In the not-too-distant future, the MTA and NYC DOT will begin to install Select Bus Service routes along First and Second Avenues. As their plan to speed up bus service goes into effect, a small but vocal minority will complain about how the new bus lanes will impact businesses because parking spots will be lost. As I’ve said on more than one occasion, that’s a spurious argument that doesn’t reflect the reality of the demographics of the East Side.
Today, we have some proof from an NYU study that East Siders view themselves as benefiting from increased transit options and are eagerly awaiting the better bus service. Businesses, too, view these bus lanes as a boon. Kurt Cavanaugh in The Villager has more:
A big question mark thus far has been what the plan will mean to the thousands of business owners along First and Second Aves. These are, after all, very tough times and many businesses are struggling just to break even. Change can be unwelcome in the best of times, and in a deep recession, there is a very reasonable fear that things could get worse.
New York University researchers have recently interviewed hundreds of shoppers along the East Village segment of the Select Bus Service corridor. They have focused on: preferred modes of transportation; pedestrian compared to automobile driver spending; and how shopping habits might change if parking were reduced and/or bus access improved.
The results are striking. Among the 500 customers surveyed, 7 percent came to the area by car, 45 percent arrived by public transportation and 43 percent arrived by biking or walking. Spending habits were even more lopsided. Automobile drivers constituted less than 4 percent of the total weekly spending. Those using sustainable modes of transportation — biking, walking and public transit — represented 96 percent of weekly spending.
When asked how they would respond to proposed street changes, 36 percent of customers said they would come to the area more often if bus service were improved, while only 10 percent would come less often if there were less on-street parking. An even higher proportion, 12 percent, said they would come more often if there were less parking.
People who live, walk and shop along the East Side’s main thoroughfares understand that streets, especially in New York City, are mostly for pedestrians. Local businesses cater to pedestrians, cyclists and bus riders while cars zoom by, taking up precious space with few people and providing no opportunities for window shopping or casual browsing. The voices will raise as the SBS debut this fall nears, but as the numbers show, car drivers are in the small minority. These bus improvements are sure to benefit the East Side.
27 comments
If the Select-buses prove to be a real success, it might mean the end of the Second Avenue Subway. Beyond Phase 1, anyway.
Don’t hold your breath. It doesn’t have the capacity to replace SAS, especially not the way it’s being designed.
Are you joking? There’s no way any transit that has to contend with stoplights, jaywalkers, illegally-parked cops and delivery vehicles, and severely limited vehicle lengths can provide the capacity and speed this corridor needs.
I support the SBS project because it means less space on Second Avenue for cars. More space for buses seems like a much smaller benefit.
Don’t forget that the traffic lights on 1st and 2nd are timed for a cruise speed of 28 mph. Great for cars, not so great for buses. Needless to say, SBS is not going to be followed by a redesign of the stoplights for bus speed.
Argh! Bit OT but it drives me absolutely nuts that this timing (and it seems to be on every Avenue) seems to result in having to stop at every @#$%^&* corner when I’m walking around. 99.9% of the time I’m incensed by all the anti-city measures they took decades ago to maximally accommodate the horseless carriage – things the public now takes for granted like one-way streets and single-file sidewalks. The other 0.1% of the time I’m riding in a taxi or car service and I appreciate them :/
When a bus is moving, it moves at similar speeds to cars.
(When a bus isn’t moving, traffic signals don’t matter.)
How often do you see a (crosstown, usually) bus either stop on the near corner to load, and then barely miss the light, and spend 60 seconds waiting for the light, or miss the light across from the stop and wait 60 seconds just to pull across the street and load? Signals matter whether or not the bus is loading.
Think of the bus’s average speed, not its marginal speed. If the bus spends half its time stopped (loading) and half moving at 20mph, then the bus moves at 10mph on average. This is also, coincidentally, the optimal speed for bicycles to ride the wave. Cars, on the other hand… make the lanes narrow enough that they feel totally cramped and want to drive slowly.
There is no east-west wave in Manhattan.
SBS doesn’t stop once per signal. The average speed, including stops, is irrelevant to getting a bus past a series of signals between stops.
No, the average speed is very relevant. The bus needs to be able to accelerate quickly enough to keep up with the wave; it should ideally also have short enough a dwell to avoid encountering a red light after every stop. Needless to say, the 28 mph green wave doesn’t take care of that.
A vehicle that operates at a steady 7 mph with no stops and a vehicle that operates at up to 30 mph but makes frequent and long enough stops that the average speed is 7 mph will benefit from very different signal progressions. The first is best off with a signal progression of 7 mph. The second is best off with a signal progression of the typical speed between stops, probably 25-30 mph.
Precise dwell times are impossible to predict on a bus-by-bus basis; they can’t be figured into the signal progression. Obviously, it’s best if the bus pulls out in time to catch a green light rather than a red light, but there’s no way to guarantee that. The best we can aim for is to give the bus the progression once the first light is green.
SBS also has ‘traffic signal priority’ as part of the package, so SBS buses can eek out that changing light, or get a head start on the cars..
According to Andrew, signal priority doesn’t work well, which is why buses must piggyback on one-way green waves instead of running in the median of a two-way street like everywhere else. Do you disagree?
No, according to Andrew, signal priority works fine, but it’s not the same thing as absolute signal preemption. Traffic signal priority, as typically implemented in bus systems (including the Bx12), works exactly as Al D describes: it allows the signal to turn green a little bit early, or keeps the signal green a few seconds late.
When was the last time you rode a bus in Manhattan?
This afternoon. Buses have slow average speeds because they spend a lot of time stopped, not because they’re particularly slow while in motion.
SBS stops are spaced on the order of 10 blocks apart. The bus may encounter a red light after pulling out, but once it gets through that, it’ll stay in the green wave assuming traffic permits.
Well, either you weren’t paying attention, or your bus was weird. Because the buses I’ve taken have always been slower than cars even at cruise speed, and have accelerated much more slowly back from a slowdown.
If a bus is pulling out from a bus stop and approaching a red light, it’s going to move slowly. But so would a car in that situation, unless the driver is stupid.
If a bus is going nonstop from 86th to 96th and the lights are green, it’s going to keep up with the lights, assuming traffic permits.
The M101 Limited runs at car speeds, traffic permitting. I now regularly use it south of 42 St where traffic is lighter.
Traffic doesn’t permit on 1st and 2nd, not during the daytime. This makes the bus even slower than traffic: the stop-and-go nature of the avenues means that buses’ lower acceleration rates matter.
It would be helpful if you actually checked what you were talking about before going on with the “MTA can do no wrong” theories.
Maybe we’re talking about different streets. I’ve ridden the M15 Limited at 30 mph. I’ve driven up 1st from 34th to 96th without having to stop. Quite a few times. During the day.
In fact, if the SBS bus lane is kept clear of non-bus traffic, buses will be able to proceed at 30 mph while cars are trapped in congestion.
But limited buses, while they are in motion, certainly don’t move appreciably more slowly than the other traffic. If the signals are timed too fast for buses, then they’re timed too fast for everyone else too.
Then the signals are timed too fast for everyone else, too. Because I’ve walked faster than traffic on 2nd in the middle of the day. And I’ve taken taxis that hit a red light once every 6 or 7 blocks.
Dedicated bus lanes alone don’t help, because the intersections are often blocked, making it impossible to pass. If you don’t believe me, check schedules on the northbound limited buses on Madison/5th, which get two lanes.
I didn’t say that traffic always moves smoothly on 1st and 2nd – I simply denied that it never does.
Yes, even bus lanes sometimes get blocked by cross traffic. That doesn’t mean they don’t help.
The goal here isn’t to make buses move at the speed of light, never having to stop or slow for a red light or for a traffic jam. The goal is to improve their speeds and to reduce and shorten their stops.
Nice to see a study backing up what we all knew. I wonder if it will make it into the media, as a counter to the random-person-in-a-car they always trot out to argue against anything that would improve life for pedestrians and transit riders.
Probably not. The rich drivers on the UES have garages, and the local middle class has approximately zero car ownership.
I know the media’s going for “fair and balanced” when they do that – they show a picture of a street in Times Square with chairs and people in it enjoying the space (and the reporters snicker like it’s the silliest thing on Earth) and then they air the entirely predictable opinion of some random livery driver – but they never seem interested in pointing out even the simplest facts and figures such as the rate of car ownership.
the most important thing to remember in any urban planning regime is that motorized transportation should be given priority over non-motorized transportation. if we handle this one aspect well, everything else will work itself out. dedicated bus lanes instead of dedicated bike lanes are a very big step in this direction. hopefully we can push this project, and others like it, forward.
Complaints about reduced parking spaces hurting businesses are usually in reference to delivery space. While I support SBS whole-heartledy this is a legitimate concer and needs to be addressed if SBS is to succeed.