Robert Spire

I wonder how a Park Slope express bus would do? Or an express bus from any gentrifying neighborhood? 

On 5/25/2024 at 6:34 PM, B35 via Church said:

Even with the old network, SCT did much of nothing throughout decades to grow their riderbase..... For however few working class people use NICEbus (for example), significantly less working class people use buses in Suffolk County.... Regardless, it makes you question why/what this big rush was to have this new network come to fruition, is really about....

The first rendition of the #80 (before they turned into the loop it is now) was more useful than this....

I'd just have this replace the #5's routing through Smithtown & call it a day.

There is also a trend of redesigning buses nationally and I wonder what type of grants were received? 

12 hours ago, Wallyhorse said:

Exactly!

There's a reason the  and on the 7th Avenue Line are both local late nights while the  and  do the same on the Lexington Line.  The one thing I would differently with regards to these when the  is not running also have the  go to Bowling Green so there are trains to/from there to/from the SI Ferry every 10 minutes or so in late night hours.  

I would also have the  run express to Grand Central in late night hours much like the  does to Times Square.  

There are reliability problems with the  late nights. There's people that take the  into Queens for the Q44 instead late nights. 

40 minutes ago, Amiri the subway guy said:

I like the idea except for the  part brining the  back as basically a “late night exclusive clone” of the  is pointless, confusing, over complicated and unnecessary just extend and reroute the  to South Ferry via 7th Avenue local and reroute to the  to 7th Avenue express and call it a day 

It is not a clone because it doesn't go to Brooklyn and is not express. Either way the  late nights are a mess, I have seen rush hour style crowding at 4 am. 

4 hours ago, darkstar8983 said:

Or just run the  late nights to South Ferry via Local and keep the  as an express 

That would be a different terminal. At least we could have an easy customer identification. 

Here is a random proposal I have to bring back the  train.

 same as now

 express between 241 Street and Flatbush at all times including late nights

 same daytime pattern as now but with no late nights

 late night only between 148 Street and South Ferry running local 

This would provide full late night service all the way downtown as the  only goes to 42 Street and this would help out the  late nights

I would like to see off peak QM16 and QM17 service to be part of the plan. 

9 hours ago, xD4nn said:

MNR doesn't have this issue because their lines go from north to south. On the island the sun majority shines on the south side of the train.

The New Haven Line goes from east to west and they lack this issue. 

On 5/14/2024 at 6:16 PM, bulk88 said:

New Q31 and new Q65 was my proposal in 2019 at Queens boro hall open house and it official now. The existing bus map was made to keep POC like me out of NE Queens. Currently/historically there is NOT 1 bus from South Queens that crosses Northern Blvd between Main Street and Francis Lewis. And Q76 is 20 minute service at best, plus goes through "nowhere" more than the Q31. Q31 peaks at 15 minutes. Q76 is worse at 20 ish. New Q65 and new Q31 finally break the Northern Blvd barrier that isolates north Queens from "undesirables".

When the Queens bus routes were started, SE Queens was mostly white.

The MTA by design will never have enough resources to please anybody. Some of the biggest congestion pricing proponents privately admit that the purpose of congestion pricing isn't even to encourage mass transit use into Manhattan. Eventually, the goal is that any white collar worker or any white collar person that does business in Manhattan will either live in Manhattan or gentrifying nabes like Park Slope. Right now there are white collar employers based in Manhattan that have a soft preference for Manhattan residents. 

17 hours ago, NoHacksJustKhaks said:

Has to be drivers letting people ride anyway. Either that, or maybe farebeaters are scaling the bus through the rear emergency exits. anything is possible 

People just walk on and bus operators are more averse to confronting farebeaters since there are more of them now. 

18 hours ago, JAzumah said:

Agreed. They are well aware of what comes with fare evasion and the LIRR knows that those kinds of problems will kill the railroads. It is also why fare evasion is not tolerated on express buses.

Fare evasion on express buses has increased on Bronx and Staten Island express buses. 

On 4/30/2024 at 1:40 PM, Kingsbridgeviewer382 said:

A fleet expansion as they're going to beef up some express routes for congestion pricing.

They aren't adding that many trips, just a few trips here and there. If anything I wouldn't be surprised if they were used to retire the remaining 2005-06 MCI's on the property at MTA Bus. 

6 hours ago, JAzumah said:

For those interested: The MTA plans to implement the Queens changes in Spring 2025. It might happen in two phases, with the Brooklyn/Queens stuff happening later.

I wonder if they'll leave the express alone like they did with the Bronx? 

On 3/30/2024 at 12:48 AM, JAzumah said:

Many years ago, Larry Littlefield (IIRC) thought that the MTA would reduce frequencies everywhere down to 15-30 minutes and the city would encourage more bicycling to offset the issue. If the bus system were to become free, I could see your "superroutes" becoming a reality with a 40% articulated fleet.

 

100%. That's my beef with most transit supporters. They do not understand that the less they pay for the buses, the less buses they will get. That does not mean they have to pay 100%, but 0% means that the bus funding will be subject to the political winds or fluctuating streams of money.

 

In a free bus system and a paid rail system, we become WMATA overnight in terms of demographics. Outside of Manhattan, the class divide on the subways is not that strong today. 

The thing is with bicycling is that Citibike is operating at a loss and Lyft may be looking to dump it. The same people wanting publicly subsidized bike share complain about express bus and commuter rail subsidies. 

On 3/29/2024 at 7:29 PM, B35 via Church said:

 

 

Quite frankly, the educational level of the 2 poor souls they threw to the wolves is rather irrelevant to me (all things considered)... This debacle represents a new low the MTA has hit... Anyone would have to be a fool at this point to believe the MTA is still in it to provide optimal public transit for the NYC region... But of course, the kool-aid drinkers will still slurp-slurp & go AHhhHHhhh at this f***in' bullshit....

I think it is more than that. Some of the kool aid drinkers are part of groups like Riders Alliance who are there to take advantage of the lack of solidarity between non express bus riders to claim to speak for ALL transit riders when they really speak for the big tech, hedge fund and other corporate interests that fund them. 

3 hours ago, JAzumah said:

Hospital & school cluster in the area.

That was the original route but was changed due to 2nd Avenue Subway construction. They reverted back to the original route as many drivers were using it anyways. There's even some drivers who use the FDR Drive to 96th street. 

On 3/26/2024 at 5:00 PM, Kingsbridgeviewer382 said:

I would argue to making the bus system free, but it's pretty f'n obvious not a single person would want to have that conversation without screaming entitlement or not wanting to pay the taxes necessary to fund it. And I recognize that this is a complicated subject topic altogether that can't be solved easily (as much as people like to think it would be by just throwing more police onto buses).

The bus system being free wouldn't make much of a difference. Most bus customers transfer to and from the subway and theoretically pay the subway fare anyway. Those who take unlimited rides would likely ride subways enough times that you could get them all there. My plan would be make the entire local bus network free, but have the subway fare be $3 with no unlimited rides. 

4 hours ago, QM1to6Ave said:

I'm sure they figure they will just pick a different line. Given the crazy high absenteeism level, there is more than enough work to go around to just barely fill service, even if they made cuts.

Now the majority of bus operators at MTA Bus are from what's called the consolidated list which are operators hired after June 6, 2009. If they cut CP express service, if they want to work express that bad they can always pick into EC or YO the next year. I'll make a point of saying there's no more people hired from Queens or Steinway Transit driving anymore and only about 65 or so Queens Surface operators still driving at CP out of about 560 operators. 

11 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

Actually, they were fully planning on using those new 500's on the 4C's because they thought the riding public wouldn't care. That was quickly changed the two times a 500 ran on the 4C and the county got over 100 complaints. 

I also wouldn't count on the 4C going away just yet, the last three times they tried to get rid of it, the public fought to keep it. 

I have a gut feeling this time is the charm

4 hours ago, Gotham Bus Co. said:

Empty buses is a great way for them to lose work due to service cuts.

MTA wants that because they don't like express anyways. In terms of College Point operators behaving badly, one of the unofficial reasons the QM4 was moved to Baisley Park in 2016 was because College Point had poor attendance and moving the QM4 and having less express work at College Point was supposed to send a message to the union leadership

On 3/23/2024 at 7:39 AM, JAzumah said:

I am not sure why anyone thought that wouldn't happen. If you are paying railroad prices for a bus, you expect similar seats to the railroad. They don't care how new the bus is if their butt hurts when they get off.

They could've bought some retiring MTA Bus MCI's on the cheap? 

1 hour ago, Lex said:

So what's the plan for nights and weekends?

Have the  run via 63rd Street weekends? But that would create another merge. 

Bureaucratic inertia? 

On 2/17/2024 at 12:54 PM, mikecintel said:

I just heard that the MTA states they don't when they will phase out the Metro Card from this podcast at Gothamist:

https://gothamist.com/news/why-omny-readers-at-the-back-of-mta-buses-are-effectively-useless-right-now

Scroll down to hear the post cast.  Go to time 3:55-4:05 and it will "briefly" talk about that.  They said there is "no time line" when they will discontinue the Metro Card.  This article is talking about buses not using OMNY readers at the back of the bus and it will not turn on and the reason why it will not be turned on.  Well know why and it is "not paying the fares".

One thing I am noticing for several months, each new Metrocard has an expiration date of 1/31/2025, none of them have later expiration dates as was the practice before. I am getting the sense that there may be a non reduced fare switchover to OMNY around that time. Otherwise why are new Metrocards given a 1/31/2025 expiration date when its 2/29/2024. Also Metrocards given out by MTA customer service when filing a claim this month have expiration dates of 9/30/2024 when its usually more than a year as was the practice before.