Bus Rapid Transit program may roll out in nine locations in Queens

[Harry]

Bus Rapid Transit - a system that allows buses to function more like a subway - is key to expanding the city's mass transit, some advocates and transportation officials argue.

 

BRT was established in New York for the first time last year as a pilot program on the BX12 line along Fordham Road in the Bronx. By providing a separate right-of-way for buses and allowing for curbside fare payment, among other features, travel time dropped by 11 minutes - or 19% - from one end of the line to the other, city records show.

 

"This is the brave new frontier of public transportation in New York City," said Wiley Norvell of the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives.

 

The city is now pushing BRT plans in Manhattan, Brooklyn and on Staten Island, but not in Queens, where local merchants previously opposed a Merrick Blvd. pilot, fearing it would remove on-street parking and hurt business.

 

But the city is proposing a second wave of BRT lines over the next decade. Whether this transit frontier will run through Queens - and if so, where - will depend on various factors, including input received at two public meetings in Jackson Heights and Jamaica last week, officials said.

 

The city Transportation Department has identified 31 potential BRT corridors, focusing largely on areas underserved by mass transit or targeted for growth.

 

Nine of those are in Queens, including southeastern Queens; Utopia/Fresh Meadows; Middle Village; the Long Island Expressway; the Long Island City waterfront and the Queens-Manhattan connections, where subways are jam-packed.

 

Joe Barr, director of transit development for the DOT, said eight to 12 corridors across the city will be selected this summer for further study. Projects that are ultimately selected will be built over the next decade.

 

The Bronx pilot was built in about a year, Barr noted. "If people are looking for short-term improvements to their transit service," he said, "this is really a good way to deliver that."

 

Norvell said BRT projects should be prioritized when lawmakers carve out the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's five-year capital plan this fall.

 

BRT is a much more effective way to add mass transit capacity than building new subways, he noted. BRT costs about $10 million per mile. The Second Ave. subway, by contrast, is projected to cost $1 billion to $2 billion per mile.

 

Ted Orosz, director of long-range bus planning for New York City Transit, said areas that lack subways, such as southeastern Queens, should get first dibs.

 

"You want to expand the reach of the transit system," he said, noting that areas where the subways are overcrowded should also be high on the list.

 

City Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing), who chairs the Council's transportation committee, thinks BRT can provide a quicker link between the borough's major transit hubs.

 

"It's really ridiculous and maddening that you could travel by mass transit faster between Flushing and Manhattan as opposed to Flushing and Forest Hills," he said.

 

Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Sunnyside) pointed to BRT as a way to handle the growth in Long Island City.

 

All told, about 100 people attended last week's meetings in Queens. In Jamaica on Wednesday, it seemed as if city officials outnumbered the public.

 

"There should be a lot more people out here," said Bruce Pulling, a truck driver and regular bus rider from Oakland Gardens.

 

He wants to see a BRT line running along the Horace Harding Expressway, from the Queens-Nassau border to Jamaica.

 

"Anything to get more buses out there," he said.

[CPBO]

This will be the biggest money drain on the system......lets let everybody ride for free!!...I don't get this MTA.....money problems and they like this idea??.......I want to go to one of this workshops they are having but I am not off on the Tuesdays they have em.....besides if I want and voiced my concern about farebeaters......they would have an answer.....this has to be coming from a guy who never drove a bus in his life......his uncle was a super......and he got the job.......

 

 

Dumb....real dumb.......stick with Limited!!

[FamousNYLover]

This video playlist I made is also relative to Bus Rapid Transit if you guys want to learn more.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=4BB4CA0A75AC260E

[Cait Sith]

Q44 & Q10 Please!

[Shortline Bus]

Off topic but related. I felt that the M15 should been the first NYC bus line to get BRT.

[Cait Sith]

The Q60 would be a bigger benefit than those two routes. To those who have been on the Q60, you should know where I'm coming from.

 

Which is true. For the manhattan portion, they would have to extend the Q60.

 

The M15, Q10 & Q60 would benefit from the SBS. The Q44 as well since thats a route that always has crush loads every trip to and from Flushing in both directions to Jamaica & The Bronx.

[Q43 Floral Park]

This would work on the Q46 speeding up the ride during rush hours and I've never seen anyone even attempting to get on for free. The Q43 could also use this.

 

As for HH Expwy forget BRT over there. I mean it'd be nice to have 1 bus serving the whole corridor but there simply isn't a need for it east of 188St

[BrooklynBus]

This will be the biggest money drain on the system......lets let everybody ride for free!!....I want to go to one of this workshops they are having but I am not off on the Tuesdays they have em.....

 

Don't waste your time. You didn't miss anything.

 

I just went to the one at Brooklyn College last night and was very disappointed. I thought it would be primarily a discussion about potential routes of which there was very little discussion. The prime purpose was to explain what BRT is. (People could just go to the MTA website if they are interested.)

 

The group was broken up into separate workshops of about ten people each. The first half hour was spent drawing on a map where people lived, travelled to, and transferred. A total waste of time. They just wanted to show you that people make a lot of trips everywhere. I felt like I was back in kindergarten.

 

Then another half hour was wasted asking what features people liked about BRT and what they didn't, as if that will influence what they decide. There was very little talk about specifics. The discussion was far too general to be meaningful.

 

When I asked why there was very little enforcement on the Bx 12, they couldn't provide an answer. Then I asked how they would implement real-time bus arrival times, when they've already had three experiments that failed, the last one costing $14 million. Looks like they intend to waste more money studying it.

 

They are trying to brainwash the people by calling BRT "like a subway on the surface" which it is not. Also, priority bus signals could be done along all major routes. They do not need BRT for that.

 

In Brooklyn, they seem to favor Utica Avenue although everyone in our group preferred an east west routing in Southern Brooklyn. They willend up doing whatever they want anyway.

 

It's taking 8 years just for Nostrand Avenue. They hope to do another two more in Brooklyn by 2021. They will probably implement a second route within ten years which will result in an average five minute travel time savings, ten minutes if you ride the entire route. Would make more sense if they just turn the Bay Ridge Line into Light Rail.

 

BRT works well on a physically separated roadway. Other cities are using wide former rail rights of way. You can't really do it on two or four lane wide streets like they are proposing. You need boulevards and we have very few of them here and we can't afford to lose a lane of traffic due to the lack of expressways in many areas.

 

They paid at least 15 DOT and MTA employees to run this waste of time plus perhaps $1,000 on materials for this single session. The meetings are just to give the impression of public input.

 

The incompetence is just unbelievable. They stated that the community recommended delivery zones on Fordam Road. You mean DOT couldn't think of that themselves after studying it for three years? What did they expect the merchants to do?

 

They didn't even give the correct address for the meeting so how could we trust them to implement BRT correctly? They stated it would be at 2900 Bedford Avenue. That turned out to be a general address for the campus. There is no building with that number. You had to go in a building to find out it was being held at the Student Center three blocks from Bedford Avenue. And at that building, there was a small sign which said the meeting was inside. You had to ask again to learn it was on the fourth floor. This is what you are dealing with.

[kawasaki3]

will there be a chance to BRT or select bus service could be

put on Bx19 route? Bronx route could use some BRT or select

bus service that can be put another route in the bronx .

Bx19 is consider an artic new flyer route? sometimes you orion5 , orion7 , 1996 nova bus run on Bx19. weren't M101 supposed to become BRT

select bus service route. i heard it last year that M101 supposed to become

BRT , select bus service route.?

[Forest Glen]

The Q5 Limited is more than sufficient. There's no need for a Merrick Blvd BRT. The Q5 isn't as busy as the Bx12.

[FamousNYLover]

Slightly little off-topic, WCDOT Bee-Line are also planning for W21 Bus Rapid Transit.

[R32 3348]

will there be a chance to BRT or select bus service could be

put on Bx19 route? Bronx route could use some BRT or select

bus service that can be put another route in the bronx .

Bx19 is consider an artic new flyer route? sometimes you orion5 , orion7 , 1996 nova bus run on Bx19. weren't M101 supposed to become BRT

select bus service route. i heard it last year that M101 supposed to become

BRT , select bus service route.?

 

Offtopic.

[CPBO]

Don't waste your time. You didn't miss anything.

 

I just went to the one at Brooklyn College last night and was very disappointed. I thought it would be primarily a discussion about potential routes of which there was very little discussion. The prime purpose was to explain what BRT is. (People could just go to the MTA website if they are interested.)

 

The group was broken up into separate workshops of about ten people each. The first half hour was spent drawing on a map where people lived, travelled to, and transferred. A total waste of time. They just wanted to show you that people make a lot of trips everywhere. I felt like I was back in kindergarten.

 

Then another half hour was wasted asking what features people liked about BRT and what they didn't, as if that will influence what they decide. There was very little talk about specifics. The discussion was far too general to be meaningful.

 

When I asked why there was very little enforcement on the Bx 12, they couldn't provide an answer. Then I asked how they would implement real-time bus arrival times, when they've already had three experiments that failed, the last one costing $14 million. Looks like they intend to waste more money studying it.

 

They are trying to brainwash the people by calling BRT "like a subway on the surface" which it is not. Also, priority bus signals could be done along all major routes. They do not need BRT for that.

 

In Brooklyn, they seem to favor Utica Avenue although everyone in our group preferred an east west routing in Southern Brooklyn. They willend up doing whatever they want anyway.

 

It's taking 8 years just for Nostrand Avenue. They hope to do another two more in Brooklyn by 2021. They will probably implement a second route within ten years which will result in an average five minute travel time savings, ten minutes if you ride the entire route. Would make more sense if they just turn the Bay Ridge Line into Light Rail.

 

BRT works well on a physically separated roadway. Other cities are using wide former rail rights of way. You can't really do it on two or four lane wide streets like they are proposing. You need boulevards and we have very few of them here and we can't afford to lose a lane of traffic due to the lack of expressways in many areas.

 

They paid at least 15 DOT and MTA employees to run this waste of time plus perhaps $1,000 on materials for this single session. The meetings are just to give the impression of public input.

 

The incompetence is just unbelievable. They stated that the community recommended delivery zones on Fordam Road. You mean DOT couldn't think of that themselves after studying it for three years? What did they expect the merchants to do?

 

They didn't even give the correct address for the meeting so how could we trust them to implement BRT correctly? They stated it would be at 2900 Bedford Avenue. That turned out to be a general address for the campus. There is no building with that number. You had to go in a building to find out it was being held at the Student Center three blocks from Bedford Avenue. And at that building, there was a small sign which said the meeting was inside. You had to ask again to learn it was on the fourth floor. This is what you are dealing with.

 

This is exactly what I had envisioned.......:tdown::tdown:

[Qns Blvd Dom]

I sure hope BRT comes to Queens! I honestly think it was a big mistake of ditching the Merrick Blvd BRT plan as that would of have been a great way to get people off of those unsafe Dollar Vans that would be trying to hit cars and people while zooming up and down Merrick Blvd.

I feel other places that should have BRT is along the Q44, Q60, Entire Northern Blvd Corridor, most of the LIE, and I honestly feel that the QM22 should be converted to SBS!

[Amtrak7]

Before implementing it on the Q44, we have to consider wether traffic signal priority/bus lanes will cause big problems with the congestion of the Flushing Transit 'Hub'.

[R32 3348]

I honestly feel that the QM22 should be converted to SBS!

Dedicated bus lanes for a bus that runs 4 times a day? 21st St. doesn't get overwhelmed with traffic either.