Select Bus Service Discussion Thread

[EastFlatbushLarry]

6 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

These are the types of individuals that I think of when we talk about offering "reduced fares" and those who aren't paying the fare.  They are not "outstanding citizens", and they believe that society owes them everything... Free transit... Free everything.  Until we wise up on this issue and the  gets serious about dealing with these people, it'll continue to be a problem.

I will say that legitimately there are those that cannot afford the bus fare and have to make life decisions that affect whether or not the bus fare is "worth paying". I grew up in one of those households. Only difference is my mother would walk everywhere with my younger sister and I. So as much as I understand that this system is not, nor has it ever been in the business of making money and that the only reason fares are collected is to validate their existence while showing the state & federal government that they are providing a utilized service, I don't know if "reduced fares" are the absolute best long-term solution to poverty and those who qualify as the working poor. 

[Via Garibaldi 8]

1 minute ago, EastFlatbushLarry said:

I will say that legitimately there are those that cannot afford the bus fare and have to make life decisions that affect whether or not the bus fare is "worth paying". I grew up in one of those households. Only difference is my mother would walk everywhere with my younger sister and I. So as much as I understand that this system is not, nor has it ever been in the business of making money and that the only reason fares are collected is to validate their existence while showing the state & federal government that they are providing a utilized service, I don't know if "reduced fares" are the absolute best long-term solution to poverty and those who qualify as the working poor. 

You're just validating a point I made in another thread, which is that those that are truly poor usually aren't the ones farebeating.  They walk to and from and so on.  I wouldn't even classify this guy as poor, but rather just someone who doesn't care about anything or anyone.

[EastFlatbushLarry]

24 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Social media. A whole big discussion about whether or not the Eagle Team was justified in using the amount of force that they used. I just go back to the principle of it.  You don't have a ticket or didn't pay $2.75, step off of the bus and say so.  

There are a lot of dirtbags who abuse the system, I see it all the time.. The entitlement attitude. Like those who refuse to pay the fare on the B44/46SBS's and will wait for a paid customer to hand off their POP receipt (proof-of-payment) Yet, one of the things i was taught in Zerega was yes, the fare is there to be collected... But at what cost? A dumb argument with someone who has already made an executive decision not to pay? A fight with a potentially unstable individual? Count your costs, is what a director instructed my classmates & I.

As far as eagle team goes.. I worked security (residential & club bouncer) in my past. The law was and still is that you (security guard) are a private citizen and are allowed to use equal force against another individual. So if an eagle team agent is shoved, he/she is within their legal rights to shove back. 

[EastFlatbushLarry]

18 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

You're just validating a point I made in another thread, which is that those that are truly poor usually aren't the ones farebeating.  They walk to and from and so on.  I wouldn't even classify this guy as poor, but rather just someone who doesn't care about anything or anyone.

Agreed. But this brings me to my ultimate point. I am currently a bus operator. I wasn't always one, nor will I always be one. My title doesn't dictate my humanity. This system is a public service built to serve the public, just like FDNY (not the ambulance)  or NYPD. If the police or fire department charged a fee of any amount to assist you and relied on that revenue to "stay in business", there would be daily riots in these streets. I understand that NYPD & FDNY (ambulance) collects revenue for the city in various ways, but that is not the bread & butter of their existence. The MTA (board of transportation, NYCTA, MaBSTOA, whatever rendition of NYC Transit) much like NYCHA weren't created to be revenue streams, period. The intent was to serve poor people. Disenfranchised people. Working poor people. People who couldn't afford cars. Not vagrants, vagabonds and raggamuffins. Of course, these types are the apples that spoil the bunch. Yet, there must be a way to separate them from the rest of decent  society who utilize transit for the true intent & purpose it was originally designed. 

Edited February 5, 2018 by EastFlatbushLarry
2 spelling errors

[Via Garibaldi 8]

3 minutes ago, EastFlatbushLarry said:

Agreed. But this brings me to my ultimate point. I am currently a bus operator. I wasn't always one, nor will I always be one. My title doesn't dictate my humanity. This system is a public service built to serve the public, just like FDNY (not the ambulance)  or NYPD. If the police or fire department charged a fee of any amount to assist you and relied on that revenue to "stay in business", there would be daily riots in these streets. I understand that NYPD & FDNY (ambulance) collects revenue for the city in various ways, but that is not the bread & butter of their existence. The MTA (board of transportation, NYCTA, MaBSTOA, whatever rendition of NYC Transit) much like NYCHA weren't created to be revenue streams, period. The intent was to serve poor people. Disenfranchised people. Working poor people. People who couldn't afford cars. Not vagrants, vagabonds and raggamuffins. Of course, these types are the apples that spoil the bunch. Yet, there must be a way to separate them from the rest of decent  society who utilize transit for the true intent & purpose it was originally designed. 

Regardless of who the  serves, it must collect fares to cover at least a portion of its operating costs, otherwise it will be just like NYCHA... An agency that is hemorrhaging money left and right.  Ultimately someone always has to pay for these things, and it's usually those that are already paying for them.  

Edited February 5, 2018 by Via Garibaldi 8

[EastFlatbushLarry]

2 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Regardless of who the  serves, it must collect fares to cover at least a portion of its operating costs, otherwise it will be just like NYCHA... An agency that is hemorrhaging money left and right.  Ultimately someone always has to pay for these things, and it's usually those that are already paying for them.  

Agreed. NYCHA haa suffered from the same problems MTA has over the years... Hemorrhaging money by way of mismanagement & deferred maintenance. Sad, but true. They both allow those who abuse the system to run rampant, without definitive problem solving solutions. 

[EastFlatbushLarry]

On 2/1/2018 at 4:11 PM, BrooklynBus said:

I agree here mostly with B35 via Church and Garibaldi here. SBS won't fix anything. What has it fixed on the B44 and B46 for most riders? Nothing. In fact, I haven't heard a single good word about the B46 SBS. I was a daily B46 rider in the 1960s and I bet service today is much worse than it was then. Prior to 1975 it operated on a scheduled two minute headway during rush hours. In reality, it was more like four buses every ten minutes. But you never had to wait more than ten minutes for a bus all day long. Can anyone say the same is true today? And then it was only the third most utilized route in Brooklyn, not the heaviest.

Now back to the B82. You know I am for long routes to minimize transferring. But that does not mean every bus needs to go from one end of the borough to the other. That is what causes delays. The longer a bus has to travel, the greater its chances of delays are. The B82 never should have been created in the first place.  The B5/50 was just fine.   No bus transfers were saved by combining the routes and that wasn't the purpose of combination anyway. IT WAS TO SAVE OPERATING COSTS. And it was plain dumb to do that. 

Everyone knows that in most cases, it is the central portion of the route that has the most patronage. That's why it made sense to overlap the routes. The lack of that overlap is what causes your overcrowding and the fact that a longer route means less reliability.  The additional service provided by the B7 is insufficient to really matter.

The solution is increased reliability which SBS has not been known for. Buses on SBS routes bunch just as often as they did before SBS was created.  You get increased reliability with better supervision. Right now there practically is no supervision at all.

The only good features about this SBS plan is the curbside lanes on the narrow portion of Kings Highway during rush hours. AND YOU DON'T NEED SBS TO DO THAT. 

Their solution for Flatlands Avenue to 'reconfigure the roadway has me worried because I don't have the slightest idea of what they actually intend to do. Will they be eliminating left turn lanes? Because that would be disastrous for traffic. They at least owe us an explanation of what is being proposed. But according to DOT, cars don't matter.

I am also against this because where they are proposing to put in bus lanes on the wide portions of Kings Highway, it just isn't necessary. Their own data, if you go through all the reports, shows that except for three hours a day, average bus speeds already exceed 20 mph in a 25 mph zone. So how does an exclusive lane increase bus speeds there? It doesn't. It only will slow down traffic and cause congestion where none exists now.

Also, where is the evidence that more will pay their fares with SBS? I haven't seen any.

So the solution is to revert to the B5/50 or another combination of routes so the route is shorter and more reliable. {No one from Bay Parkway is traveling east of Rockaway Parkway anyway." Better supervision and measures taken to return buses to schedule. Have schedules that adequately reflect running times with adequate layovers. Schedule the correct number of buses to reflect usage. Also, someone please tell me why a saw a not in service B82 on Avenue P? Are they running buses not in service from Ulmer Park all the way to East New York? If so, that is one reason how they are wasting money.

SBS is not the panacea they would have you believe to solve all problems. If they want SBS in this corridor, it needs to make new connections that people will use like starting from Bay Ridge along 65 St (stopping at even numbered avenues only) and Avenue P and extended to Gateway Mall and JFK. 

As someone who has had ups & downs with the old B82 local set up (a one & one long/short trip set because the line is ridiculously long) I was in favor of limited stops. After doing my form of homework, I firmly believe the 82 should be split apart, much like the old B61/new B62 scenario. I can think of many cases throughout the system where long lines need to be broken down and focus solely on serving case specific corridors, but if they still want a bus line to run from Spring Creek Towers to Bay 38 Street/Ulmer Park Depot... Let em have it. I don't see it succeeding, personally. But the B5/50 set up should encompass the locals. For the life of me, as a kid, I never understood why they combined them. Yet as an adult, after seeing my run pay on the 82, I didn't care as much lol

[B35 via Church]

1 hour ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

You're just validating a point I made in another thread, which is that those that are truly poor usually aren't the ones farebeating.  They walk to and from and so on.  I wouldn't even classify this guy as poor, but rather just someone who doesn't care about anything or anyone.

1 hour ago, EastFlatbushLarry said:

There are a lot of dirtbags who abuse the system, I see it all the time.. The entitlement attitude. Like those who refuse to pay the fare on the B44/46SBS's and will wait for a paid customer to hand off their POP receipt (proof-of-payment) Yet, one of the things i was taught in Zerega was yes, the fare is there to be collected... But at what cost? A dumb argument with someone who has already made an executive decision not to pay? A fight with a potentially unstable individual? Count your costs, is what a director instructed my classmates & I....

There has always been a train of thought that says that public transportation should be free.... The term "public" (anything) tends to constitute this frame of mind... As long as that attitude continues to persist, you're gonna have farebeaters.... It isn't a bunch of poor people per se, getting hostile/belligerent/argumentative when they get caught not paying the fare.... Don't know about you two, but I have never heard of a hustler who's alright with their hustle getting busted - IDGAF if you're ray ray down the street or Bernie damn Madoff....

Entitlement is right.

30 minutes ago, EastFlatbushLarry said:

As someone who has had ups & downs with the old B82 local set up (a one & one long/short trip set because the line is ridiculously long) I was in favor of limited stops. After doing my form of homework, I firmly believe the 82 should be split apart, much like the old B61/new B62 scenario. I can think of many cases throughout the system where long lines need to be broken down and focus solely on serving case specific corridors, but if they still want a bus line to run from Spring Creek Towers to Bay 38 Street/Ulmer Park Depot... Let em have it. I don't see it succeeding, personally. But the B5/50 set up should encompass the locals. For the life of me, as a kid, I never understood why they combined them. Yet as an adult, after seeing my run pay on the 82, I didn't care as much lol

Right... Just because a long route garners a ton of passengers, doesn't necessarily make a route "successful".... You can fill a pool with urine just as you can with fresh water.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

3 minutes ago, B35 via Church said:

There has always been a train of thought that says that public transportation should be free.... The term "public" (anything) tends to constitute this frame of mind... As long as that attitude continues to persist, you're gonna have farebeaters.... It isn't a bunch of poor people per se, getting hostile/belligerent/argumentative when they get caught not paying the fare.... Don't know about you two, but I have never heard of a hustler who's alright with their hustle getting busted - IDGAF if you're ray ray down the street or Bernie damn Madoff....

And this is precisely the problem I have when people say oh we need reduced fares. First truly get an understanding of who isn't paying and why, but we both already know these people generally are. The guy in that video wouldn't pay regardless.

Edited February 5, 2018 by Via Garibaldi 8

[B35 via Church]

23 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

And this is precisely the problem I have when people say oh we need reduced fares. First truly get an understanding of who isn't paying and why, but we both already know these people generally are. The guy in that video wouldn't pay regardless.

Reduced fares won't make a difference when it comes to deterring farebeating.... I don't even entertain those arguments anymore because I've been through enough of em.... Give me the people in this city that exude any sort of pride when it comes to utilizing the buses & trains in this city..... On the other side of the coin, the MTA isn't in it for the riding public (as much as people want to believe), so why should the rider go above & beyond in that category, when you have as many of them so fed up with the service levels, service reliabiliy, the lack of cleanliness, the amt. of homelessness & panhandling being as commonplace as it is, the list goes on.....

Now I'm not trying to say that 2.75 a ride is dirt cheap, but I'm sorry, I'm not buying into the fake outrage behind it being such this big hardship as people like to let on..... Funny how everybody has money for the things they want (within reason) and not for the things they NEED.....

Edited February 5, 2018 by B35 via Church

[Via Garibaldi 8]

30 minutes ago, B35 via Church said:

Reduced fares won't make a difference when it comes to deterring farebeating.... I don't even entertain those arguments anymore because I've been through enough of em.... Give me the people in this city that exude any sort of pride when it comes to utilizing the buses & trains in this city..... On the other side of the coin, the MTA isn't in it for the riding public (as much as people want to believe), so why should the rider go above & beyond in that category, when you have as many of them so fed up with the service levels, service reliabiliy, the lack of cleanliness, the amt. of homelessness & panhandling being as commonplace as it is, the list goes on.....

Now I'm not trying to say that 2.75 a ride is dirt cheap, but I'm sorry, I'm not buying into the fake outrage behind it being such this big hardship as people like to let on..... Funny how everybody has money for the things they want (within reason) and not for the things they NEED.....

That's exactly what I've been saying...

[EastFlatbushLarry]

9 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Funny how everybody has money for the things they want (within reason) and not for the things they NEED.....

I personally have had females get on the bus on Saturday nights asking for a free ride... Wearing authentic Christian Louboutin red bottom heels. So I definitely agree with this.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

1 minute ago, EastFlatbushLarry said:

I personally have had females get on the bus on Saturday nights asking for a free ride... Wearing authentic Christian Louboutin red bottom heels. So I definitely agree with this.

And those shoes are a good $600-900 per pair. They were featured once on a financial show that I watch. If you can afford such expensive shoes, you can afford $2.75.

[N6 Limited]

What do you think of a Q44 extension to Fordham Plaza?

[Via Garibaldi 8]

10 minutes ago, N6 Limited said:

What do you think of a Q44 extension to Fordham Plaza?

That bus is already slow enough. Why Fordham Plaza?

[N6 Limited]

2 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

That bus is already slow enough. Why Fordham Plaza?

Many Connections

[RailRunRob]

4 minutes ago, N6 Limited said:

Many Connections

I asked the same thing in the other thread. I was thinking Connections as well.   

[MysteriousBtrain]

The Q44 cannot handle any more extensions. Leave it the way it is.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

13 minutes ago, N6 Limited said:

Many Connections

 

7 minutes ago, RailRunRob said:

I asked the same thing in the other thread. I was thinking Connections as well.   

The two of you should ride the route and that would answer your question.

[RailRunRob]

Just now, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

 

The two of you should ride the route and that would answer your question.

It's a long route..  I got it... like I said that's why a Q94 was on the table. 

[Via Garibaldi 8]

1 minute ago, RailRunRob said:

It's a long route..  I got it... like I said that's why a Q94 was on the table. 

From who and from where to where?

[RailRunRob]

Just now, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

From who and from where to where?

You don't think it's demand from Mid Bronx to Queens?

[Via Garibaldi 8]

Just now, RailRunRob said:

You don't think it's demand from Mid Bronx to Queens?

All I asked for was the termini. The next thing I'd want to know is how would it differ from the Q44SBS in terms of the amount of stops? The current Q44 makes far too many stops.

[RailRunRob]

1 minute ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

All I asked for was the termini. The next thing I'd want to know is how would it differ from the Q44SBS in terms of the amount of stops? The current Q44 makes far too many stops.

Fordham Plaza is a solid terminus. Metro-North, Two SBS transfers and  3 major North/South routes.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

Just now, RailRunRob said:

Fordham Plaza is a solid terminus. Metro-North, Two SBS transfers and  3 major North/South routes.

That's not what I asked.  I asked how would the Q94 differ from the Q44 and what would the termini be?