This is the absolute worst way to travel in New York City

[Via Garibaldi 8]

STEVE CUOZZO

METRO

 

This is the absolute worst way to travel in New York City

 

By Steve Cuozzo

December 10, 2016 | 2:56pm

 

Modal Trigger

Steve Cuozzo sits on the M20 bus on 8th Ave.Photo: Helayne Seidman

 

The 1960s countercultural novelist Ken Kesey famously, if obscurely, proclaimed, “You’re either on the bus or off the bus.” More New Yorkers than ever are opting for off, but there’s nothing mysterious about why. Just hop the M4 or Q32 at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street for a joyride to Penn Station.

Department of Transportation dimwits changed their traditional routes at the end of last year. Instead of turning right on 34th Street from Fifth Avenue, southbound buses now turn right on West 37th Street. That was to satisfy a dumb, new, no-left-turn rule from 34th Street onto Seventh Avenue — one of myriad monkey wrenches the Department of Transportation has thrown in to suit City Hall’s car-hating, traffic-management fantasy.

The poor M4 or Q32 now must worm its way from Fifth to Seventh through three of Midtown’s most impassable blocks. A baby on its belly could cover them more swiftly than the buses, which take 45 minutes and worse at busy times to traverse 800 feet. Citi Bike stands, utility digs, construction jobs, double- and triple-parked trucks — even a few vestigial, rolling garment racks — all scrunch through traffic into one lane.

Most of the traffic trauma stems from former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s and current Mayor de Blasio’s aspirations for an auto-less city where everyone walks or rides a bike.

ADVERTISING

 

With ideology substituting for rationality, is it a wonder that city bus ridership is down 7 percent from 2010 to 2015, according to the MTA?

But wait — shouldn’t buses be more popular, thanks to “dedicated” lanes, “select” routes that skip stops and allow boarding through three sets of doors, and apps that take the mystery out of when the next lumbering conveyance is coming?

Hah! Even hallucinogen-addled Kesey would grasp a simple fact that’s beyond City Hall’s Cuckoo’s Nest thinkers:

SEE ALSO

 

 

The real reason for New York City's traffic nightmare

People are abandoning New York’s buses, which never were the swiftest way to get around, because they keep getting slower. Streetsblog.org, which tracks such things, reports that bus “speed” fell by 2 percent overall from 2010 to 2015. The MTA reported a 5 percent drop at rush hour. But it often feels more like 100 percent.

Why might this be?

Although 45,000 fewer cars come into Midtown daily than in 2010, according to DOT, it often seems like more cars, thanks to the mess the agency made of things.

I’ve never driven a bus, but I’ve driven cars since 1967. And I can attest that driving in Manhattan has never been as difficult as it is today. (Bike-crazy Cuozzo-bashers: I’m a happiest-on-foot mass-transit mouse, and my car has just 28,000 miles on it after 20 years). If driving a car has turned from merely miserable to horrific, might it not be just as awful for bus drivers caught up in the same city-inflicted chaos?

Anti-auto airheads blame Uber-type cars and lack of congestion pricing. More reasonable minds cite an unprecedented volume of construction and pavement resurfacing.

But mostly what’s brought buses to a halt is the same fiasco that reduced auto-traffic average speed in Manhattan from 9.35 mph in 2010 to 8.51 by 2015, according to the city: the zany maze of obstructions and interdictions it’s imposed on the historically challenging, but more or less comprehensible, street grid.

People are abandoning New York’s buses because they keep getting slower.

The fun starts with a baffling zoo of lane markers, painted arrows and bus and bike lanes that pop up and vanish at whim. Some of the charming features they announce were spelled out in a Post analysis last week.

They include bike lanes that take away vehicular lanes; pedestrian “plazas” thrust into traffic lanes; “buses only” lanes full of trucks, bicycles and pedicabs; and curbs that meander to and fro like mischievous rats.

Traffic lights were un-synchronized in order to force stops at consecutive corners, like the one that turned Third Avenue in the 30s, into a horn-honking hell. No-turn rules meant to speed up 23rd Street from First Avenue to Ninth Avenue have the opposite effect of jamming it up, as drivers pause to devise escape strategies. Crazy corners where left-turn lanes merge with bike lanes give fits equally to pedestrians, drivers and cyclists.

Can’t the NYPD take on the gridlock? Sure! During this Most Wonderful Time of the Year, traffic cops aplenty blow whistles to no effect and ignore wrong-way cyclists who nearly run them down.

No wonder de Blasio increasingly uses NYPD choppers to borough-hop. Those of us who can’t soar above it all must choose a different way — and we’re not on the bus.

 

 

Source: http://nypost.com/2016/12/10/this-is-the-absolute-worst-way-to-travel-in-new-york-city/

[MikeC]

 

STEVE CUOZZO

METRO

 

This is the absolute worst way to travel in New York City

 

By Steve Cuozzo

December 10, 2016 | 2:56pm

 

Modal Trigger

Steve Cuozzo sits on the M20 bus on 8th Ave.Photo: Helayne Seidman

 

The 1960s countercultural novelist Ken Kesey famously, if obscurely, proclaimed, “You’re either on the bus or off the bus.” More New Yorkers than ever are opting for off, but there’s nothing mysterious about why. Just hop the M4 or Q32 at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street for a joyride to Penn Station.

Department of Transportation dimwits changed their traditional routes at the end of last year. Instead of turning right on 34th Street from Fifth Avenue, southbound buses now turn right on West 37th Street. That was to satisfy a dumb, new, no-left-turn rule from 34th Street onto Seventh Avenue — one of myriad monkey wrenches the Department of Transportation has thrown in to suit City Hall’s car-hating, traffic-management fantasy.

The poor M4 or Q32 now must worm its way from Fifth to Seventh through three of Midtown’s most impassable blocks. A baby on its belly could cover them more swiftly than the buses, which take 45 minutes and worse at busy times to traverse 800 feet. Citi Bike stands, utility digs, construction jobs, double- and triple-parked trucks — even a few vestigial, rolling garment racks — all scrunch through traffic into one lane.

Most of the traffic trauma stems from former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s and current Mayor de Blasio’s aspirations for an auto-less city where everyone walks or rides a bike.

ADVERTISING

 

With ideology substituting for rationality, is it a wonder that city bus ridership is down 7 percent from 2010 to 2015, according to the MTA?

But wait — shouldn’t buses be more popular, thanks to “dedicated” lanes, “select” routes that skip stops and allow boarding through three sets of doors, and apps that take the mystery out of when the next lumbering conveyance is coming?

Hah! Even hallucinogen-addled Kesey would grasp a simple fact that’s beyond City Hall’s Cuckoo’s Nest thinkers:

SEE ALSO

 

 

The real reason for New York City's traffic nightmare

People are abandoning New York’s buses, which never were the swiftest way to get around, because they keep getting slower. Streetsblog.org, which tracks such things, reports that bus “speed” fell by 2 percent overall from 2010 to 2015. The MTA reported a 5 percent drop at rush hour. But it often feels more like 100 percent.

Why might this be?

Although 45,000 fewer cars come into Midtown daily than in 2010, according to DOT, it often seems like more cars, thanks to the mess the agency made of things.

I’ve never driven a bus, but I’ve driven cars since 1967. And I can attest that driving in Manhattan has never been as difficult as it is today. (Bike-crazy Cuozzo-bashers: I’m a happiest-on-foot mass-transit mouse, and my car has just 28,000 miles on it after 20 years). If driving a car has turned from merely miserable to horrific, might it not be just as awful for bus drivers caught up in the same city-inflicted chaos?

Anti-auto airheads blame Uber-type cars and lack of congestion pricing. More reasonable minds cite an unprecedented volume of construction and pavement resurfacing.

But mostly what’s brought buses to a halt is the same fiasco that reduced auto-traffic average speed in Manhattan from 9.35 mph in 2010 to 8.51 by 2015, according to the city: the zany maze of obstructions and interdictions it’s imposed on the historically challenging, but more or less comprehensible, street grid.

The fun starts with a baffling zoo of lane markers, painted arrows and bus and bike lanes that pop up and vanish at whim. Some of the charming features they announce were spelled out in a Post analysis last week.

People are abandoning New York’s buses because they keep getting slower.

They include bike lanes that take away vehicular lanes; pedestrian “plazas” thrust into traffic lanes; “buses only” lanes full of trucks, bicycles and pedicabs; and curbs that meander to and fro like mischievous rats.

Traffic lights were un-synchronized in order to force stops at consecutive corners, like the one that turned Third Avenue in the 30s, into a horn-honking hell. No-turn rules meant to speed up 23rd Street from First Avenue to Ninth Avenue have the opposite effect of jamming it up, as drivers pause to devise escape strategies. Crazy corners where left-turn lanes merge with bike lanes give fits equally to pedestrians, drivers and cyclists.

Can’t the NYPD take on the gridlock? Sure! During this Most Wonderful Time of the Year, traffic cops aplenty blow whistles to no effect and ignore wrong-way cyclists who nearly run them down.

No wonder de Blasio increasingly uses NYPD choppers to borough-hop. Those of us who can’t soar above it all must choose a different way — and we’re not on the bus.

 

 

Source: http://nypost.com/2016/12/10/this-is-the-absolute-worst-way-to-travel-in-new-york-city/

 

You've got people in charge that just don't care. There's no real visionaries like Robert Moses anymore 

[Via Garibaldi 8]

You've got people in charge that just don't care. There's no real visionaries like Robert Moses anymore 

Agreed... All of this under the so called Vision Zero guise... 

[paulrivera]

Part of it on the bus side is poor dispatching too, but I do agree with everything here. The question now is how the hell are we going to fix it?

 

BTW, when that anti-bus operator, Vision Zero loyalist MHV9218 replies (these kinds of threads are right up his alley,) can someone please shoot me a private message? I would LOVE to see how he'll defend Vision Zero while demanding that bus operators rot in jail.

[B35 via Church]

You know, I have never seen so many bikes utilizing all these damn bicycle lanes throughout the city...

Yep, it puts the sheer amount of motor vehicles stuck on the helix everyday to shame!

 

That's how you address capacity issues.

[Interested Rider]

I read Steve Cuozzo's column in the New York Post and I agree with him. The few times that I am in Manhattan, I can see what he is talking about and why people do not want to take the bus. His reference to the Q/32 and M/4 had to come out of hizzoner's cast of characters as no matter what I think of the MTA, I am pretty sure that it was not their idea.

 

The only Vision Zero I agree with is when Phreet Baharra finishes his work and the entire bunch are walked out of City Hall. After reading the New York Daily news articles this weekend on our mayor's administration, I wonder why it is taking so long.

 

If my memory serves me correctly, the number of deaths this year cuased  by this nonsense has gone up

[JubaionBx12+SBS]

The main problem with buses is there's a lack of will to improve the overall system. The vast majority of New Yorkers have no knowledge of buses that don't serve their particular neighborhood and even then many of the riders find only limited usefulness with the routes available to them. Given how often I post on there I can tell you that my AM Rush commute pattern is one that makes limited use of the bus. All but one AM Rush bus trip in my commuting life has been from Bartow/Edson Avs to PBP on either the Bx12 SBS, Bx23 or Q50. Sure, I make use of local buses more often during other periods but for most people AM Rush commutes are most in mind when gauging their opinion of the transit system. 

 

Sometimes, even I as a transit enthusiast, question my will to see improvements in the bus system given how useless it is to me during AM Rush which is $ time when it comes to me getting to work/school or wherever I have to be. That's when you know there's a problem and trust me, the solutions are not as easy as it seems.

[R10 2952]

I don't normally care for tabloids like the Post or establishment hacks like the Times (Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune and even USA Today are better at objective journalism), put the points made in the article are for the most part valid.  Bloomberg and Wilhelm have artificially induced gridlock in an attempt to force more people onto public transport without taking into account the capacity constraints of that system.  You can't force Niagara Falls into a straw, unless you make that straw as wide...

 

I look forward to the decisive conclusion of the US Attorney's investigation into and the eventual conviction of  that idiot Warren (and Andy Boy as well).  We could use some real leaders for a change.

[MHV9218]

Cuozzo is complete idiot and reprinting anything he says is a waste of server space.

 

You've got people in charge that just don't care. There's no real visionaries like Robert Moses anymore 

 

Moses was bold, but half the time he was a maniac. He destroyed the Bronx. Plopping a highway in the middle of town does not make you a visionary.

 

Part of it on the bus side is poor dispatching too, but I do agree with everything here. The question now is how the hell are we going to fix it?

 

BTW, when that anti-bus operator, Vision Zero loyalist MHV9218 replies (these kinds of threads are right up his alley,) can someone please shoot me a private message? I would LOVE to see how he'll defend Vision Zero while demanding that bus operators rot in jail.

 

A shout out! Pal, I'm probably personal friends with more operators than you are. I've supported bus operators since day one and the fact that you're so baffled by the idea of fairly and equally applying a law as to think I'm anti-B/O is simply sad.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

You know, I have never seen so many bikes utilizing all these damn bicycle lanes throughout the city...

Yep, it puts the sheer amount of motor vehicles stuck on the helix everyday to shame!

 

That's how you address capacity issues.

What's funny is that there are so few bikes using the actual bike lanes that it seems pointless if they're all going to ride IN the actual traffic.  I see it all of the time on the Upper West Side along Amsterdam and Columbus.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

Part of it on the bus side is poor dispatching too, but I do agree with everything here. The question now is how the hell are we going to fix it?

 

BTW, when that anti-bus operator, Vision Zero loyalist MHV9218 replies (these kinds of threads are right up his alley,) can someone please shoot me a private message? I would LOVE to see how he'll defend Vision Zero while demanding that bus operators rot in jail.

To the first part, the would have to become more aggressive in how it deals with service in general, and I don't see that happening as of yet.  Aside from SBS, I've seen no real effort by the to improve the situation.  Traffic signal priority has been talked about but has yet to be implemented.  Every now and then you'll see a dispatcher out in the field, but sometimes they make the situation even worse than what it is.  The buses purposely come late when they know dispatch will be out so it's like artificially giving them work to do when they may not have any.  

As to your second point... LOL!

[DetSMART45]

To the first part, the would have to become more aggressive in how it deals with service in general, and I don't see that happening as of yet.  Aside from SBS, I've seen no real effort by the to improve the situation.  Traffic signal priority has been talked about but has yet to be implemented.  Every now and then you'll see a dispatcher out in the field, but sometimes they make the situation even worse than what it is.  The buses purposely come late when they know dispatch will be out so it's like artificially giving them work to do when they may not have any.  

As to your second point... LOL!

SBS and TSP are merely band-aids on a very broken system.

 

I still don't get how people get "excited" over SBS, thinking that it's the best thing since sliced bread.  If SBS faced some serious auditing -- from the route performance overall down to actual farebox receipts -- it would not stack up much better than any of the other Local routes.  I'm not going to get in the weeds over all of this, but suffice it to say, after oodles of money spent prior to actual implementation and then the actual performance measures being applied afterwards, there is NOT some magical increase in ROI.

 

TSP is also seen as some silver bullet, but until the MTA solves the farebox and boarding problems (contributing to bus bunching and overall on-time performance), you can have every signal hooked up and it will still not make a difference.

 

But at least people can be amused while on the pokey buses, what with WiFi and charging ports.  Gotta have those priorities!

[Via Garibaldi 8]

SBS and TSP are merely band-aids on a very broken system.

 

I still don't get how people get "excited" over SBS, thinking that it's the best thing since sliced bread.  If SBS faced some serious auditing -- from the route performance overall down to actual farebox receipts -- it would not stack up much better than any of the other Local routes.  I'm not going to get in the weeds over all of this, but suffice it to say, after oodles of money spent prior to actual implementation and then the actual performance measures being applied afterwards, there is NOT some magical increase in ROI.

 

TSP is also seen as some silver bullet, but until the MTA solves the farebox and boarding problems (contributing to bus bunching and overall on-time performance), you can have every signal hooked up and it will still not make a difference.

 

But at least people can be amused while on the pokey buses, what with WiFi and charging ports.  Gotta have those priorities!

I for one don't care for the utter amount of waste that SBS routes create with those damn paper tickets.  There should be a paperless method that can be created.  Those SBS ticket machines must also cost a fortune and then you have to have them maintained and refilled, etc., so there's more money to pay people for that.  Then there's the expense of the Eagle teams too... I agree not that cheap... I mean maybe they save a little from the B/O costs, but there has to be added costs elsewhere.  Also they save when they get the new buses paid for federally, but that money won't last forever and those buses take a serious pounding, so there's also the need to keep replacing those buses quicker than usual due to the miles they rack up. 

 

The other thing I've been thinking about is on weekends, no matter what subway station I go to, the MVM machines are practically all not working.  Saturday I came down from Riverdale on the express bus and needed to refill one of my Metrocards... Three machines at the 86th and Lex station and all of them weren't working in some capacity.  After trying all of them once along with several other annoyed people waiting in front of me, I lucked out and was able to refill my card but didn't get a receipt.  Probably using those workers to refill those SBS ticket machines... 

[bobtehpanda]

SBS and TSP are merely band-aids on a very broken system.

 

I still don't get how people get "excited" over SBS, thinking that it's the best thing since sliced bread.  If SBS faced some serious auditing -- from the route performance overall down to actual farebox receipts -- it would not stack up much better than any of the other Local routes.  I'm not going to get in the weeds over all of this, but suffice it to say, after oodles of money spent prior to actual implementation and then the actual performance measures being applied afterwards, there is NOT some magical increase in ROI.

 

TSP is also seen as some silver bullet, but until the MTA solves the farebox and boarding problems (contributing to bus bunching and overall on-time performance), you can have every signal hooked up and it will still not make a difference.

 

But at least people can be amused while on the pokey buses, what with WiFi and charging ports.  Gotta have those priorities!

 

We've been using Metrocards since 1998. Ridership and speeds have not taken a nosedive since all the way from 1998. Traffic has actually gotten worse, a lot of that due to societal change (same-day online shopping delivery, Ubers, etc.), and that can be attributed to bus ridership, speed, and reliability declines. Anyone who seriously thinks that it was all sun and flowers before the traffic changes started happening in 2007 needs a reality check.

 

I for one don't care for the utter amount of waste that SBS routes create with those damn paper tickets.  There should be a paperless method that can be created.  Those SBS ticket machines must also cost a fortune and then you have to have them maintained and refilled, etc., so there's more money to pay people for that.  Then there's the expense of the Eagle teams too... I agree not that cheap... I mean maybe they save a little from the B/O costs, but there has to be added costs elsewhere.  Also they save when they get the new buses paid for federally, but that money won't last forever and those buses take a serious pounding, so there's also the need to keep replacing those buses quicker than usual due to the miles they rack up. 

 

The other thing I've been thinking about is on weekends, no matter what subway station I go to, the MVM machines are practically all not working.  Saturday I came down from Riverdale on the express bus and needed to refill one of my Metrocards... Three machines at the 86th and Lex station and all of them weren't working in some capacity.  After trying all of them once along with several other annoyed people waiting in front of me, I lucked out and was able to refill my card but didn't get a receipt.  Probably using those workers to refill those SBS ticket machines... 

 

The replacement for Metrocard is expected in the 2020s,

 

The 'smart' thing to do would be to do what SF Muni and most European agencies do, and have tap-and-go readers at every door instead of just the front, and fare inspectors roaming to fine farebeaters. But because New York is a Special Snowflake^TM the powers that be will probably decide that that doesn't work here for some reason and we need to keep the same fare payment systems.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

The 'smart' thing to do would be to do what SF Muni and most European agencies do, and have tap-and-go readers at every door instead of just the front, and fare inspectors roaming to fine farebeaters. But because New York is a Special Snowflake^TM the powers that be will probably decide that that doesn't work here for some reason and we need to keep the same fare payment systems.

That I agree with... Hell even when I was living back in Italy (Florence) they had that set up on ALL buses.  You just get on through any door, walk over to a ticket puncher, stamp your ticket and take a seat, and everyone was trained on how things worked so it worked beautifully.  Here people are still woefully confused.  I suppose since Florence doesn't have a subway or tram that perhaps that's why they were so quick in getting that up and running, but even in other Italy cities it's the same deal... Bologna certainly comes to mind.  Hell they even had countdown clocks going back to the early 2000s in a city that is known to have issues with tracking due to the buildings.  Amazing how behind NYC is....

[bobtehpanda]

That I agree with... Hell even when I was living back in Italy (Florence) they had that set up on ALL buses.  You just get on through any door, walk over to a ticket puncher, stamp your ticket and take a seat, and everyone was trained on how things worked so it worked beautifully.  Here people are still woefully confused.  I suppose since Florence doesn't have a subway or tram that perhaps that's why they were so quick in getting that up and running, but even in other Italy cities it's the same deal... Bologna certainly comes to mind.  Hell they even had countdown clocks going back to the early 2000s in a city that is known to have issues with tracking due to the buildings.  Amazing how behind NYC is....

 

It's a problem of this country in New York (and to a lesser extent, America in general) that this country is so exceptional that it couldn't possibly learn anything from anyone else, so therefore we should all sit on our hands until one of our own government staff manages to figure something out. It's not a union problem, because French unions will strike if you so much as look at their members the wrong way, and yet the French are probably one of the faster innovating countries in the transit sphere.

 

AFAIK the issue with countdown clocks on buses was not that we couldn't, but it was too expensive before we had BusTime. The pilot on the M34 alone cost something on the order of $300M, and there weren't other suppliers available.

[IAlam]

The 1960s countercultural novelist Ken Kesey famously, if obscurely, proclaimed, “You’re either on the bus or off the bus.” More New Yorkers than ever are opting for off, but there’s nothing mysterious about why. Just hop the M4 or Q32 at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street for a joyride to Penn Station.

Department of Transportation dimwits changed their traditional routes at the end of last year. Instead of turning right on 34th Street from Fifth Avenue, southbound buses now turn right on West 37th Street. That was to satisfy a dumb, new, no-left-turn rule from 34th Street onto Seventh Avenue — one of myriad monkey wrenches the Department of Transportation has thrown in to suit City Hall’s car-hating, traffic-management fantasy.

The poor M4 or Q32 now must worm its way from Fifth to Seventh through three of Midtown’s most impassable blocks. A baby on its belly could cover them more swiftly than the buses, which take 45 minutes and worse at busy times to traverse 800 feet. 

 

 

I mean the current M4 and Q32 are bad, but I feel like they're making it sound worse than it really is. I've taken it may times to go to Chick-Fil-A, and I've never had a problem. 

[Via Garibaldi 8]

I mean the current M4 and Q32 are bad, but I feel like they're making it sound worse than it really is. I've taken it may times to go to Chick-Fil-A, and I've never had a problem. 

No it actually is pretty bad.  The only time I use buses on 5th Avenue is when there's one right there and I can get it, otherwise I don't bother.  The traffic during the rush is just impossible and as much as I hate walking such long distances, I usually do it because of the large gaps in service and the amount of bunching.  Both the M4 and Q32 bunch like crazy coming down 5th, though they can better on weekends.

[IAlam]

No it actually is pretty bad.  The only time I use buses on 5th Avenue is when there's one right there and I can get it, otherwise I don't bother.  The traffic during the rush is just impossible and as much as I hate walking such long distances, I usually do it because of the large gaps in service and the amount of bunching.  Both the M4 and Q32 bunch like crazy coming down 5th, though they can better on weekends.

TBH I've never had problems waiting for the M4/Q32 guess I get luck then. 

[Via Garibaldi 8]

TBH I've never had problems waiting for the M4/Q32 guess I get luck then. 

You do... lol The M4 and Q32 can bunch like crazy...

[IAlam]

You do... lol The M4 and Q32 can bunch like crazy...

True I've seen that first hand, I just seem to always come at the right time lmao. 

[BrooklynBus]

Reliability and outdated routes are the two biggest problems with the buses. There needs to be periodic studies of all the bus routes and how they interact with each other every ten years or so. Dinky little shuttle routes at 30 minute headways, new SBS routes, and tacking on mile extensions to already overlong routes are not the answers. Routes need to be shorter and overlapping and designed according to usage. That would improve reliability so a tie up in midtown doesn't affect service in Washington Heights.

 

In 1972, when I wrote my masters thesis at Columbia, I designed a new bus system for Brooklyn based on those concepts. Of course my ideas have changed over the years and are continuing to evolve. I mention this because about 15 changes that I thought of then were eventually made but but were not obvious to the MTA for as long as 40 more years. At the rate they are making route changes, it will take them another hundred years to update the system and by then, it will be obsolete again. Perfect example: Why wasn't the Q70 thought of forty years ago? The need for improved LaGuardia service was just as great back then.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

Reliability and outdated routes are the two biggest problems with the buses. There needs to be periodic studies of all the bus routes and how they interact with each other every ten years or so. Dinky little shuttle routes at 30 minute headways, new SBS routes, and tacking on mile extensions to already overlong routes are not the answers. Routes need to be shorter and overlapping and designed according to usage. That would improve reliability so a tie up in midtown doesn't affect service in Washington Heights.

 

In 1972, when I wrote my masters thesis at Columbia, I designed a new bus system for Brooklyn based on those concepts. Of course my ideas have changed over the years and are continuing to evolve. I mention this because about 15 changes that I thought of then were eventually made but but were not obvious to the MTA for as long as 40 more years. At the rate they are making route changes, it will take them another hundred years to update the system and by then, it will be obsolete again. Perfect example: Why wasn't the Q70 thought of forty years ago? The need for improved LaGuardia service was just as great back then.

The love affair with SBS IMO is nothing more than their desire to cut costs.  Have new buses paid for with federal funds and cut overhead where possible, and it's a success!

[bobtehpanda]

The love affair with SBS IMO is nothing more than their desire to cut costs.  Have new buses paid for with federal funds and cut overhead where possible, and it's a success!

 

Isn't this what they should be doing anyways? People are whingeing on and on about waste all the time.

[B46 via Utica]

I think it's a little over dramatic to call it the worst way to travel around NYC. I think the proper way to way to look at it is that it is the hardest way to travel. There is always room for improvement. A study on how to deal with traffic can help.