Much Better Buses: It’s About Time
As we approach the end of four long years of waiting for faster bus service, waiting for leaders like Mayor Adams to build the network of bus lanes he committed to on the campaign trail, we’ve been presented with a new opportunity to make up for the wasted time we’ve spent waiting and deliver fast, reliable transit service to every corner of the city.
Much Better Buses could be on their way to our streets, and it’s about time! Here’s how the incoming Mayoral administration can go beyond simple red paint and create a citywide network of gold-standard transit service to put time and money back into the hands of New Yorkers.
Immediate opportunities for our next Mayor to take action:
Flatbush Avenue
Fordham Road
Fifth Avenue
34th Street
Tremont Avenue
Same as it was four years ago, the average speed of our buses is still sitting at barely 8MPH. We knew then what it would take to improve service and it remains the case today — dedicated, fully-separated bus lanes that can get bus riders out of traffic and on their way.
We’ve seen what’s possible when we treat buses like a dignified, respected transit mode on 14th Street, where buses blaze across Manhattan on traffic-free streets with an increased ridership that shows the enthusiasm riders have for bus service that works. Replicating this success across every major corridor so that every New Yorker has access to this level of service is what we demand of City Hall.
To that end, the Adams administration has left plenty of opportunities on the table for Mamdani’s City Hall to hit the ground running. For example, stalled busway/improvement projects on Flatbush Avenue, Fordham Road, Fifth Avenue, 34th Street, and Tremont Avenue are all ripe for implementing Bus Rapid Transit (or BRT, think of it like bus service that operates identically to a train) and laying the groundwork for building out a citywide network of subway-grade bus service — not in decades, but in as little as a few years!
Other major transit corridors where these improvements could be prioritized:
Utica Avenue, Brooklyn
Linden Blvd/Conduit Ave, Brooklyn and Queens
Main Street, Queens
Merrick Boulevard, Queens
125th Street, Manhattan
1st and 2nd Avenues, Manhattan
What riders stand to gain
Long waits for the bus disadvantages New Yorkers who have the most to lose, considering the majority of bus riders are working-class, immigrant, people of color with an income of less than $50,000.
Offering bus service that can get people to the places they need to access jobs, healthcare, education, and recreation is about bridging the opportunity gap for the majority of New Yorkers who rely on public transit. Bringing subway-level bus service to our streets is a matter of bringing equal access to reliable transit to everyone. This is especially true for New Yorkers with disabilities who are locked out of large swaths of our subway and are even further dependent on surface transit to access our city.
But let’s get specific! What kind of improvement could we expect from implementing this kind of bus service? Bus Rapid Transit experts at People Oriented Cities have conducted an analysis of the time savings that are possible with BRT and found that riders could cut their travel time by 30%-40% on Fordham Road and Utica Avenue!
How we make it happen
The path to better buses is clear. All that’s missing is the political will to take bold, decisive action to deliver the best bus service possible. Specifically, here are the commitments riders need from the incoming administration to get us on track to make our buses the envy of the world:
Implementation of stalled bus projects during the first 100 days of the new administration, following a brief review for forward compatibility with bus rapid transit
A commitment from City Hall to building physically-separated bus lanes, not just red paint.
A plan to reform the byzantine permitting and approval process to ensure concrete can be poured within a matter of months, not years.
A comprehensive planning process that fully integrates buses, making transit speed and reliability central to zoning and housing strategies in every neighborhood.