southern Boulevard and into Harlem, clocking in as the slowest bus in the other boroughs.

Those glacial speeds explain why Manhattan-wide, bus ridership is down five percent over last year. Some of that decline surely stems from broad economic and demographic trends, but speed clearly matters. Along First and Second Avenues, where Select Bus Service was installed and speeds rose dramatically, ridership jumped up nine percent.

The good news for New Yorkers is that the MTA remains on board with expanding Select Bus Service. “The past year established Select Bus Service as a game changer in New York, with 20 percent faster bus service now on three routes,” MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz told Transportation Nation’s Jim O’Grady. “We are working with the city to expand the SBS network, bringing faster boarding, dedicated bus lanes and enhanced bus lane enforcement to more and more routes.”

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.

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Photo: Sabrina Porter

The Straphangers Campaign and Transportation Alternatives have chosen the winners for their best and worst of New York City Transit photo contest. The top “Good Transit Scene” was “Break of Day ” by Sabrina Porter, while John Wehmeyer took the prize for best “Bad Transit Scene” with “”Reassuring? Not so much!”

Photo: John Wehmeyer

Porter and Wehmeyer will each receive a 30-day MetroCard. Check out honorable mentions here.

“These photos show our transit system at its best — and its worst,” said TA Executive Director Paul Steely White. “It’s time we had more of the former and less of the latter. The winning photos shine a spotlight on the real-world consequences of transit funding cuts and remind us what we stand to lose if nothing is done.”

Not to diminish Wehmeyer’s victory, but White reminds us of another transit tableau that is sure to go down in history as one of the most repulsive of all time:

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The transit photo contest held by the Straphangers Campaign and Transportation Alternatives has moved into the final round. Five finalists have been selected for the photo that most captures New York City’s transit system at its best, and five have been chosen to represent the system at its worst. You can vote for your favorite here.

The winning photographers will each receive a free monthly MetroCard, while the winning photographs will be used in an ad campaign making the case for better transit, so choose carefully.

Not to influence your vote or anything, but I voted for the two photographs above. In the “best of transit” category, I thought this shot of light streaming onto a subway was just beautifully composed, though the image of three boys showing off for the camera best represents my favorite moments on the train. In the “worst of,” I had to vote for the picture of sludge piled up at the Canal Street station; that station is right next to Streetsblog HQ, so that pick was personal. Let us know in comments which you voted for.

Be sure to check out the full photo galleries as well. Some of the best photos in each category didn’t make it into the final round at all, and they’re well worth a look.

DOT's plan for 181st Street includes a part-time bus lane and pedestrian safety features, but it's less ambitious than other options the agency presented last year. Image: NYC DOT

With five bus lines, two subway stops, a busy commercial strip, the only entrance to the Hudson River Greenway for blocks, and major bridge crossings at both ends of the street, Washington Heights’ 181st Street is a tangle of cars, buses, bikes and pedestrians. For years, DOT has been looking to redesign the corridor entirely, with the goal of finding a way to serve all those different needs.

In a plan presented to the local community board last Monday [PDF], DOT finally came out with its proposal for the street. With a slew of pedestrian safety improvements and a bus-only lane designated for the evening rush hour, the plan should be a major improvement for the neighborhood, but like other recent redesigns on 34th Street and First and Second Avenues, it’s far less ambitious than what could have been.

As recently as last fall, DOT was considering a protected bus lane for this project. Local elected leadership seemed split. At a presentation on the project to Community Board 12, an aide to Denny Farrell conveyed the Assembly member’s opposition to a major reconfiguration, while local City Council member Ydanis Rodriguez seemed open to the ambitious reallocation of space, telling CB12, “We have to make a certain level of radical change in how traffic is organized in that area.” The changes on the table now are positive, but not radical improvements.

Currently, 181st Street has two travel lanes and a parking lane in each direction on the wider blocks east of Broadway, narrowing to a single travel lane and parking lane on the blocks west of Broadway. The proposed changes mostly focus on the eastern section, as no buses continue on to the narrower section.

Under the proposed design, pedestrians will be safer thanks to a curb extension at the intersection of 181st and Haven Avenue, leading pedestrian intervals where 181st meets Broadway and Fort Washington Avenue, and, if the community board wants them, pedestrian refuge islands at St. Nicholas Avenue. Longer-term plans to extend the sidewalks at St. Nicholas and Amsterdam Avenues would calm traffic further.

For bus riders, the curbside parking on the south side of 181st Street would be replaced with a dedicated eastbound bus lane from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., improving reliability by clearing the way for Bronx-bound buses at the very beginning of their routes. On the block between Audobon and Amsterdam Avenues, which a DOT spokesperson said was where buses suffered the biggest delays from congestion, the bus lane would be in effect from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

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Jamaica rep Leroy Comrie. Photo: NY Observer

With thousands of bus riders per hour traveling each direction on Archer Avenue, DOT’s proposed bus improvements for Downtown Jamaica are some of the most important street redesigns on the table right now. But previous bus improvements in this part of Queens have been politically vulnerable — a proposed Select Bus Service route along Merrick Boulevard was scuttled after local merchants fought against it in 2007. So, for one perspective on the political prospects of the project, we checked in with Council Member Leroy Comrie, who represents Jamaica and hosted an open house on DOT’s proposal Tuesday night.

While Comrie told the Daily News that he’s not pleased with the part of the proposal that calls for converting segments of Jamaica Avenue to one-way traffic flow, in a phone call with Streetsblog he seemed willing to support the expanded bus lanes if merchant deliveries can be integrated into the plan.

The council member said that Tuesday’s open house was a success. The “free-flow discussion, more like a charrette” showed that DOT was open to suggestions, he said. Comrie himself has some recommendations for DOT, though so far he’s only made them informally. One question, he said, is “whether or not the bus lanes would be impacting during the non-rush hours that would prohibitively affect the businesses from getting deliveries.”

Comrie distinguished those concerns from the merchant fears of losing curbside parking that torpedoed the Merrick Boulevard SBS. On that route, he said, “most of the businesses, their prime time for customers was during the morning and evening rush.” Comrie is more concerned with off-peak delivery access as opposed to peak hour customer parking. Comrie said he hadn’t heard much from local businesses about the proposed bus lane changes yet.

Comrie also urged DOT to make sure that both public and private transit (dollar vans) were able to speedily access Jamaica. “What are we going to do to try and work the van traffic through and give them some dedicated space also, since they are here and people will use them?” he asked.

This gorgeous photograph of the Beverley Road subway station in full bloom, brought to our attention by Brownstoner, somehow manages to make peeling paint look beautiful. Photo: flatbushnelson via Flickr

We often describe the importance of transit in numbers, like the fact that 54 percent of New York City households don’t even own a car. But even the most convincing stats can get a little dry. To help capture what the subways and buses mean to a city where the transit system is the closest thing to a shared experience for eight million people, the Straphangers Campaign and Transportation Alternatives are launching a photography contest. A picture is worth a thousand words, after all.

The contest will feature two categories: the things we love about transit — only-in-New York juxtapositions, for instance, or the system’s speed and ease — and the problems that make us fed up with the MTA. The winners will be featured in an ad campaign intended to make the case for better transit, said Straphangers Campaign Coordinator Cate Contino, while photos showing specific problems, like the mysterious dripping at certain subway stations or the shuttered bus stop a community once depended on, will be sent along to the MTA in the hopes of resolving the issues.

“We know that the MTA has been forced to make some really tough choices,” said Contino, explaining the goal of the ‘bad transit scene’ category. “We want to capture these declines that we’re seeing mostly anecdotally.”

The winners will each receive a 30-day unlimited MetroCard. To enter, submit your photos at straphangers.org by June 10.

Plans call for doubling the mileage of bus lanes in Jamaica. Image: NYC DOT

We missed these when they were first released in late March, but DOT has come out with its preliminary recommendations for improving bus service in downtown Jamaica [PDF]. The plan calls for adding roughly a mile and a half of new bus lanes and beefing up an equal amount of existing lanes. It would also redesign two intersections and create new pedestrian space.

Anything that helps buses move quickly, smoothly and reliably through downtown Jamaica would be an enormous boon to Queens transit riders. Jamaica is both a subway hub and a job center unto itself, with 47 different bus routes running through the area. Archer Avenue carries more local buses than any other road in New York City, according to the DOT, with a staggering 180 buses per hour in each direction.

Along Archer, the existing bus lanes between 150th and 160th Streets will be visually strengthened, getting a coat of terra cotta paint and new signage. The eastbound lane will be extended on both ends, from Sutphin Avenue to Merrick Boulevard.

Similarly, along Jamaica Avenue the existing lanes (serving 90 buses per hour in each direction) will get the new paint and signage as well as expanded hours of operation and some new turn restrictions. The westbound lanes will be extended from Parsons Boulevard to Sutphin.

New dedicated lanes on Merrick Boulevard and 165th Street will help buses enter and exit the 165th Street bus terminal.

Currently, camera enforcement is not an option for these bus lanes, since the state law which enabled bus cams on Fordham Road and First and Second Avenues only applies to officially designated “Select Bus Service” corridors.

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Not so long ago, it was common to hear NYCDOT staff say their job was “to keep the traffic moving.” Engineers working from “the motorist’s viewpoint” ran the show, much like they did in the 1950s. Those days are thankfully over. Today’s DOT prioritizes safety and sustainability and has compiled a lengthy track record of innovation in a few short years. But as the transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 6 learned last night, the old emphasis on keeping the traffic moving still restrains how far the department will go to improve conditions for other modes.

The crush of traffic using the free Queensboro Bridge is the limiting factor holding back DOT's plans for faster buses and safer streets. Photo: R36 Coach/Flickr

At the CB meeting, DOT presented plans to speed buses across the Queensboro Bridge and extend the bike lanes on First and Second Avenues from 34th Street to 57th Street. Those changes are underwhelming: mostly traffic signal tweaks for buses, and mostly shared lanes for cyclists.

In explaining why only minor tweaks will be employed to help Queensboro Bridge bus riders and why protected bike lanes won’t be built through Midtown, DOT officials made it clear that anything that slows traffic is off the table. When push comes to shove, in this case, DOT’s other goals are getting trumped by traffic. One can only imagine what might have been if Albany had enacted congestion pricing, easing the peak hour crush of cars on this free bridge.

The need for faster bus service across the Queensboro is pressing. During the evening rush, there are two buses crossing the bridge every minute. They spend their time in grinding traffic, however. From 5:00 to 6:00 p.m., buses travel at only 12.2 miles per hour. That speeds up to 21.2 mph just an hour later.

Eric Beaton, the director of transit development at DOT, defined the department’s goal for the project as increasing bus speeds “without having too much of an impact on the many cars and other people that use the bridge.”

The limits of that approach quickly became clear. One of the four improvements proposed would grant eastbound buses at 57th Street and Third Avenue heading onto the bridge a leading green light so that they can merge from the right side of the street to the left. The buses would get their green during an already-installed leading pedestrian interval at the intersection. “We’re not taking any green away from cars,” promised Beaton.

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