New York isn’t the city that never sleeps because John Kander and Fred Ebb once proclaimed it to be in a song. Rather, the New York is the city that never sleeps because it’s transit system never sleeps. It might require more patience, but anyone interested in traveling from Inwood to the Rockaways can take the same one-swipe, one-seat ride at 3 a.m. as they can at 3 p.m. That is the beauty of a city with a nightlife as vibrant as New York’s and with an economy dependent upon 24-hour transit service.
Michael Grynbaum of The Times published a piece this afternoon on just that theme. He examines the planned late-night bus service cuts and finds a few hard-working New Yorkers who will be very inconvenienced by the dwindling off-hours service options. One woman works as a projectionist at the AMC Lincoln Center movie theater and must get home at 2 a.m. to the Upper East Side. In July, the MTA will cut three of the four buses that run through Central Park, and Elaine Beverly will find her options severely limited.
Grynbaum offers more details on the impending cuts:
And while not all of the cuts will be devastating, they will reshape the rhythms of nocturnal New York, when buses and subways are already scarce and routines forged over many years can be tough to shed. Transit officials studied ridership patterns and considered the proximity of other public transportation options when deciding which bus lines to reduce or erase…
Ms. Beverly will lose both the M96 and the M104, which runs along the backbone of the Upper West Side. One alternative, the M10 along Central Park West, will also vanish, even during the daylight hours, and late-night Upper East Side bus service will be trimmed, if not eliminated…
The M86 crosstown bus, with 8.8 million annual riders, is the most popular of the five Central Park routes; it will continue to run at all hours. But the M79, with 5.9 million riders — and the only bus that reaches East End Avenue — will not run after 1 a.m., nor will the M66. (The M72 crosstown route already stops service at midnight.)
The deaths of these lines will lead to problems for those who work at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell and Mount Sinai hospitals and longer commutes for every off-hours worker. “There are a lot of residents in the hospital who have shifts that end late at night,” Patrisha Woolard, a second-year resident at Mount Sinai, told The Times. “That would be horrible.”
The real statement though on the service cuts came from a bus driver. Vincent Wright drives the only bus that runs the M96 route late at night, and he understands how bus cuts will impact the heart of the city. “This is a 24-hour city, and you can’t have a 24-hour city without a 24-hour system,” he said. “The taxi business is probably going to love this; they’ll throw a big party if all the cuts happen.”
Some cabs may benefit, but many workers needing transit at 2:30 a.m. cannot afford expensive cabs. They need their one-swipe rides to places far from subway lines. They need their bus routes. They need their transit options, and soon the MTA may take it all away. The city that never sleeps may need to find a new way around town.
32 comments
I don’t think it’s right for private business to have to pick up the slack, but in LA a lot of businesses and universities have started running shuttles to and from subways, particularly those who are within a few miles of Downtown but not walking distance from the Red/Purple/Blue lines. I am hoping that Presbyterian and other 24-hour employers consider running cross-town shuttles – it might even be more efficient for various companies on both sides of the park to pool together to run a shuttle between their various companies with stops on the IRT lines and the 8th Ave IND.
At least for NY Presbyterian, how long would it really take to walk a few more short blocks to the F at 63rd/Lex and double back at Rockefeller Center for UWS service? Strikes me that it wouldn’t be a horrible trip, although with overnight headways it’d take longer than it would at rush hour, although to my memory the 63rd St and 68th St stations are nearly on top of each other. I don’t know where the furthest uptown 24-hour entrance is for 63rd though, as I’m always using the elevator there.
I live at 72nd and York, and work at Columbia. The late-night 1-7-6 trip takes about an hour and a half. A 1-D-F trip would take about the same time underground and involve more walking above ground; a two-seat D-F ride is impossible for anyone between Columbus Circle and 125th. Currently the trip takes 45 minutes to an hour using the M66, which gets 10-minute headways until almost 1.
I wonder why the D doesn’t run local at night, like most other lines. Seems like it would reduce much of the pain.
[I first posted this on an old thread by mistake. I meant to put it HERE.]
To Ben:
Maybe this is slightly off-topic, but on what website is there a COMPLETE LIST of the coming “doomsday” service cuts?
Like, WHICH bus routes will be totally done away with?
I know that for subway routes, that’s the W and the Z, but I can’t find anywhere a list of the doomed bus routes.
I doubt anything’s been finalized yet. The cuts being mentioned now are mostly identical to the cuts that were threatened earlier in the year. I’m sure the new MTA and NYCT leadership will have some new ideas.
But there must be a list somewhere of just what bus routes are on the chopping block. I know that it’s not final.
http://www.mta.info/mta/budget.....tation.pdf is probably what you’re looking for.
YES, thank you.
That IS what I was looking for.
The champagne continues to flow on Park Avenue, while the workers who keep our City alive are forced to suffer.
I’d hate to see service cut, but I don’t think this is nearly as bad as you’re making it out to be.
Let’s go one person at a time.
Elaine Beverly commutes from 68th and Broadway to East 96th St. Currently she uses the M104 and M96, both of which will be cut at night. But she can still ride the 1 or 2 train to 86th St., take the M86 across town, and walk ten blocks. OK, so that’s an extra half-mile walk, but unless she has a mobility impairment, she doesn’t need to resort to a taxi.
Carlos Rosario commutes from 96th and Broadway to somewhere (presumably) on the Pelham line. He won’t be able to take the M96 anymore. But he can walk or take the train to 86th and take the M86 across. Or he can walk to 106th and take the M60 (I don’t think that’s being cut) across. Or he can take the 2 or 3 train to 125th and either walk to Lex or take the M60 or M101 (is that being cut?) or Bx15 to Lex. Again, no need for a taxi.
Oumar Ndiaye commutes from 66th and 5th (or thereabouts) to Inwood by way of Columbus Circle. He currently walks down CPW from 66th to 59th after getting off the M66. If the M66 is cut, he’ll presumably walk down 5th instead and then walk across 59th. No need to walk through the park.
Finally – I agree that many people can’t afford to ride cabs. But the MTA can’t afford to run nearly empty buses either. If something must be cut, I’d rather it be something that very few people use.
The half empty buses provide people with the ability to get home on transit late at night, if they work later than planned. Cutting them would reduce ridership in the daytime, too.
The one person at a time examples you give are all for people who are close enough to 86th, or can walk through. This is not in line with where the major late-night job centers are: Hunter at 68th and Lex, Weill Cornell at 68th and 1st, Columbia at 116th and Broadway. All of those stick out on job density maps; all lose service out of this plan. In fact the 66th Street corridor is so important for late night service that it’s almost the only bus line in the city that gets 10-minute service until 1.
If the late night buses were half empty, I don’t think they’d be a problem. The last time I rode a late night crosstown bus (the M96), it had one rider the whole way from Broadway to Lex.
As I asked Jerrold – what alternative cuts do you recommend to generate similar cost savings?
The examples I gave were the examples the New York Times gave. If you don’t like them, complain to the Times.
I’m not sure that those are really the three major late-night job centers. But let’s say they are.
Hunter is directly served by the 4 and 6 trains. The F is five blocks away; the N is eight blocks away. That’s plenty of train service in all four directions. Add on the M101, which will continue to run all night.
Weill Cornell is a few long blocks east of Hunter. So it’s a few long blocks further from each of those three stations. Still quite walkable (for the able-bodied), if not pleasant in bad weather. And the M15 runs at night.
Columbia has the 1 train and the M60 bus. All it’s losing out on is the M104, which runs directly above the 1 train. (The M4 and M11 already doesn’t run at night.)
Come on – there are entire neighborhoods that are going to be cut off from all transit access at night, and this is the best we can come up with?
Hunter doesn’t get service in all four directions. It gets service east, south, and north, but not west. West Side destinations north of Columbus Circle are a three-seat ride.
The alternative service cuts I’d recommend are for the M66; the M96 and M79 can be cut. The appropriate cut to the M66 should be a reduction in evening and early-night frequency, except when there is an event at Lincoln Center. Right now, the M66 runs at 8-minute headways at 8, and at 10-minute headways from 10 to 1, which means that it’s not very full at ordinary times, and is crush-loaded after a Lincoln Center event. If the MTA cut the night frequency to 12 minutes, it would cut more buses than if it eliminated late night service, without hurting normal-time capacity much, saving enough money to allow it to run multiple buses together after Lincoln Center events.
The F and N go west. Transfer from the F to the D at 47th-50th St. Transfer from the N to the 1/2/3 (or A) at Times Square. Two-seat ride. (Although, as I pointed out earlier, it would make more sense for the D to run local at night.)
As I said, there are entire neighborhoods that will be losing all transit access at night, and this is what we’re worried about?
Bus drivers pick their jobs based on the day of the week (Saturday or Sunday or weekday) – not on whether there’s a Lincoln Center event. Cutting service only when there’s no event at Lincoln Center is difficult – what do those bus drivers who work the special Lincoln Center runs do when there’s no event, sit home and not get paid that day? The only way to handle this fairly is to do it based on overtime – everybody gets paid for a full day, but when there’s an event at Lincoln Center, some drivers work late to provide extra service. But overtime is expensive – it may well be cheaper to provide adequate (if barely-adequate) service every day.
Funny how you dismiss the M96 as unnecessary, even though it’s ten blocks from the nearest crosstown bus line, while the M66 is within eight blocks of two crosstown subway lines. I’d suggest that the decisions be made based on late night ridership. I doubt the M66 would have been proposed for overnight elimination if ridership wasn’t very low.
The N is a mile-long walk from Weill Cornell, so it doesn’t work; its only East Side stops are 5th/59th and Lex/59th, which areas have the lowest population density on the Upper East Side and are far away from the late-night job centers.
The F only connects to the D, which makes three West Side stops – 59th, 125th, 145th. And it, too, is far from the hospitals. Running the D local could improve matters, but NYCT is trying to make as many subway lines as possible stick to the same service pattern at night for some reason. This is pure stupidity – we’re talking about an agency that runs the 1 express on late night weekends sometimes without adding any M72 service to connect to it – but it’s stupidity entrenched in policy.
The extra Lincoln Center service would be based on overtime, yes. It would cost extra, but it would also increase ridership. If the M66 dwelled at the station for 3 minutes instead of 10, fewer people would be taking taxis. At any rate, a cut from 10-minute service to 12-minute service would not make this problem much worse, because of the after-event demand peak. (Lower frequencies are a bigger capacity problem when demand is more continuous. That’s why I’m proposing bus bunching instead of special 5-minute service.)
The M66 already has the second highest late night ridership of the crosstown buses, after the M86, judging by its late night frequency.
Doesn’t work? Why doesn’t a mile-long walk (it’s actually slightly less) work?
The line along 60th St. is 90 years old. Blaming the line for being in the wrong place for being far away from the late night job centers seems kind of silly to me – especially coming from someone who has objected to SAS, which will have a stop much closer to Weill Cornell (with direct service to Times Square).
I do wonder, incidentally, why you are particularly concerned with individual large employers, which may well find it worthwhile to start operating shuttle buses when the convenient crosstown bus lines shut down, rather than with clusters of smaller employers, none of which individually have enough late night employees to make a shuttle bus worthwhile.
Plenty of subway lines have different service patterns at night than during the day – the D included (it runs local in Brooklyn at night; it could easily be modified to run local in Manhattan at night as well). The only lines that run exactly the same 24/7 are the 1, F, L, and Q (the G may soon be added to that list, with the Q removed).
Do you really think there’s substantial demand for the M72 when the 1 runs express at night – substantial enough to add the cost of running a bus to whatever capital project requires the 1 to run express (these days, probably the station rehab at 96th or 59th)?
The vast majority of people who take cabs after Lincoln Center events will take cabs regardless of the quality or quantity of bus service. And Lincoln Center generally has several simultaneous events that don’t necessarily end at the same time (but might happen to end at the same time on some nights) – how do you schedule the buses around that? Or do you just have the extra buses sitting around from the earliest time that any of the events might possibly end (with the drivers collecting time-and-a-half), pulling up when the crowds show up, kind of like what happens on the subway after Yankee games? I’m afraid we’re not looking at Yankee numbers here – sports events draw much larger crowds than Lincoln Center events, I’d be surprised if as many as 10% of Lincoln Center patrons ride the M66 home. Seems like you’re advocating a pretty major expense for little benefit.
All of the late night crosstown buses (M42, M50, M66, M79, M86, M96) run on a 40-minute headway – not because ridership levels require a bus every 40 minutes, but because it takes a bus 40 minutes to complete a round trip at night – in other words, increasing the headway would only marginally reduce operating costs (there wouldn’t be any labor savings). There are plenty of seats available on all six routes at night on the 40-minute headway. So I don’t see how you can conclude that the M66 has the second highest late night ridership judging by its late night frequency – they all have the same frequency, and even if they didn’t, frequencies at night are dictated by the cycle time, not by ridership.
I’m not blaming the 59th Street Line for being far away from Weill Cornell – I’m just stating the fact that it doesn’t serve far East Side destinations well.
I haven’t objected to SAS; I’ve objected to its cost. I think even at $1.7 billion per route-km it would be about as cost-effective as the other subway projects in the US – Phase 1 would cost about $50,000 per rider, higher than for other recent US subways but not by much (e.g. the LA Red Line at $30,000). It would also have knocked off my commute this year and my girlfriend’s last year by about 15-20 minutes one-way. But I don’t know that there won’t be additional cost overruns, and I do know that the same project in Paris would cost $250 million per route-km.
You’re right that most lines operate differently at night, but NYCT is trying to minimize this as much as possible in order to simplify the system, or so I’ve read. But anyway, in the case of the D, I suspect another reason it runs express at night is that it skips so many stops it’s a real time saving for people in Harlem and the Bronx, and the Upper West Side stations are low-ridership. NYCT hasn’t tried to minimize or time transfers at night to avoid making people wait 20 minutes.
Most employment in Manhattan comes from large employers, not clusters of small employers. This is especially true at night – small employers close relatively early, and tend not to generate the same nighttime traffic as hospitals or even universities.
I don’t know how much demand there is for the nighttime M72. But it’s surely more than there is for a nighttime M66 or M79 when there’s no 1 train for them to connect to. At any rate, the cost of running the extra service isn’t high compared to capital construction cost…
In absolute terms the Lincoln Center demand is low, but relative to capacity, it’s huge. The buses are loaded after events, and, worse, the line of people boarding can take 10-15 minutes. Those people may be a minority of Lincoln Center attendees who come from the East Side, but I’m not so sure – I only see a few people quit the long lines to take cabs. (How would the cabs even deal with the capacity bottleneck across Central Park?). In either case, if it’s a minority, it’s going to be a larger minority if boarding times are halved.
Finally, what I said about the M66’s late night headways comes mainly from its operation between 12 and 1, before it switches to 40-minute frequency. It switches to 40-minute frequency earlier than the M86 but later than the M96 and M79, and runs late night buses at 10-minute frequency until it switches, on a par with the M86 and shorter than the M79 and M96.
Plenty of small employers are open all night, or stay open until very late, or open very early in the morning. And with only a few late night employees, they’re not in a position to operate shuttle buses. Large hospitals are. And one could well argue that large hospitals that deliberately placed themselves on the edge of the island, presumably to more easily obtain large plots of land, owe it to their staff to run shuttle buses when the public transit system cuts back to its skeletal late night network.
I doubt the 1 train feeds many riders to the crosstown buses at night. But why don’t you suggest running extra M72 service when the 1 runs express to the MTA? I suspect that the handful of late night crosstown bus riders know exactly when and where to get the bus.
I agree that not many people quit the lines for the bus to get cabs – most of the people who want cabs don’t walk to the bus stop first! And a lot of people going to the East Side use the other crosstown routes, just as not all of the cabs going to the East Side use the same transverse.
Operation between 12 and 1 is irrelevant. (Capacity for late-running events at Lincoln Center, perhaps?) Nobody’s proposing to cut the M66 between 12 ans 1. The question is after that. The ridership threshold for eliminating late night service was 15-20 passengers per hour – that’s incredibly low.
Are you sure the MTA’s not eliminating the M66 between 12 and 1? Its statement about it is vague. Anyway, the MTA explained that it’s cutting additional crosstown services in Manhattan even when they clear the ridership threshold, because of parallel service. My point is that the M66 doesn’t have much parallel service.
The large hospitals didn’t deliberately space themselves away from mass transit. Cornell built the medical school in 1898, when the mass transit in the area was the 2nd and 3rd Avenue els.
I highly doubt anything on a 10-minute headway is being dropped entirely. The late night service that’s proposed for elimination is the skeletal, one-bus-per-route service.
There is parallel service less than half a mile away to the south, albeit parallel service making fewer stops, and one mile away to the north, making similar stops. Once again, there are entire neighborhoods elsewhere being left with no late night transit service at all.
The 2nd and 3rd Avenue els ran north-south. The M15 bus and Lexington Avenue subway run north-south. I thought your concern was with east-west service.
My concern was with east-west service, but at the time all those institutions were built, the only concern was north-south service. Late night service work was alien, as were universities as major employers. At the time the notion was that you worked in Lower Manhattan and that’s where the els and the subway needed to get you to. Crosstown service was an afterthought, even by the standards of the time.
Now that I’ve seen “what I was looking for”, let me say:
They would be crazy to eliminate ANY crosstown bus route, on weekdays OR weekends. THAT is where there isn’t any so-called duplication of service that is already being provided by the subway.
Also, instead of eliminating the M10, why don’t they just merge the M20 into the M10? Then, the M10 would be like it used to be, one continuous route without people having to change between buses.
I don’t like it either, but the goal here is to reduce operating expenses. What alternative suggestion do you have that saves as much money as eliminating most of the overnight crosstowns?
Eliminating the M10 saves a lot of money. Recombining the M10 and M20 saves a lot less, and reintroduces the reliability problems of the old M10. Perhaps a better compromise is to eliminate the part of the M10 that runs directly above the subway but to keep the bit in Harlem, maybe diverting it east or west to a different subway line to give riders more options. That maintains most of the savings but keeps service where it’s most needed.
This solution may not appeal to many persons – ride bicycles. They run as long as you can for essentially only your purchase price. They run even late at night, no matter what the MTA does (or doesn’t) provide.
That may work for a subset of those people, but I’m in a wheelchair – they haven’t made a bicycle for me yet. If people are going to work at that hour, they can’t show up sweaty. Other people may not have the physical ability to ride for other reasons, don’t have the space to store a bike at their apartment or their work won’t provide bike parking. It’s truly not an appropriate solution for everyone.
With all apologies, bicycle evangelism frustrates me at times – I’m glad that it works for some people, and I’d like to see NYC made more accessible to cyclists in general. But cycling is a tool, not a religion to which all New Yorkers should be converted.
Me too, and I’m glad I don’t see a lot of it around here.
As for the topic at hand, I continue to believe that a little effort will reveal many more millions of dollars to be saved at the MTA through such things as attrition, curbing of fraud, and (if the stars happen to aligned properly) union concessions than could ever be saved through the proposed service cuts. In other words, I don’t think the cuts will happen.
The MTA has made draconian cuts in the past, including the TEARING down of whole elevated lines. They are quite SERIOUS.
NYC and NYS have major budgetary issues, as well.
In all honesty, much of the bus service in Manhattan is redundant. During the day I would say keep crosstown buses, but buses running on top of an avenue that has subway service underneathe (unless overly crowded) is just a waste of resources.
As for the late night service, please, most people who work, especially those who would work late at night, have no problems walking a few extra blocks to a different train station. As for those disabled or elderly, if your mobility is that bad you shouldn’t be out at night, you’re an increased target for ROBBERS.
The cuts we’re discussing are not to lines running on top of subways, but to lines running where the subway doesn’t. The subway gives a three-seat ride from the West Side to the East Side north of 59th.
Part of my point is that the new cuts are hardly draconian. Sure, you can always trot out some people who will be harmed by them, as the NYT has done, but that’s hardly instructive.
None of this is meant to imply I support the cuts. I am very much against them. In fact, I believe that the cuts a political tool to get more money from Albany. The only proposed cut that has a real impact on the bottom line is the cutting of student MetroCards, which is so politically impossible that Paterson was on the microphone the next morning vowing that it won’t happen.
As for the Manhattan avenue buses which parallel subway lines, most of them get decent, if not spectacular ridership. I think they serve a useful function, though, for people who for whatever reason prefer the bus. Maybe it’s easier to board, or you want to sightsee, or whatever. I often take the bus over the subway for short trips and if punctuality is not a concern 🙂 If the ridership is there, there’s no reason to cut the service.
I agree with your first and third paragraphs completely.
However, your second paragraph is not quite correct. If nobody steps up to the plate with funding, these cuts (or a similar set of cuts) will happen. If Albany comes up with most or all of the necessary funding, then most or all of them won’t happen. The proposed cuts do have a substantial impact on the bottom line – according to this document, $62 million in 2010 (assuming mid-year implementation) and $129 million in 2011, the bulk of that coming from NYCT.
Well, I’ve been watching various agencies “cry wolf” so many times over the years only to be temporarily saved by one gimmick or another that I’m skeptical about this round of cuts. But maybe you’re right and times have changed and this time it will happen. Who knows? San Francisco made big cuts–I didn’t see that coming.
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