A fancy new bus won’t held speed up the crosstown travel time.
One of the great aspects about New York City’s bus network is how extensive it is. Every major artery in the city and many minor ones have bus routes that run throughout most of the day. But for more trafficked routes — those that mirror subway lines along Manhattan’s, Queens’, Brooklyn’s and the Bronx’s major roads — speed is a problem. Because the city does not have dedicated bus lanes, because police do not enforce marked bus lanes and because cars unnecessarily fill the streets, buses simply are not a viable means of crosstown travel.
Every year, the Straphangers Campaign hands out its Pokey award to the city’s slowest bus, and this year, the M42 took home the honors. It achieved, they said, an average speed of 3.7 miles per hour at noon on a weekday. For many of us, that’s a brisk walking pace.
Last week, Pete Donohue tested that claim and found that the bus is, in reality, even slower. Due to cars, trucks and vans double parking or using the bus lane, what should be a convenient ride across the street is far from it. He writes:
On just one rush-hour ride last week, nearly two dozen vehicles were parked or idled in the bus-only lane, which stretches roughly from Ninth to Third Aves.
The entire trip, from First to 12th Aves., is just over 2 miles. The trip took 43 minutes, even on a day when traffic was much lighter than usual. The average speed: approximately 2.85 mph, slower than the average person walks…
“If the lanes were clear, it would make it a lot easier to go across town,” [M42 driver Vincent] Mashburn said. “No delays. No one blocking us. We could come in, pick up passengers and move.”
During Donohue’s crosstown experiment, he saw empty police vans and patrol cars blocking the bus lane. He witnessed a line of taxis and livery cabs parked in a bus lane outside of Port Authority, and he saw a U.S. Postal Service truck and other assorted delivery vans blocking the bus’s progress.
The police vans, while not a new problem, are particularly distressing. Who is going to follow the bus lane rules if police are openly flaunting them? The same holds true for the postal service as well.
In the end, Donohue’s experience is not an isolated one. Buses are inefficient for crosstown travel and downright painful for long distances. His article underscores the need for camera enforcement and physically separated bus lanes. The MTA and NYC DOT are engaged in an extensive effort to bring bus rapid transit service to the city, and those planning would do well to read Donohue’s article and pay careful attention to the lessons in it.
As mobile device use permeates our society and smartphone penetration rates soar, application development has become the wave of the present. From the mundane — the weather, the nearest restaurants — to the complex — what subway car should I ride in if I want to exit efficiently at another station — mobile applications have revolutionized the way urban dwellers interact with their cities.
As I mentioned last Friday, with tourists and the holiday come far fewer weekend service changes. Since this is the first weekend of the month, Transit, as part of an effort to better prepare riders for the travails of weekend travel, sent out a glance ahead at this month’s major projects, and for the most part, the changes are rather non-disruptive.
– Rockaway Shuttle
When the MTA raised fares earlier this year and continued the 15 percent pay-per-ride bonuses, the agency inadvertently created a crisis of mathematics among New York City’s straphangers. With a base fare of $2.25 and a volume discount, a rider has to buy 20 rides for $45 to earn a bonus of $6.75 that results in 23 rides for the price of the original 20. Yikes.
When yesterday’s news broke that the state would 