The latest plan for 34th Street will arrive in November.
It’s been over six months since 34th Street NIMBYs killed NYC DOT’s ambitious plan for a 34th Street transitway and equally as long since the agency announced modified plans for semi-dedicated bus lanes. Now those plans are coming to fruition, and DOT is eying a November roll-out for its so-called Select Bus Service along the 34th Street corridor.
As The Daily News reported today, instead of a dedicated transitway along 34th Street, we’ll get the M34A SBS, a BRT-lite route that will improve travel for all of one bus route in the city. The M34A will replace the M16, and it will be equipped with the same SBS features found along 1st and 2nd Aves. and Fordham Road: pre-board fare payment with proof-of-purhase; surveillance cameras to enforce bus-only lanes; three-door, low-floor buses; and eventually, signal prioritization.
These measures can’t replicate bus rapid transit. Rather, they are simply a start, but it’s tough to say if these efforts to speed up bus travel will go anywhere. Even after the city dumped the plans for a Transitway, residents are still complaining about curbside access and want DOT to carve out an exception to the bus-only lanes from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every weekday.
DOT has rightly refused. “Although we appreciate the concerns of the residents of the 34th Street block between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, the current curb configuration on 34th Street provides significant benefits to bus riders,” a spokesman said to DNAInfo. This is a battle over transit speed and street space that won’t end soon.
23 comments
Are they going to SBSify both the M34 and the M16, or only the M16?
I’m not sure. I believe they might do it as they have the M15/M15 SBS right now, but I’m waiting to confirm.
I hope the M34 will at least benefit from the bus lane enforcement, if nothing else.
Both the M16 and M34 will get +SBS+. 34th Street will be an +SBS+-only street (as far as the local buses are concerned)
And the M16 is being renamed the M34A, I gather. (Why?)
I think it has something to do with the +SBS+ machines being able to handle one route at a time (so I guess the M34A would technically just be a branch of the M16, even though it branches at both sides)
I meant to say a branch of the M34.
The machines don’t “handle” any routes at all – they just print a route number on the receipt, and the inspectors know where it’s valid.
But that raises an interesting question, since two SBS routes will now intersect. At the intersecting stops, will the machines dispense receipts valid on either route, or will people have to make sure to get the correct receipt? And will riders transferring between the M15 and M34 be able to use their original receipts on the second bus, or will they have to get a second receipt when they transfer?
It would make sense for the new line to utilize the bus lanes on 2nd Ave but would they then add them on 23rd St and 8th/9th Aves? The M16 has a serpentine route as it goes cross town. Would the new route also have the same terminals (43rd/9th and Waterside Plaza) as the M16?
I know the M34A will follow the same route as the M16. Pre-board fare payment will happen on the entire route. Not sure about signal prioritization or dedicated lanes off of 34th St.
and want DOT to carve out an exception to the bus-only lanes from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every weekday.
That has to be one of the unintentionally funniest demands ever.
That’s not a carve-out, that’s a gutting.
While on the subject, they really need to expand parking options in the subway at night. Express tracks unused during overnight hours? That’s valuable space for private cars!! They’re allowed to park in the dedicated transit space on 2nd Ave during overnight hours, why not underground too?
Just be sure you move your car before the morning “shredder” train comes through (most popular run for train-drivers ever)!
Eh, for a mile or two of service, this should work pretty well.
The rather ironic side to this is it probably would have been a lot safer for the poor NIMBYs to do it the way DOT originally proposed. Sure, they would have been exposed to the roving gangs of rapist-murderers, the ones that inhabit 34th Street at all hours of the day, for several additional seconds during 60-foot walk from the taxi to their doormen. But they would have stepped out of the taxi onto a pedestrian-friendly curb, rather than into a lane of bus traffic.
The people who opposed the original proposal are so contemptuous of those they think are beneath them that they’re willing to put themselves in harm’s way to inflict pain on everyone else. Really nice.
If the sidewalk is pedestrian friendly … doesn’t that just make it much more easier to use for the Roving Gangs of Rapist-Murders (RGOGMs)?
don’t confuse New York with Philadelphia.
Why do you call this “Abridged BRT”? No, it doesn’t include all of the possible BRT treatments, but most BRT implementations don’t. Is it any less BRT than, say, the Bx12?
The term “BRT” seems absurdly diluted anyway—it seems to be used to mean almost anything except bog-standard bus service…
If cars need to get through the bus lane to park, it should under no circumstances be considered BRT.
Eh, gotta agree with Miles. “BRT” seems like a generally nebulous and dubious concept anyway. But what you say is almost like saying something shouldn’t be called light rail because drivers have to cross its tracks to park. There’s a good possibility the parking won’t be especially disruptive here.
The entire point of BRT is that the lines are kept separate from cars. SBS, even with painted bus lanes, is just your normal bus, run in a modern fashion (modulo the inspection process, of course).
Usually the identifying feature of light rail is that it’s rail, but if you’re specifically contrasting it with a shared-lane streetcar, then sure, I don’t mind excluding lines that aren’t parking-protected.
I’d tend to agree, but I’ve never heard of complete separation being a necessary criterion. Hell, one of the first things BRT genuflectors usually tout after pretending buses save so much money is the dubious benefit of being able to bounce between busways and mixed traffic.