NYC Not Hitting The Gas On Bus Fixes, New Report Says

[Via Garibaldi 8]

NYC Not Hitting The Gas On Bus Fixes, New Report Says

Advocates praised the MTA for helping to improve bus service, but said the Department of Transportation is lagging behind.

By Noah Manskar, Patch Staff | Oct 2, 2018 1:14 pm ET

NEW YORK — While New York City Transit — the MTA agency overseeing the buses — has demonstrated a commitment to turning things around, de Blasio's Department of Transportation has shown a "lack of urgency" toward getting the buses moving, the report says.

"We've turned a corner policy-wise with the MTA but not with the city," said Jon Orcutt, the director of communications and advocacy at TransitCenter, one of the Bus Turnaround Campaign's core groups.

The MTA's sprawling bus system has struggled alongside the subways in recent years. Its slowest-in-the-nation speeds have caused riders to leave in droves — annual trips plummeted by about 100 million from 2008 to 2016, according to a city comptroller's report released last year.

New York City Transit President Andy Byford unveiled a sweeping plan in April to revive the system by redesigning routes, rolling out new vehicles and eventually allowing passengers to board at any door.

While there is still room for improvement — the timeline of all-door boarding is still uncertain, for example — the agency has taken concrete steps to show it's serious about bus fixes, the advocates' report says.

A revamped Staten Island express bus network launched in July, and similar route updates are in the works for the Bronx, the report notes. NYC Transit has also created a bus performance dashboard so riders can more easily access performance data.

"There's real political capital from transit leadership going into buses, which you probably couldn't have said at any time in the last 30, 40 years," Orcutt said.

But the city's efforts have not matched the scale of the bus system's woes, advocates say.

The Department of Transportation has added about 15 miles of bus lanes since August 2017, though much of that resulted from delayed projects, the report says. The NYPD, meanwhile, has failed to effectively keep those lanes clear — just 1 percent of the moving violations police issued between January and July were for driving in bus lanes, according to the report.

The DOT has moved at a similarly anemic pace to expand transit signal priority technology, which helps buses get through intersections more easily, the report says.

The city had installed the technology at 546 intersections as of September, putting it on track to hit about 1,000 intersections by the end of 2020, the report says. But the de Blasio administration should increase that pace to 1,000 intersections per year if it's serious about getting New Yorkers where they need to go, advocates say.

Instead, Orcutt said, the mayor seems more interested in "low-ridership, low-impact" transit initiatives such as the NYC Ferry system and the Brooklyn-Queens Connector, a proposed $2.7 billion streetcar with a reportedly uncertain future.

"If you were serious about the fair city sort of rhetoric and you wanted to speed things up for low-income people and just give them better access, you would focus on buses," Orcutt said.

A DOT spokesperson touted the city's commitment to Select Bus Service, the bus rapid transit initiative that has expanded to 16 routes carrying more than 375,000 riders. The city released a plan, titled "Bus Forward," for expanding the service last year.

"The de Blasio administration has committed more for transit than ever before by committing to 20 new SBS routes, and has committed to bring SBS-style improvements to routes citywide through the Bus Forward program," the spokesperson said in a statement.

The de Blasio administration has committed about $270 million in new city funding to the program, the spokesperson said. The city also plans to add two new camera systems for bus lane enforcement this week, bringing the total to 130, the spokesperson said.

The MTA, for its part, embraced the report's conclusions. A spokesman said the agency will have a more definite timeline for the all-door boarding rollout as it gets closer to fully implementing its new fare payment system, which will not use swipe-able MetroCards.

"We truly appreciate the Bus Turnaround Coalition's support for our aggressive efforts to transform our bus network and deliver a better system for riders," the spokesman, Jon Weinstein, said in a statement.

(Lead image: A New York City Transit bus is pictured on Staten Island in August 2018. Photo by Marc A. Hermann / MTA New York City Transit)

Source: https://patch.com/new-york/foresthills/s/giutg/nyc-not-hitting-gas-bus-fixes-new-report-says?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_term=traffic+%26+transit&utm_campaign=autopost&utm_content=foresthills

[QM1to6Ave]

Nothing shocking here lol. They could have just read this board to learn all of that. 

[bobtehpanda]

14 hours ago, QM1to6Ave said:

Nothing shocking here lol. They could have just read this board to learn all of that. 

I mean, the point of the PR is not to show new information, but to keep the heat and pressure on. Lord knows the MTA won't do anything otherwise.