Report: NYC Not Doing Enough to Prioritize Buses

According to a bus advocacy coalition's progress report, New York City hasn't yet delivered on promises to get buses moving faster with comprehensive and well-enforced bus lanes.

October 8, 2018, 7am PDT | Philip Rojc | @PhilipRojc

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Bus Turnaround—a coalition comprised of Transit Center, Riders Alliance, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, and the NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign—gave New York City largely unsatisfactory marks in a progress report.

Dan Rivoli writes, "The groups gave the city Department of Transportation a D+ for its effort to design streets that prioritize buses. The NYPD got a D for failing to ticket vehicles that clog bus lanes."

New York's Department of Transportation pushed back, citing "the administration's installation of 111 miles of bus lanes, 16 Select Bus Service (SBS) routes and 500 intersections where buses get priority at lights." But the coalition says that's not enough to compensate for a downward trend in yearly ridership numbers.

According to Bus Turnaround, the city's failure to install enough dedicated bus lanes, and NYPD's failure to police them properly, may be driving that decline. "The group notes that only 15 miles of bus lanes were added since the 2017 progress report, whereas advocates have called for 100 miles over five years, including 60 new miles in the final years of de Blasio's time in office."

Full Story:

Stuck on the bus: new report says city's made little progress in speeding up service

Published on Monday, October 1, 2018 in NY Daily News