Yesterday morning, Bus Rapid Transit service in New York City made its long-awaited and highly anticipated debut. While we won’t enjoy camera-enforced dedicated bus lanes thanks to this absurd Representative from Rochester, I received a few missives from readings clamoring to find out how day one went. To that end, both The Times and Streetsblog covered it on the big day.
The short of it is that riders were slightly confused at first by the new pre-boarding fare options while the service itself is being praised. But the long of it is that, just as how a one-week stretch is too small a sample size in, say, baseball to assess a player, so too is one day of BRT service too small a sample to analyze the lasting impact of this new bus service on transportation in New York City. The City does, since it refused to build physically separated bus lanes, need to address the problem of people parking in what are supposed to be dedicated bus lanes sooner rather than later. [Streetsblog, The New York Times]
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So were the bus lanes formerly parking zones, which might cause some drivers to think its some new parking zone identification scheme? And I read in Metro that some riders were unsure of how the ‘pay before you board, get a receipt and then show it to a guard’ plan worked. My question is, doesn’t having a receipt and an extra person to hire system cost more than using a conventional pay-on-the-bus system? I know it might things slightly faster, but the MTA has to add the extra cost of the ticket checker, the pre-boarding machine, and the paper trail!