A fancy new bus won’t held speed up the crosstown travel time.
One of the great aspects about New York City’s bus network is how extensive it is. Every major artery in the city and many minor ones have bus routes that run throughout most of the day. But for more trafficked routes — those that mirror subway lines along Manhattan’s, Queens’, Brooklyn’s and the Bronx’s major roads — speed is a problem. Because the city does not have dedicated bus lanes, because police do not enforce marked bus lanes and because cars unnecessarily fill the streets, buses simply are not a viable means of crosstown travel.
Every year, the Straphangers Campaign hands out its Pokey award to the city’s slowest bus, and this year, the M42 took home the honors. It achieved, they said, an average speed of 3.7 miles per hour at noon on a weekday. For many of us, that’s a brisk walking pace.
Last week, Pete Donohue tested that claim and found that the bus is, in reality, even slower. Due to cars, trucks and vans double parking or using the bus lane, what should be a convenient ride across the street is far from it. He writes:
On just one rush-hour ride last week, nearly two dozen vehicles were parked or idled in the bus-only lane, which stretches roughly from Ninth to Third Aves.
The entire trip, from First to 12th Aves., is just over 2 miles. The trip took 43 minutes, even on a day when traffic was much lighter than usual. The average speed: approximately 2.85 mph, slower than the average person walks…
“If the lanes were clear, it would make it a lot easier to go across town,” [M42 driver Vincent] Mashburn said. “No delays. No one blocking us. We could come in, pick up passengers and move.”
During Donohue’s crosstown experiment, he saw empty police vans and patrol cars blocking the bus lane. He witnessed a line of taxis and livery cabs parked in a bus lane outside of Port Authority, and he saw a U.S. Postal Service truck and other assorted delivery vans blocking the bus’s progress.
The police vans, while not a new problem, are particularly distressing. Who is going to follow the bus lane rules if police are openly flaunting them? The same holds true for the postal service as well.
In the end, Donohue’s experience is not an isolated one. Buses are inefficient for crosstown travel and downright painful for long distances. His article underscores the need for camera enforcement and physically separated bus lanes. The MTA and NYC DOT are engaged in an extensive effort to bring bus rapid transit service to the city, and those planning would do well to read Donohue’s article and pay careful attention to the lessons in it.
12 comments
Infuriating. And it speaks volumes that no mayor has had the guts to stand up to the police on this–both for their habit of CAUSING congestion and their near total abdication of their responsibility to enforce the laws that are in place to supposedly address this issue.
I appreciate that you included that “cars unnecessarily fill the streets.”
In a previous post, you mentioned “bus bulbs,” which I thought was a pretty clever way make bus travel more efficient. How does the pre-payment scheme work, such that passengers don’t have to present something to the driver and slow down the boarding process?
The usual prepayment scheme is based on proof of payment, with random inspections. For example, with card readers at stations, people could swipe, and the card would record that it had just been swiped, letting fare inspectors know that the passenger did in fact pay.
I’d also add that it would be very helpful for crosstown traffic if bus lanes were “no parking” zones, even when the bus lane is not in effect. Ideally, you could have 24-hour bus lanes, but that actually might be overkill in the wee hours of the morning, even on a major thoroughfare like 34th street. The problem is that between 7 PM Friday and 7 AM Monday, the bus lane is literally a parking lot on 34th between the East River and Lexington Avenue and then again after 8th Avenue. I think the 42nd Street lane is a little tougher on parking, but it has a whole host of its own troubles.
Cameras, by themselves, wouldn’t do the job. If the DOT or MTA (or NYPD? whoever the governing authority is) doesn’t do anything about police cars in the bus lane, what good would a photograph do?
You’d have to change the whole police culture (“we park wherever we feel like”)–which isn’t going to happen any time soon.
Not necessarily. What if the police have nothing to do with bus lane enforcement, and the NYPD itself is subject to fines?
Remember, Albany hasn’t been willing to authorize bus lane cameras. So how about a deal?
Albany approves bus lane cameras. In exchange, Albany collects the fine revenue. Aside from authorized buses, any vehicle photographed in the bus lane – even if it belongs to an arm of the city, such as the NYPD – is subject to a fine. The only exceptions are fire trucks hooked up to hydrants. Anybody else who needs to park in an emergency can park around the corner or can even block the lane to the left of the bus lane.
You raise a good point. While I would rather see *less* state involvement, not more, the MTA is unfortunately a state agency. Nevertheless, I can’t see in a million years a state trooper–which would presumably be necessary to enforce a state law–ticketing a city cop car. Ain’t gonna happen.
No state trooper. A camera on the bus automatically takes a picture of whatever’s in the bus lane (in this case, an NYPD car). A bill is automatically generated and sent to the NYPD.
Of course, the NYPD will probably ignore the bills. The usual threat of suspending the violating vehicle’s registration won’t work here.
Incidentally, this has nothing to do with the MTA being a state agency. The city cannot collect fines from bus lane cameras without state approval. and the state (or, more precisely, a particular David Gantt) has repeatedly refused to grant approval, claiming a violation of privacy. (Because, of course, anybody who parks illegally in a bus lane in a public street has a reasonable expectation of privacy!)
I’ve often said that if the city were serious about getting traffic moving in Manhattan, we’d have the death penalty for double parking — for the first offense. All you’d need is a couple of instances of enforcement, and people will no longer be willing to risk it.
On a more serious note, I’m always amazed at the row of 24 hour supermarkets along Lexington Avenue between the 60s and 90s that all seem to get deliveries from big trucks during the morning rush hour. Properly structured tax incentives for such businesses to get their deliveries during off hours would get those trucks off the streets during the busiest times of day and would pay for themselves in terms of increased productivity by all the people who would then move through traffic more efficiently…
It’s perfectly possible to enforce traffic without resorting to such draconian measures…. Obviously, whatever the current fines are, they aren’t high enough, or people wouldn’t flaunt the laws so egregiously. Heck, businesses just consider parking fines to be part of the cost of doing business–and no doubt pass along that cost to the consumer.