A New York Magazine illustration highlights the various elements of the MTA's Select Bus Service plan. Click to view the descriptions.
Cut a bus. Add better bus service. That’s the MTA’s mantra this year as the transit authority had to eliminate or scale back numerous bus routes last week as part of the service cuts while Select Bus Service, the city’s abridged version of Bus Rapid Transit, will make its debut along 1st and 2nd Avenues in the fall. As Jay Walder tries to, in his words, “make buses sexy,” the MTA in partnership with New York City’s Department of Transportation is implementing a plan that’s almost there but doesn’t quite satisfy what both politicians and activists want.
This week, the glowing coverage of the city’s Select Bus Service comes from New York Magazine’s Robert Sullivan. He profiles the advances in bus routing that the MTA and DOT are working to put into action, and for the most part, he treads familiar ground. He talks about how buses are cheaper to build out and how bus lanes can truly elevate bus service in the eyes of a ridership used to hearing about elderly and poor bus riders. He pays lip service to the “BRT-as-surface subway” line of thinking that I have shot down in the past.
“When the city adopts a world-class ‘Bus Rapid Transit’ system,” Kyle Wiswall of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, said to Sullivan, “people are going to have a tough time, efficiency-wise, telling a bus apart from a subway—it’s going to be like a subway with a view.”
There are, of course, obvious problems with Wiswall’s claims. Buses can’t go as fast as subways, and unless they run with near-constant frequency, they can’t approach the capacity of one full subway car, let alone a 600-foot train of 8 or 10 cars. As New York has drawn them up, the Select Bus Service lanes don’t cross the arbitrary borough borders and don’t cross over or under the city’s rivers. Without the Holy Grain of dedicated and physically separated bus lanes, few will mistake SBS for a subway, and as Sullivan notes, a world-class bus system is a ways off.
Where Sullivan’s article hits its stride is in its discussions of the conflict between politicians and city planners. Usually planners want to be more ambitious than the politicians, but in the debate over Select Bus Service, the New York’s transite-phobe politicians have embraced calls for a more encompassing plan. He writes:
In this case, however, many lawmakers are more ambitious about buses than the bureaucrats. When the MTA and the DOT were putting together their plans for First and Second Avenues, nineteen legislators—including City Council members, State senators and assemblymen, and U.S. representatives Carolyn Maloney, Jerry Nadler, and Nydia Velázquez—wrote a letter pressing them to “take the project further” and build physically separated lanes. The DOT subsequently made changes, but it argued that external circumstances (i.e., Second Avenue subway construction) makes separated lanes impossible.
“A lot of us think that they are not seizing the full opportunity here,” says Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh, who helped organize the campaign. “They are not thinking broadly enough about how to restructure the service and restructure the streets.” Kavanagh is not anti-car; he believes, in fact, that more buses on First and Second Avenues might make Lexington Avenue better for cars. “We have to get the balance right,” he says. But the shift in balance should not be to increase bus speed slightly; the shift needs to turn buses into a substitute for rail, with rail-like speeds and rail-like reliability. Kavanagh says that his fellow legislators are prepared to take flak for risks. “We are willing and ready to help facilitate the conversations that need to happen and to sell the ideas to businesses.”
It’s an odd moment: The DOT and the MTA are both captained by mass-transit evangelists fluent in urban best practices. They are committed to working together rather than at the usual cross-purposes. They are moving toward a radical revamping of mass transit and the city street. And they are being chided—by Albany legislators!—for their limited scope.
Perhaps it’s post-traumatic-stress disorder. Although Westchester assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a noted congestion-pricing killer and MTA watcher, speaks excitedly about improved bus service, he’s circumspect about overzealous technocrats: “Someone’s got to be like your aunt, saying, ‘No, no, dear, that won’t work.’?” But politicians who are hesitant about the bus future end up groping for an argument against it, and the reflexive populist case for the automobile is difficult to make in comparison with buses.
Sullivan goes on to blame poor leadership from the mayor and no political capital from the governor for the DOT/MTA reticence. Mayor Bloomberg has long been licking his wounds from the congestion pricing fight, and David Paterson is treading water until Andrew Cuomo can take over the reins. Meanwhile, Select Bus Service moves forwards with some positive elements but many omissions that are needed to make the bus system truly rapid transit.
For now, though, we’ll be satisfied with the baby steps and ask for more. With Albany hesitantly granting the MTA the right to use bus-lane cameras, we’ll need dedicated and separated bus lanes. To serve areas without subway access, the BRT plans should include more borough-to-borough connections. As they are right now, the routes are simply faster feeders to subway hubs. And to succeed, the MTA will have to ensure that fare beating remains at acceptably low levels.
Select Bus Service is probably the biggest on-street change to New York since the trolley tracks were ripped up decades ago, and if it works, something good will have come out of a period of MTA service cuts. The road to true innovation remains a bumpy one.
23 comments
Kyle Wiswall is obviously vastly overstating his case.
But the one existing SBS line, and one of the planned SBS lines, in fact do cross borough lines (which, aside from Brooklyn/Queens, are not arbitrary at all) and do cross over bodies of water, so I’m not sure why you say that they don’t.
I’ve pointed out many times before (and will gladly point out again, if necessary) why a single bus lane, physically separated from other traffic, would be very bad for bus service. If there were two bus lanes, then separation would be very good, but taking two bus lanes from cars would be politically very difficult. And if the new camera program is implemented properly, separation
And what’s wrong if people use SBS as a feeder to the subway? Lots of people use the local train as a feeder to the express, and even the best implemented SBS will still be slower than the local train. If you’re traveling from an outlying area to Manhattan, you probably wouldn’t stay on the bus the whole way in even if that were an option – you’d get off as soon as you reached the subway for a faster trip. Buses are much more expensive per passenger than subways to operate; if a subway line already exists, there’s no need to duplicate it. And if you’ve just gotten off the subway and you’re waiting for the bus to take you to that outlying area, you don’t want to be held hostage to traffic congestion on a major river crossing. There’s a reason NYCT just got rid of two of its river-crossing bus lines – traffic congestion can sometimes be very high, and most riders prefer to avoid that unpredictability by going underground – and there’s a reason that those two bus lines basically only crossed the river – so that people not riding the bus across the bridge aren’t subject to traffic delays on the bridge. If running times are unpredictable, NYCT can’t determine how many buses are needed to maintain the desired headways; overestimating (i.e., scheduling enough buses under the assumption that traffic will always be terrible) is extremely costly, and is unnecessary on most days.
SBS can work well for trips not served by the subway. SBS in the Bronx works well because it runs perpendicular to the subway lines, connecting them all. What’s wrong with that approach? SBS certainly can’t replace any of those subway lines!
Physically separated bus lanes haven’t posed a problem in places ranging from Brazil and Bogota to California. It would require a two lanes — one in each direction — and that’s it. The whole point of Sullivan’s article is that New York State politicians want that and are willing to work with residents and businesses to make it happen while DOT/MTA are shuffling their feet a bit.
I think you just proved my point – Curitiba (Brazil) and Bogota have access to multiple lanes, at least at bus stops, where it really matters (also see the photos Veritas links to below):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.....brasil.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.....4-7-10.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.....iental.JPG
I don’t know which California system you’re referring to, but the same applies to the LACMTA Orange Line:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.....e_rack.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.....tation.JPG
A two-lane bus-only roadway (like what’s planned for 34th Street) would still qualify, as long as bus stops aren’t directly across from each other, since a bus can pull into the opposing lane to pass a stopped bus. That’s not what’s planned for 1st and 2nd Avenues, and I don’t think anyone aside from Alon Levy has proposed it. What’s planned is one single lane on each street.
If implemented correctly, camera enforcement will keep stray vehicles out of the bus lanes while still allowing buses to pass each other when necessary. It works in London. The only catch is making sure that it’s implemented correctly.
If you still think that a single divided lane makes sense, take a ride on the M15 Limited, preferably during rush hour, preferably for the entire length of the planned SBS lane. Over the course of your trip, count how many other buses you pass, and count how many other buses pass yours.
One thing I have a hard time understanding is the open-nature of the SBS bus stops, the “honor-system”, and the need for random “proof-of-payment” checks. Yes, I understand how it works, and that it’s done in Europe — no need to explain that.
But if the bus waiting-areas were enclosed like subway stations with gated (turnstile) entrances and exits, this wouldn’t be needed. Swipe-in (pay your fare) and you’re allowed inside the waiting area. When the bus arrives, it lines its doors up with the exit doors of the waiting area, essentially creating an extension of a fare-controlled zone.
Not a bad idea, in principle. I think that’s how it works in Curitiba.
But how do you stop people from stepping into the gated entrance area from the street side? And what happens if two buses pull up at once?
Even on subway systems, where gated access is entirely feasible, the trend seems to be toward POP.
In Bogotá, the street side is basically a wall of windows with doors that align with the bus doors. When the bus stops, the doors open. You can kind of see it in this image: http://www.lightrailnow.org/im.....Papaya.jpg
Actually this photo shows it even more clearly
http://railforthevalley.files......ilenio.jpg
Nice photos. But that’s a massive piece of infrastructure to be installed and maintained (whenever it malfunctions, the bus stop would probably have to be shut down). And how would you fit that thing on a New York City sidewalk while still letting pedestrians by? That right-of-way is 2-3 times wider than 2nd Avenue; we simply don’t have that much space available in NYC.
Also, what do you do when there are 40 or 50 people waiting for a bus on a 95 degree day? Will they all fit in this enclosed space? Will it be air conditioned? How expensive would that be? Way more costly than spot-checking receipts on buses. Works in theory or in small cities in Spain, not so much in NYC.
I haven’t been on an NYC bus in a couple years, but one thing that would make them “sexier” would be to have automatic displays in the bus that showed the stops so you knew when to get off. I was just in Chicago and all the buses had that. It made it SUPER easy for a non-resident to ride the bus and figure out where you were and where to get off. And even for residents – you’re not going to know every bus line by heart, so this would help them too.
Long Island Bus has such a system in place. Westchester is going to get a system soon. When? I don’t know.
The MTA of all systems should have this up & running, but outfitting 4500 busses is quite expencive reguardless. It still needs to be done anyway.
There is also the problem of what happens when some idiot crashes into the SBS (which will inevitably happen; as it did in Los Angeles with the Orange Line) The media and the politicians will slow down the SBS service to make it more safe. This happens even with a dedicated lane due to cross traffic.
Making the “express bus service” less and less “express” and more regular. (To say nothing of the problems of cross traffic in general; see Cleveland BRT problems (surprise it cant reach the speeds forecast for it: http://blog.cleveland.com/metr.....lower.html)
Politicians love SBS because a route can be conceived and completed entirely within their term of office. In other words, they can take credit for it at election time. Start a subway now, and someone else will be in office when the ribbon is cut.
The article states that the primary advantage of the bus over rail is in its flexibility, that it can go wherever you want it to. Theoretically true, but in practice, largely a myth.
In 1972, I wrote a masters thesis in Urban Planning at Columbia University where I discussed the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of local bus service in Brooklyn due to an archaic routing system in parts of the borough which makes seemingly simple trips overly complex, discourages bus use, and needlessly adds to travel time. I outlined a routing system with modifications to about half the routes. Over the years, many of my suggested changes have become reality, but so much more needs to be done.
The problem is that it takes the MTA four or five years to study simple routing improvements, ones that I recognized as needed nearly forty years ago. The complex ones, they cannot even deal with because they do not adequately understand how the system is used. However, when it comes to cutting service, they rushed through the equivalent of ten years worth of changes all at once.
If they ever get back on track to wanting to improve connectivity between neighborhoods instead of severing it, it will take them another hundred years at the rate they have traditionally been making improvements.
If Select Bus Service improves matters, it is certainly not the solution to improving bus service, since it will only be implemented on perhaps 2 to 10% of the bus routes.
I still wonder how effective separate bus lanes will be and whether BRT with Bogota-like performance can be executed on the avenues with busy intersections every 200 feet and pedestrians competing with traffic for some of that street space. But hey, even our subways just creep along compared to the ones in many other cities.
And what are some of those recent articulated M15 buses? They are quiet.
Nobody’s expecting Bogota-like performance. There’s still a lot of room for improvement over current NYC bus performance. It’s still a bus, but if using a fancy name can attract funding and political support, then there’s nothing wrong with using a fancy name.
Those new buses on the M15 are what will be used on SBS. They’re also in use on the Bx12. They do seem a lot nicer than the old ones. And, best of all, they have three doors.
The problem with the fancy names is that they make people not understand that apart from physically separated lanes, the SBS improvements can all be done systemwide. Systemwide POP can work, and work much better than having the bus stand still while the fare inspectors check tickets so they can travel around the city on an SUV. Three-door non-articulated buses run safely around the world – for example, in Nice. Bus cams could be installed on any route, if the average IQ in Albany were higher than 15. The best part of it is that it would make it easy to run buses partly as mixed-traffic city buses and partly as BRT in physically separated lanes, leveraging the only real advantage of BRT over light rail.
Alas, DOT has decided that only six routes in the city will get any serious improvements, and not even the best-performing six.
Systemwide POP in a MetroCard world would require a major capital investment (payment machines at every bus stop) that would become obsolete as soon as MetroCard is no longer with us. Systemwide POP is a lot easier to implement with smartcards, since riders can swipe(?) their smartcards as they enter the bus (through any door). I don’t know if that’s NYCT’s plan, but I hope it is. It’s certainly doable.
I think you misunderstand both what the inspectors do and why they do it – it doesn’t take 5 minutes and it has nothing to do with SUV’s. But it seems like your source is not personal experience (which wouldn’t be too hard to get; the Bronx isn’t that far away) but rather the second-hand reports of a blogger who heard about it from somebody else, so it’s no wonder that the facts got a little muddled.
I think the new three-door articulated buses are the buses NYCT will be buying to replace the older artics as they are retired. Systemwide. All are in agreement that the two-door buses were a mistake.
There are plenty of bus lanes around the city. Unfortunately, most are not enforced, and Albany isn’t allowing that to change. And installing new bus lanes is politically very difficult – most elected officials sympathize more with the drivers who don’t want to give up parking than with bus riders. Marketing gimmicks help in gaining political support.
Nothing’s been decided forever. DOT and NYCT have identified six initial SBS corridors. That doesn’t mean there won’t be a seventh. It doesn’t even mean that plans won’t change with other corridors replacing some of the initial six.
It’s not just a blogger. I read the blogger’s own sources, and I’ve asked friends who’ve ridden the bus, and they’ve confirmed that the bus indeed stands still during inspections.
Systemwide POP doesn’t need machines at every station. Machines at every station simplify it, but people can swipe on the bus. This is how it’s done in Paris and how it was done in Singapore before the stations got card readers (which, for your information, cost S$950 apiece, which means the citywide investment is tiny). The time saving comes from letting people with unlimited-ride cards or valid transfers board from any door without swiping.
There exist non-articulated three-door buses. NYCT isn’t buying them or planning to buy them.
The bus also stands still at red lights. That doesn’t mean that red lights have to be eradicated. The inspections are quite fast. And I’ve explained in the past why they’re done that way; it has nothing to do with SUV’s.
Swiping on the bus is exactly what I expect will happen with smartcards. It doesn’t make sense at this point to develop to develop and install the necessary equipment for the soon-to-be-obsolete MetroCard system. And the time savings would be relatively small, since, for people who still have to dip their MetroCards, the process is just as slow as it’s always been.
Too many seats were already given up in the move to low floor buses. Adding a third door would eliminate even more seats. On non-articulated buses, I don’t see the need for a third door.
Um, BRT strives to eliminate red lights, using signal priority.
You haven’t explained why it’s done this way, at all. You’ve said that the tickets are there because, according to you (and not any actual reference), handheld card readers cost too much. You never actually gave an argument for why the bus should have to stop at inspections.
I’m glad you think three-door buses are unnecessary. Hordes of passengers with little standing space and excessively long dwell times might disagree. The MTA never even bothered to test this, because it wasn’t invented here.
BRT reduces the delay caused by red lights. It doesn’t eliminate them entirely, except in unusual cases like full grade separation.
It’s done this way – with inspectors standing outside, guarding the doors – so that fare evaders can’t jump off at the next stop and get away. A full inspection – which only happens once in a while – still takes less time than fare payment does at a single busy stop on any other bus line in the city. It’s a big improvement.
Adding a third door to a standard 40-foot bus reduces the available space to stand and sit on the bus (which has already been reduced far too much in the latest crop of buses). It would only make the crowding situation worse. And what do you want to test? Testing is an expensive proposition, generally undertaken only to determine something empirically that can’t be determined analytically. What are you trying to determine?
I want to make a note that the TransportAzumah vehicles were buses hired for our services. They were comparable to the equipment used by the MTA. I recognize that the Daily News has been showing us as some sort of bootleg van operation, but that is not the case.