Changes to Local Service in the Bronx Benefit Bus Speeds, Ridership

The MTA launched redesigned local bus service in the Bronx June 2022. Since then, buses are going faster with more riders on board, according to data shared recently by the New York MTA.

Dave Colon provides more detail on the changes and their results in an article for Streetsblog NYC.

Local buses ran 4 percent faster in the months after the redesign went into effect on the 13 routes the agency re-mapped, while overall speeds also increased borough-wide — by 2 percent on weekdays and 3 percent on weekends, according to the presentation.

Ridership, meanwhile, increased 6 percent after the redesign went into effect, Thompson said. The routes that received the most changes saw the biggest increases.

To revamp the system, according to Colon’s account of the changes,  “the MTA made major changes to 13 of 46 routes, while also tweaking almost every line in the borough by streamlining routes and adding more space between stops, a process known as bus stop balancing.”

The Bronx changes are the first of a series of local bus service changes in the works by the MTA since 2019, adds Colon. Queens will be next, followed by Brooklyn.

Bu system redesigns have become popular since the city of Houston led the way with a redesign of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (Metro) bus system in 2015.