Now that the MTA and DOT have been offering Select Bus Service for nearly nine months, the agencies have a better picture of how it’s shaping up, and the early returns have been quite positive. This week, DOT presented its findings on SBS to Community Board 3, and DNA Info was there. According to DOT, trips have increased along the M15 by 30 percent since Select Bus Service debuted, and travel times by 15-18 percent.
Meanwhile, enforcement remains a key concern for the city. Enforcement officials had issued nearly 4700 fare-evasion summonses to riders through April, and lane enforcement cameras had resulted in 5800 ticketed drivers who were parked in the bus-only lanes. People too are safer as injury-causing crashes have dropped by 14 percent on both avenues between 34th and Houston Sts.
Yet, CB3 didn’t seem satisfied, and here we see the dangers of community boards in the transportation planning process. Community Board members say that gaps between local and express stops and the frequency of Select Bus Service stops “make it difficult for riders to choose between the two buses.” Their solution? More Select Bus Service stops. CB3 wants to see “regular and SBS bus stops be placed closer together or combined at locations to provide riders with more options,” and one rider asked for a stop at Allen and Delancey Sts.
If Community Boards had their ways, Select Bus Service stops would be just as frequent as local service, and that’s the problem. SBS works because the stops are far apart, and that sometimes means skipping busy locations. Already, there’s a stop at Houston and Allen and Grand and Allen. That’s only a distance of 0.4 miles. Adding yet another stop in there — two blocks away from Grand St. — is entirely unnecessary.
I’m happy to see Community Board consulted in the planning process. Neighbors should have a say on changes that will impact their lives. But at a certain point, the experts have to be allowed to run the service. Local and express stations aren’t closer together so that SBS buses aren’t stuck behind local routes. Station distances on the SBS route are far apart to allow buses to build up speed. That’s what makes the system work, and it shouldn’t be changed.
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For that location in particular, there is no integration with the J M Z at Essex St. And shouldn’t SBS complement subway service?
If you’re picking one, integration with the much more popular B/D at Grand St. trumps F/J/M/Z at Essex and Delancey. Again, it’s a two-block walk.
Delancey Street is a pretty busy stop. I’,m shocked that there is no SBS stop there. I would eliminate the stop on Houston and place a SBS stop on Delancey.
The Houston stop has to be included because it is perfectly aligned with the exits for the F train, with minimal walking involved. Connecting from the SBS to the Grand St or Essex stations will always be problematic, and therefore less used than they otherwise should be.
There will always be an argument on which stops are appropriate for Select bus service locations. It’s good to know that this article points out that if the stops are too close together and/or too frequent then it defeats the purpose of Bus Rapid Transit aka Select Bus Service.
The JMZ is always unfairly getting the shaft and travel times from the J to many places in Manhattan are unnecessarily long. Even though it doesn’t put up huge ridership numbers, it’s still serves close to 100,000 people a day who don’t deserve to be ignored. The planned second avenue subway is supposed to connect with many stations that are quite far from it via underground passages. Where it crosses the J, however, the MTA has made no provisions for a transfer, even though the Bowery station is very close to the Grand St station. When they built the BD Grand St stop to begin with, they should have connected it to Bowery. At the very least, they could move the Grand St SBS stop a bit further north. A northern exit from the Grand St BD station would also be a welcome and useful addition. If it’s just a two block walk for JMZ riders, then it’s just a two block walk for BD riders too.
South/east of Myrtle, the J/Z is a painful, tortuous joke. It crawls.
The Delancey/Grand conundrum is a tough one — 20-30 years ago, Delancey would have been the far more logical stop. But the revival of the business area between Grand Street and East Broadway has boosted usage of that stop, while the elimination of the B-39 bus also eliminated the natural transfer of riders going over the Williamsburg Bridge and connecting with the M-15 at Delancey.
Considering where the spacing is right now, Grand makes a more logical midpoint for SBS between the south side of Chinatown and Houston Street, and once you add that stop, it wouldn’t be a big shock to see CB 3 come back later and ask for an additional SBS stop at St. Mark’s Place and for uptown boards to also start asking that the MTA designate every other stop for M-15 SBS.
The same happened in the Bronx when the Bx12 SBS was first placed. It didn’t stop at Sedgwick Avenue, where the local terminated. The problem was not the local/SBS xfer (since riders did that at University Avenue), but the fact that north of Sedgwick was the heavily-elderly Fordham Hill Oval housing complex who had to walk across the poorly-lit and drug-infested DeVoe Park to get to/from the Bx12 to their homes. In addition, riders from Fordham Hill lost access to the Pathmark in Inwood.
The thing is that the Sedgwick Av stop is a mere three blocks west of University Av stop. I wouldn’t be surprised if St. Marks Pl and Delancey St get added on the M15.
In general, the proposal to integrate regular and SBS stops is good – it means the effective frequency of the buses is doubled, which can save as much time as SBS.
But here’s a more radical idea: put TVMs at every M15 stops, and designate every M15 as SBS. There would still be local and limited buses, but all would have POP, and they’d share stations.
Unnecessarily costly, given that MetroCard will be history in less than 5 years.
Let’s get really radical: when smartcards start, implement POP on all buses citywide, with boarding through all doors.
And in most cases, the SBS and local stop are half a block apart. Not a big deal.
That’s funny, the earlier comments seem to have disappeared.
I wasn’t at the community board meetings, but I get the impression that only a few people were asking for more stops. The main thrust was that every SBS stop should be immediately adjacent to or combined with a local stop, so that people can take the local if the express doesn’t come right away.
That seems reasonable to me. In fact, there are some locations that are set up that way, and I’ve done just that.
I hope that the Select Bus Service also finds a way to get past the car-oriented Community Board in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. This would be great for the B44 to get the green light for SBS.
The Community Board has many other concerns that are not auto related. The B44 on Nostrand Avenue is just not thought out well. There are many problems with it.
I am reading Ben’s post here slightly differently. I’m wondering if in part they mean putting SBS and local stops together. Here in East Harlem, the M15 local stop is at 116th/115th and 2nd while the SBS stop is a block and a half south at 114th. It makes it incredibly hard to pick what comes first, if say I’m traveling to only the 86th street area. Thankfully the M15 SBS has the blue flashing lights so I can see it coming from afar, so I’ll generally hang out at the local stop. But like Alon says, it’d be better if the entire thing was Proof-of-Purchase so I didn’t have to walk to an SBS stop, get my ticket, go back to the local, and then run back to the SBS if that comes first. Sure it’s only 1.5 blocks apart but that adds up when playing this game.
The one stop change I’d make is having the Northbound M15 stop north of Grand Street, instead of south of it. As it currently is, the bus usually has to wait for two light cycles to cross the street. One to get to the current stop, and the second to load passengers. Putting it north of the street would eliminate one of those as well as bring the stop closer to the Delancey JMZ by eliminating one street crossing for pedestrians making the transfer.
Having taken the M15 SBS several times in the past few weeks (my first experiences on BRT), I have to say it is an improvement over the regular M15, with much of the benefit coming in reduced loading/unloading and dwell times, thanks to Pay Before You Board.
That said, my concern over expanding the number of SBS stops doesn’t concern speed, but free-riding. Expanding the number of SBS stops makes the system that much more suspectible to fare evaders, which in spite of the MTA’s best efforts, is still highly possible under the current SBS structure. Perhaps the “smart card” payment system being considered can help.
I don’t think fare evasion is actually a problem on SBS – and if is it, increase the frequency of inspection or simply raise the fine.
Bear in mind that on a conventional bus, if you want to evade the fare, just walk on and don’t pay. The driver won’t stop you. And if a cop doesn’t catch you on the spot, you’re all set.
This is not one of your better articles. Your misleading statements are typical of the types of statements used by your so-called “experts” who “run the service”. You state “According to DOT, trips have increased along the M15 by 30 percent since Select Bus Service debuted, and travel times by 15-18 percent.” (First of all I assume you mean travel times decreased not increased.)
You don’t distinguish between bus trips or passenger trips. Since the quote is from DOT, the logical assumption is bus trips, but the link clearly says “ridership” or passenger trips. Your statement that travel times decreased by 15 to 18 percent is confusing. Your link clarifies this as bus travel times. That is quite different than passenger travel times which is the more relevant factor.
What good is it to save 7 minutes from a 45 minute trip, or a 15% savings, if it now takes you 3 or 4 minutes longer to reach your bus stop and increases your walk by that much from your new bus stop to your destination? In such an example you have a faster bus trip but actually save nothing.
And since SBS stops are not located at major intersections, the likelihood for this increases. As for the 30 percent increase in patronage, you need to look where these people are coming from. If it’s from the subway, you are doing nothing for the MTA’s bottom line.
Now I’m not saying SBS is all bad. Most of the growing pains seems to have been solved. However, the system still has some serious problems, one of which is the distance between SBS and non-SBS stops which prevents people from choosing the bus which comes first. That needs to be addressed. Another major problem is the fact that you cannot transfer between the express and local without using your one allotted bus transfer. That also needs to change. More people transferring from crosstwown routes would change to the SBS if they could change again for the local at some future stop if the stops were adjacent to each other. It is not efficient to operate in effect to totally different routes that don’t share the same stops, but only the same route number. You would never build a subway where the expresses and locals don’t transfer, and you shouldn’t do it for the buses either.
To get a clear picture as to how much time SBS is saving the passenger, you need to do an origin destination study before and after the service starts which was not done. The fact that buses travel faster is great for the MTA, it is only good for the passenger if the time savings of the bus is not eroded by extra walking time to and from the widely spaced bus stops.
Community Boards can be a hindrance some of the time, but in some instances they do have valid points which should not just be summarily dismissed.
What good is it to save 7 minutes from a 45 minute trip, or a 15% savings, if it now takes you 3 or 4 minutes longer to reach your bus stop and increases your walk by that much from your new bus stop to your destination? In such an example you have a faster bus trip but actually save nothing.
Glad to see your favorite strawman argument rear its head. If someone has to walk longer from the SBS bus stop and in doing so, loses the travel savings, well, then newsflash, Al, they’ll take the local bus. The SBS is designed to provide for faster travel and to deliver people to key points where they can either get subway routes, be near crosstown bus transfer points or get to work. Have you actually ridden the M15 SBS? I do all the time, and travel — both bus travel and overall passenger travel times — are much faster now.
I stated a fact not a “strawman argument”. What is untrue in your quote of what I said. Nothing.
What you are not addressing is why someone should not be able to choose the first bus that comes along when the time savings of SBS will not matter much. Why should you have to let a bus with capacity pass by why you have to wait five or ten minutes more for another bus? That does not make sense. Yeah you could just wait for the local, but that assumes that all the buses run on time all the time. We all know that is just not the case.
You don’t need to explain to me the purpose of SBS. I am quite aware of its purpose. I’m also not saying that travel times are not faster now. What I am saying is that it could operate in a fashion where it serves the people much better like allowing for transfers between the SBS and the local and facilitate transfers to the subway and crosstown buses, not making them inconvenient.
You also cannot say with any certainty how much faster travel time is when you don’t include walking time to the bus. It may only be a perception for some trips because you are not including extra walking time. Don’t make it seem like I’m against SBS on Second Avenue because I’m not. I just don’t like misleading statistics and conclusions.
It’s a strawman argument because the vast majority of Limited stops are retained as SBS stops. North of Houston, only a few (three in each direction?) were removed – the least used ones. South of Houston, the Limited used to make all stops. Most people don’t have to walk any further than they used to.
Granted, at a few locations, the SBS stop is now a block or more from the street it ostensibly serves, but in most cases it’s no less convenient than the old Limited stop.
M15 SBS connects with all of the crosstown buses except the M8 and M72, which are hardly the busiest of bus lines. It also connects with both subway lines that stop on 1st.
In principle, I agree that a third transfer should be allowed between SBS and local, but in practice, I doubt that many people would use it. How many people get off the subway and transfer to a parallel local bus line for one or two stops? Almost everyone going to a destination above the subway line either walks from the nearest station or takes the local bus the whole way, and it’s no different with SBS.
Origin-destination studies are done all the time. They’re not generally done with mailed surveys anymore, since mailed surveys are extremely expensive and yield tiny sample sizes. Instead they’re done with MetroCard data.
Do you think there’s any chance we’ll ever see something like SBS along any of the crosstown bus routes?
The M86, in particular, is a mess, especially during rush hour. Loading the busses at Lexington (in both directions) is a huge bottleneck. SBS-style boarding through multiple doors would seem to be the only rational way to fix the problem, and it would greatly cut back on travel times.
I agree. 86th st needs a select cross town bus
I agree. 86th st needs a select cross town bus