BrooklynBus

1 hour ago, Lawrence St said:

Honestly extending the back to the Pier using Eminemnt domain would be better then any bus route.

Which does bring me to my next point, what was with during the 1970's to the late 80's that everything subway wise could be replaced by a bus??? And look how that's going for them now, from the truncation of the from the pier to the 3rd Ave Elevated. And now with the redesign they expect that it will solve all these problems when it in fact won't.

Don’t understand what you are saying. How can the  be extended back to the pier or your point about the 3rd Avenue El truncation? I know they wanted to replace the Franklin shuttle with a bus. 
 

A useful cheap extension of the New Lots Line to Spring Creek to serve Spring Creek Towers formerly Starrett City, proposed during the 70s never materialized. Why? 

15 hours ago, B35 via Church said:

I couldn't tell you what's going on over there at Canarsie Pier, as I haven't been there in ages.... At one point, buses used to layover on the southern end of the loop (well, apparently they still do, according to this shot on google maps).... But yeah, I usually notice b/o's take their layover right at the last stop, alongside that shopping plaza....

I know where the layover is. My point is that to turn around the bus has to go all the way to Canarsie Pier anyway. That’s where the last stop should be, at least during times when people use the pier. When I was a kid, we would visit the pier all the time and I never saw a reason why we had to walk the last 600 feet when cars got to drive right up to the pier and park there. It made no sense.
 

In 1978, when I asked the MTA to change that, they used the excuse that it was federal property and the space in question where the buses would stop was dirt and needed to be paved and the feds would have to do it. The feds actually used the excuse there was no money to pave about 100 foot stretch. Can you believe our government was that broke? I could never get anyone to admit the real reason was that no one gave a damn about bus passengers. 

Now the MTA just wants to remove bus stops not add any. They want everyone to walk further to bus stops, not for things to be more convenient. People must still use the bus to get to Canarsie Pier and this is a simple zero cost solution to help them since everything is now paved and traffic lanes around the circle have been reduced to increase congestion as was done all over the city. 

22 minutes ago, B35 via Church said:

The long & the short of it is that there isn't much of a need to have the Paerdegat branch to run to Seaview/108th, when the B42 is relatively close to enough of Seaview.... It's a waste of runtime to have the Paerdegat branch directly running to the , serving the Paerdegats itself, and running to Seaview/108th, with the main branch already running to Seaview/108th, without serving either the & the Paerdegats.... From Utica/Eastern Pkwy, service alternates b/w the 2 branches to (attempt to) maintain a certain headway.....

What they needed to do for for at least 70 years is add a stop at Canarsie Pier on the B42, since the route passes it anyway. It should layover there.

22 minutes ago, B35 via Church said:

Good for Charlton on focusing more on actual transit, than berating Riders Alliance....

That said, what's all this talk about eliminating overnight service? I get that they only played a snippet of his whole commentary on News12, but nonetheless, it could use some context..... Was he talking about a specific route or what, because in that 485 page PDF of the draft plan of the redesign, there are routes here that's slated to run 24/7.... What's not mentioned though, is how frequent each route that is slated to operate 24/7 would operate during the overnight hours... That is peculiar, given that they breakdown the proposed frequencies for the other periods of the day (AM peak, PM peak, midday, etc)..... The remix map doesn't help in this category either, as it would have you believe that most routes would start at 6am, instead of any of them running overnights.....

I am not sure either what he’s getting at about eliminating overnight service. I believe some routes that currently run overnight, will have those hours cut. And you are correct about them not giving the headways for overnight service. That is probably because they will remain at 60 or 75 minutes or will be increased. They are definitely hiding something. 
 

Here is the complete 3 1/2 hours. But I doubt you will have the patience to watch it all. So just skip around till you find what you want. I suggested they put out clips on various different subjects, such as overnight service. 
 

Redesign covered by News 12

https://brooklyn.news12.com/mta-plans-to-make-major-changes-to-brooklyn-bus-routes

1 hour ago, N6 Limited said:

I agree with your comment on the article about transfers. 

Also, free buses may cause a decrease in bus speeds due to increased short distance trips spanning 1-3+ stops

Yes, and also because of more crowding. 

link to Facebook for Passengers United Zoom Meeting on the Brooklyn Bus Network Redesign on Jan 5 at 7:45 PM 
https://www.facebook.com/events/691201039256996?ref=newsfeed

https://www.riverdalepress.com/stories/a-plan-to-stop-fare-hikes-fix-the-mta,90691

I was quoted three times.

26 minutes ago, N6 Limited said:

This, I may not see an issue with. While a lot of housing is going up in downtown Brooklyn, the draw is probably the convenience to all the subway lines and local amenities. How much has bus ridership increased within the Downtown Brooklyn Area?

 

I’m also curious as to the ridership changes in Williamsburg since housing has increased there as well. Has there been in increase in bus ridership since Williamsburg has grown over the past 5-10 years,  or is it mostly just the  And bikes?

Ridership is closely linked with service provided. When service is increased, ridership increases, when it is decreased, ridership decreases. Not considering the pandemic, I would think that ridership has decreased in all areas, since service is being reduced in all areas. Service is a greater indicator than population or jobs, since as you stated, people have alternatives on how to get places. 
 

So as I stated, in a growing area, service needs to be increased, not merely rearranged or cut. 
 

Look at the example I cited with the B71. Before being discontinued in 2010, ridership on the route increased by 29 percent. That wasn’t due to increased population or increased jobs. It was due to the route being extended eastward to serve additional destination points. But the MTA discounted that info and discontinued the route anyway. If extended into Manhattan as suggested, ridership would go through the roof which is precisely the reason why the MTA won’t do it. They don’t want to give riders a choice between bus and subway even if the net is increased ridership by people not currently making the trip by mass transit.
 

They only want to cut service to improve their bottom line. They don’t give a damn about the riders.  

https://bklyner.com/mtas-brooklyn-bus-network-redesign-misses-mark/

6 hours ago, AlgorithmOfTruth said:

Negative. It's not the "best" time, especially considering that people who would be most affected by these changes are of lower income and are more likely to work odd-hour shifts. If anything, it would actually further empower those who have the ability to work from home or work typical business hours, i.e., from 9 to 5.

If that is true, then they should have two meetings for each area, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. Whenever they choose, it’s still better than no in person meetings at all.

Guess they do. This far, I haven’t had any problems with the locations or times they chose when they did have in person meetings.

51 minutes ago, Gotham Bus Co. said:

Any given day, time, or location will be "perfect" for some people and "impossible" for others. Who gets to decide exactly where and when each meeting should be held?

The best time is weekdays around 7 PM. Most people work during the day. Any time it’s held is still better than no in person meetings at all.

1 hour ago, B35 via Church said:

Lol.... I can lie to your face just as easily as I can across some device....

I can't bring myself to arguing over where/how these meetings the MTA holds should take place, because at the end of the day, they do what they want... I'm not one of these people that believes that my word is going to make THE (or even A) difference as to what any entity will end up implementing (let alone considering).... I'd say too many people go into these meetings with too high hopes & more often than not, they end up setting themselves up for sadness, anger, or both..... Your tears and/or level of concern does not trump that of the next common man's/woman's & guess what, the MTA banks on that shit..... When I consider the [MTA's bottom line] & [commuters wants/needs] being diametrically opposed to each other, along with this agency having shown time & time again that they exude zero remorse when it comes to screwing over commuters, wtf do you even do at that point.....

Don't remember which subreddit I saw it on, but I CTFU'd when someone said that the MTA is pro-car

 

You didn't... but that's what the MTA does.

Occasionally, the MTA does make changes based on community input. But it can’t be one or two people or even 10 or 20. There has to be hundreds opposed with political support behind them before they are willing to give in.

In Queens, it took a letter signed by every single council person in the city for the MTA to say they will go back to the drawing board and do a second draft from scratch. Their first draft was based on a blank slate assuming there were no bus routes in Queens.

Fine is a city is just being built, but to say you will plan a system ignoring all current travel patterns shows you don’t know the first thing about planning. They acted like this was a school exercise. Then they hire consultants to do the planning anyway, so what are they even getting paid for? 

In 1978, it took them three months to return the B78 to its former route after 500 people protested in the streets. How often does something like that happen? 

I am afraid that’s what it is going to take to stop this Brooklyn plan. 

9 hours ago, checkmatechamp13 said:

I didn't say anything about "just" asking them so predetermined questions...they should get the same level of engagement as they would at an in-person meeting. 

For the record, I remember going to a Manhattan community board where information on the Bronx redesign was being presented. As soon as I mentioned an idea outside the community board limits (which I had discussed with the community board in question and they had no problem with it), the MTA representatives put their coats on and left the meeting, and I had to chase them out into the street to get them to listen to my comment.

My point is that it doesn't have any bearing whatsoever as to where the meeting is held. If the MTA wants to engage with the attendees meaningfully, they will do so, and if they don't want to engage, they won't do so. That is the issue that needs to be addressed.

As for OMNY, they're trying to make a use of the station agent position. If they want to give them information on the bus redesigns and have them engage with the customers, I have no issue with it. 

Of course it depends on where the meeting is held. How many people actually have time to stop to talk on their way to work? People are always rushing and are late. The most anyone would stop to talk is a minute or two. Hardly enough time to educate or absorb all the changes contemplated or even the one affecting them. The most that could be accomplished is handing out a link to the website, if someone even bothers to type it in. 
 

on the way home, people are not as rushed, but are still looking forward to dinner. Add to that the January cold temperatures and even fewer would want to stop. So location certainly matters. When people are more relaxed in a seated environment, which they only did when visiting Community Boards, people can relax and concentrate.

Also, I have been using computers since 1987, and still had a hard time figuring Remax and how to move the map to see the submit button. What about those less familiar? When I had my councilman’s office tell them they are discriminating against seniors, their reply was they have addressed seniors because they are going out to senior centers to distribute materials. Wow, I never realized that all seniors live in senior centers. The MTA must be so much smarter than I am to see that. 

24 minutes ago, checkmatechamp13 said:

I mean if they engage with the people at the subway stations the same way they engage with the people at the Zoom meetings, I have no problem with it. The future of everything is virtual...as long as the work gets done, who cares where exactly the meeting takes place?

I totally disagree with you. Talking to people at subway stations just to ask them questions to support your predetermined conclusions does not qualify as community participation. Covid cannot be used as an excuse to avoid in person meetings to avoid discussions. They will ask the people if they would like the buses to be faster and 95 percent say yes, they will say that proves the people want fewer bus stops which is totally not the case. 
 

If they can’t have personal meetings because of Covid to introduce the Redesigns, why can they have personal meetings to introduce Omni? 
 

I worked for them for 25 years and know how hypocritical they can be. They can have the meetings on Zoom as long as they also meet with communities in person. They should be making presentations at every Community Board.

10 hours ago, checkmatechamp13 said:

Yes, they actually engaged meaningfully at the virtual meetings. I agree they should also have some in-person events, but if the majority are online, I think that's perfectly fine.

They are all on-line. They are calling asking people questions and distributing flyers at subway stations “in-person.” Anything not to directly meet with the public. Remember how they used to make live presentations before community boards which they did before introducing new SBS routes? This is much more important and affects much more riders, yet no in-person meetings. Elected officials must make sure they happen or they should be voted out, 

1 hour ago, checkmatechamp13 said:

I don't have a problem with virtual meetings. If anything it makes it more accessible, since you can do it from the comfort of your own home. And there was decent dialogue at these meetings (there was back and forth on the merits of running the Q101 to Brooklyn vs Manhattan, etc)

You mean they actually answered questions and didn’t just ask you to submit them on remax or as a comment? The ones I attended, all they did was tell you what you could find out on line and didn’t answer any questions. Virtual is okay as an option but not as a substitute for on line. In virtual they don’t even have to recognize you if they don’t want to. In person, they can’t really ignore you. 

It was delayed which is beyond my control.

I have an article coming out tomorrow on the Brooklyn Redesign summarizing my problems with it so stay tuned.

8 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Well they did have me come in for a small meeting for the Bronx Redesign Express Bus Plan. It was cute because we had a very large meeting a few months prior to that for all of the express lines, but that was more service related and about general questions we had with service. They had the then two Senior Planners there from NYCT and MTA Bus respectively and folks from the Customer Service Team with a book with the express lines and the plans. We went over each line and I explained the issues with some of their proposals, why it wouldn't work, specifically noting feedback I had as a commuter and more importantly, what other commuters had concerns about, and also asked questions about parts of the proposals that depended on DOT approval, which they admitted they hadn't even spoken with DOT about. lol This was a few days before there was an emergency Town hall Meeting in my neighborhood, where I told them that people would be pissed. When they arrived, they looked like they wanted to crawl under a table. LOL Hundreds of people there angry.

As for B/Os, they sadly don't ask them enough. Now they obviously gather demographic information and such, which is important, and I believe for the Queens and Brooklyn Redesign, they seem to have a commuter advocate that I work with at the  that is more hands-on with these proposals and they also attend the workshop sessions and other feedback meetings to try to listen and incorporate changes where possible, but that doesn't mean that these plans aren't laser-focused on cutting service, because they are. 

So why are they now refusing to have in-person meetings for Brooklyn and Queens?

What good is gathering demographic information if you are going to ignore what you find? The Brooklyn Existing Conditions Report stated Brooklyn is growing demographically as well with jobs. Downtown Brooklyn is the fastest growing area. So instead of increasing service boroughwide, they are making service cuts, including Downtown Brooklyn, the fastest growing area. 

https://www.qchron.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/multiple-transfers-cost-you/article_9e9ef532-8193-11ed-9afb-93afaa8bb57f.html

19 minutes ago, N6 Limited said:

 

Wouldn’t it make sense for them to ride the routes, observe ridership patterns and ask B/O and riders questions?

That would make too much sense. When I headed the Brooklyn bus redesign in 1981 and 1982 which was called the Brooklyn Transit Sufficiency Study, we asked the bus drivers for their comments we received several hundred responses. While we couldn’t really use 98 percent of the responses because they were really dispatching or operational issues which we had no control over, rather than route issues which was what we were concentrating on, we did receive several lengthy responses from several bus operators that were useful.

1 hour ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

I know the person that has been involved in the latest redesigns too. If they receive any criticism, they become quite pissed off because in their mind, they've worked very hard to improve these draft plans (and I would agree that the latest ones have been better at least in terms of SOME of the route proposals (not the service cuts to the spans and frequency though)), but let's be clear here. They do hire what are essentially consultants to do some of these redesigns and then they move on. The chick that I met with on the Bronx Redesign initially has moved on to another consulting firm. I think it makes more sense to use people from within that are a bit more familiar with the routes (too many cooks in the kitchen and it becomes a mess).

For anyone wondering though, I was told back then that they aimed to make 30% of the borough's routes different and keep 70% as is, but that 30% is huge, since it seems that it usually means service cuts and/or route changes that the actual commuters don't like/want.

When she came up to my neighborhood for a Townhall Meeting, people were pissed. She clearly felt that she was qualified to come into communities and dictate changes that absolutely would've been a disaster and commuters were having none of it. Looked like they all wanted to crawl under a table. I just laughed, as I had warned them that people would be pissed. Some of these changes would absolutely force people either into longer commutes, or they will be forced to spend more money or drive. 

Exactly why they don’t want to have in person meetings, but we can’t let them get away with this virtual shit where you can’t tell them how bad their plan is. 

2 hours ago, Cait Sith said:

A part of it I think is because people were literally attacking other people on the map. I saw some comments that were pretty....screwed up so to say about what others had to say. There was one guy that was commenting basically everywhere and some people were literally attacking him for spamming all over the map. There were other commenters that were just deliberately attacking other people for no reason.

There is a simple way to prevent people from attacking others. You don't allow to comment on someone else’s comment. You have only three actions you can take. You enter a new comment or you can thumbs up or thumbs down someone else’s comment. Anyone who doesn’t abide, has his comment deleted. But not allowing you to see what other people think is a flagrant attempt at preventing discussion. 
 

Also, I am not sure attacks are the reason you can’t see comments by others, because I heard the same thing happened in Queens. You could see all comments one day and the next day you couldn’t. If attacks were the reason seeing other people’s comments were not allowed in Queens, they never would have been allowed in Brooklyn. Why would the MTA think Queens riders attack but Brooklyn riders won’t? They probably just forgot to disable the feature in Brooklyn that allows you to see the comments of others.