Meet the latest addition to New York City’s extensive bus fleet. The Nova Bus LFS, which debuted in mid-January along the Bx12, is being called the bus of the future by New York City Transit. First announced last June, these articulated buses feature three doors, low floors and clean engine technology. Better still, this vehicle was built by workers in Plattsburgh, New York, and it truly is a product of the MTA’s state-wide impact.

Right now, the bus above is one of the 90 Transit expect to receive. These new buses will run along the city’s Select Bus Service corridors and these buses were designed with an eye toward speeding up bus service. “This is the perfect operation for a low-floor bus with three wide entry/exit doors,” Joseph Smith, Transit’s senior vice president at the Department of Buses, said. “Our SBS service is designed to move large numbers of people quickly and efficiently. Adding one door and subtracting two steps helps to accomplish that.”

The MTA recently provided a fact sheet about the new bus model, and it seems to be a nice one. The LFS is 62 feet long — or slightly longer than the standard subway cars on the lettered lines. It can fit 54 seated customers and another 58 standees for a total capacity of 112. “Boasting corrosion-free outer skin panels and frame along with improved fuel economy from its clean diesel engine and smart transmission, this technically advanced bus is expected to cost less to operate and maintain during the course of its service life,” Transit’s release said. It also features a rear window — a relic of buses from decades past when the engine components did not block the back.

With the addition of this bus to the fleet, the MTA is moving ahead with its plans to support the bus system and make it more than the inconvenient transit step child. The low floors allow for faster street-level boarding and combined with the pre-boarding fare payment systems, should help speed up what can be painfully slow bus service. Now if only the city would propose those physically-separated bus lanes.

After the jump, a view of the inside of the Nova Bus LFS with the rear window barely visible in the back. All photos courtesy of New York City Transit. Read More→

Kicking and screaming, the New York City bus network will be dragged into, well, the present. The 34th St. route features countdown clocks for buses, and the MTA and the city’s Department of Transportation are working together to plot the rollout of Select Bus Service throughout the five boroughs. None of this will work, though, without proper bus lane enforcement.

Last week, while speaking with Richard Brodsky and the Assembly Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder started beating the drum again for bus lane enforcement. In interviews shortly after he received the MTA nomination, Walder stressed the need for these cameras, and he was at it again last week.

“I simply don’t think that the MTA ever made bus lane cameras a priority. In fact, I don’t think the MTA has made buses a priority quite the way that we’re doing today,” he said. “One of the things that I’ve tried to say from day one is that buses are an under-utilized, untapped resource in New York. We can do much more with it, and we’re making it our priority to do that.”

Of course, the State Assembly has long been a reason why the city has not yet implemented bus lane cameras. Back in 2008, David Gantt, a Rochester Democrat, torpedoed a home rule measure that would have allowed the city to use cameras to enforce the bus lanes. Since then, however, the Assembly has ceded ground on red-light cameras, among others, and Walder is optimistic that they will allow for proper bus lane enforcement as well. “I recognize the issues about privacy,” Walder said. “The Assembly, the legislature, has gotten over those issues with red light cameras. There’s no reason why we can’t get over those issues with the bus lane enforcement cameras.”

Meanwhile, a City Council measure could slow down the DOT/MTA bus lane efforts as well. At the end of the year, according to a recent Streetsblog report, the City Council passed a bill mandated a 65-day review period for all “‘major realignments of the roadway,’ particularly the addition or removal of a lane of traffic or parking on more than four blocks or ‘1,000 consecutive feet of street.’”

This move is one designed to allow for more community input in DOT roadway planning, but DOT is not bound to alter plans in the face of community reaction. On the one hand, this law should eliminate any sense of paternalism that may stem from DOT unilaterally deciding how the streets should be laid out without consulting businesses and community boards. On the other, vocal minorities who seem to obsess more about parking than they should may earn too much of a say in the process. Streetsblog isn’t concerned that this measure will materially impact too many DOT plans.

In the end, these two efforts — camera enforcement and the need for dedicated lanes — highlight what is missing from the Select Bus Service plan and what the city needs to have a truly effective higher-speed bus network. I’ve seen cars driving down the 34th St. in the new bus-only lanes, and I’ve seen buses stall traffic when they have to navigate around double-parkers and other vehicles idling in bus lanes. Without dedicated lanes and without an effective enforcement means for those lanes, buses will be subject to the whims of New York City’s painfully slow surface traffic.

Walder knows that better bus service is both cheaper and more immediate than building out new subway lines. He knows that buses can be deployed to bring people into the city’s central business districts or to subway hubs. Right now, we view the buses are an inconvenience that can sometimes get us where we need to go but are mostly utilized by the aged and infirm who can’t negotiate subway staircases. In a few years, buses can be an accepted part of the city’s transit network, and with true bus lanes and enforcement measures, that vision could be one step closer to reality.

New plexiglass partitions will protect Bus Operators from out-of-control passengers. (Photo courtesy of New York City Transit)

When a New York City Transit bus driver was murdered by an irate passenger in Dec. 2008, the MTA promised a bus partition pilot program aimed at keeping drivers safer. Late last week, that pilot program debuted in Bus 5052 along the B46, the same route that played host to Edwin Thomas’ murder.

The partition is a step up in the world of bus driver safety but it is not without its problems. The divider is made of a piece of plexiglass one inch thick and with non-glare coating, and it nearly isolates the driver from his riders. It does not, however, fully enclose the driver. There is an opening at the top and side so that the driver can access the fare box.

“It’s difficult to come up with a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to this simply because our Bus Operators aren’t one size,” Transit spokesman Paul Fleuranges said. “Each has to position the wheel, seat, mirrors to their preference, and the same is true for something like a partition. They all have to be comfortable with the environment the partition creates as they drive. Our overriding goal here is to provide both a safe and comfortable environment for our Bus Operators.”

Right now, Transit plans to order 100 partitions for one model of the RTS buses similar to those in use along the B46, and according to the Daily News, that is so far the only model approved by the union. Transit and the TWU are working to develop partitions for other bus models as well.

It’s tough to speak out against bus partitions. After all, bus operators in 2008 reported over 235 assaults, and Thomas’ murder, the first of a bus driver since 1981, certainly highlighted the extremes of driver safety. Because cops do not often patrol buses, drivers are often left to fend for themselves. As long as the operators can still assist disabled riders and can still interact with passengers when they have to, Transit and the union should do all they can to ensure driver safety.

On Sunday, the western parts of Brooklyn will celebrate 2010 by getting a new bus route. Technically, it’s the break up of the old B61 into the B61 and B62, and while some travelers will have to make a new transfer, others will find a slow and crowded route faster and less packed.

“After careful study, we are dividing one long, cumbersome route into two shorter routes which will be easier to supervise and more manageable to operate,” Transit President Thomas Prendergast said in a statement this afternoon. “We made this decision in response to concerns from customers and community organizations who have long complained about this route’s lack of reliability. Both of the new services are projected to be more reliable than the single route they are replacing.”

The change, originally announced in July, will see the 9.7-mile route linking Red Hook to Queens Plaza split in Downtown Brooklyn. The B61 will run from Ikea to Smith and Livingston Sts. in Downtown Brooklyn while the B62 will run from Boerum Place and Livingston St. to Queens Plaza via the Williamsburge Bridge Plaza Bus Terminal. Transit says the new route will allow a dispatcher to better monitor the popular route.

“We recognize that there are rapidly growing new residential areas along the Williamsburg waterfront,” added Prendergast. “The B62 will also provide convenient bus and subway connections for these customers to the Williamsburg Bridge Plaza transit hub which is served by six bus routes and the Marcy Avenue subway station.”

The B61 in its current incarnation serves approximately 18,500 riders on weekdays, 10,800 on Saturdays and 7400 on Sundays. The new routing should help the bus avoid the heavy congestion in Downtown Brooklyn that often slows the bus to a crawl.

Preliminary renderings of the planned East Side Select Service routes did not include physically separated bus lanes.

Good news about transit in New York has been hard to come by over the last few weeks. We’ve been inundated with stories about budget crises and know-nothing politicians who can’t seem to figure out that this whole mess is their fault. But today, we have some good news about a group of 19 New York representatives who seem to care about sensible transit solutions. These 19 have called up on the MTA and NYC DOT to develope physically separated bus and bike lanes along the planned route for the 1st and 2nd Ave. Select Bus Service.

The back story goes a little something like this: As part of a joint effort to improve bus service throughout the city while targeting areas not as well served by subway service as others, the MTA and the Department of Transportation have identified a series of corridors ripe for Select Bus Service, the New York City modification of a bus rapid transit plan. Last month, the two sides unveiled the plans for the 1st and 2nd Aves. bus routes, and most transit advocates were dismayed to see that the plans did not include physically separated lanes.

Over the next few weeks, the two agencies heard it from all sides. Business owners misguidedly hate any bus improvements improvements whatsoever, and transit advocates did not understand how DOT thought it can run a successful BRT line while still subjecting the buses to the problems inherent in lanes not physically separated from regular auto traffic. A few days later, DOT backtracked, saying that they might place barriers along some parts of the bus routes. It was hardly a ringing endorsement of a much-needed element of any effective BRT implementation.

Last week, 19 New York City representatives chimed in on the debate. As Streetsblog’s Ben Fried reported yesterday, Rep. Micah Kellner shared the letter a group of City Council members, U.S. House members, and State Senate and Assembly representatives sent to Janette Sadik-Kahn and Jay Walder. The letter — available here as a PDF — reads in part:

While we recognize and appreciate the Department of Transportation (DOT) plans to improve travel time and convenience through Select Bus Service (SBS) on First and Second Avenues, we urge you to take the project further. True BRT can be faster and more reliable than traditional bus service or SBS, and far less expensive than comparable subway system upgrades. While we unequivocally support the full-build Second Avenue Subway, we understand that trains are not scheduled to operate on the line until at least 2016 and extending the new line below East 63rd Street, as part of Phase III of the project, will take even longer. As such, the Second Avenue Subway project does not obviate the need for efficient BRT. This is especially true for disabled individuals who use buses more than any other form of transportation in the City. A strong BRT program could be in place inexpensively by 2011.

We call on DOT to take advantage of this rare opportunity to overhaul street-level transit in a progressive and innovative manner that reaches well beyond SBS. DOT should institute changes to the First and Second Avenue route that include not only prepaid off-board fare collection, signal priority, and a dedicated rush-hour bus lane (all present in the Fordham Road SBS), but also a physically separated busway, a physically separated bikeway, level boarding, safer crossings for pedestrians, and real-time arrival information. It is our understanding that buses running via a true BRT system on the current M15 route from beginning to end would be approximately thirty-three percent faster, on average, than SBS buses on the same route.

Such a plan would elevate the City to even greater national and international prominence for sustainable urban development initiatives that innovate and endure, and we believe there would be substantial public support for BRT — significantly greater support than we expect the SBS plan to generate. With a sensible “complete street” design that keeps cyclists and pedestrians out of harm’s way, this project would also save lives.

According to Streetsblog, DOT will release an updated plan for the 1st and 2nd Ave. Select Bus Service next month. In the meantime, the 19 signatories of this letter deserve some recognition and praise for their efforts. This is indicative of the kind of leadership on transit New York deserves and needs. Hopefully, some good — some physically separated bus lanes — will come of it.