Nearly one year, Edwin Thomas, a driver along the B46 bus route, was fatally stabbed by a passenger who refused to pay the fare. Three weeks later, the MTA announced plans to start a bus partition pilot program, and now the MTA is gearing up to install these protective partitions. According to Pete Donohue of the Daily News, an L-shaped plastic partition will be installed in 100 buses in Brooklyn in an effort to better protect drivers for unruly passengers. As 340 bus drivers have been physically assaulted this year, this move is long overdue.
Although Phase I of the Second Ave. Subway is still at least seven or eight years away from completion, residents of Manhattan’s East Side will be getting speedier north-south options within the next twelve months. The MTA and New York City’s Department of Transportation are hard at work planning the Select Bus Service — New York’s version of a bus rapid transit system — for the East Side, and earlier this week, the agencies informed Community Board 1 of the plans.
In general, as the above map shows, the Select Bus Service will follow a path similar to that of the current M15 Limited. Buses will travel north up 1st Ave., and south down 2nd Ave. with a northern turnaround at 125th St. and a southern terminal at the Staten Island Ferry building. The buses will stop approximately every 10 blocks with no stops at 72nd, 28th or 8th Sts. “Faster and more reliable” were the buzzwords city officials used this week, according to Downtown Express’ Leslie Picker.
With the route in place, the MTA and DOT are trying to figure out how to make this service effective, and with out major exception, the ideas are falling into place. As preliminary designs, below, indicate, the city will install bus bulbs on blocks with stops. These bus areas will feature pre-boarding systems similar to those in place along Fordham Road in the Bronx and will allow for loading or parking areas in front of the bus stop.
As you can see from the picture, though, the plans call for an off-set bus lane but not a physically separated bus lane. Businesses along 1st and 2nd Aves., oblivious to the fact that buses would be far more beneficial than road space or parking spots, are not too keen on separated lanes, and community leaders are concerned about increased traffic due to the potential elimination of road space for bus lanes. In turn, though, DOT and MTA officials warned that the city would push for increased bus lane enforcement. Whether the NYPD alone can enforce the contours of a non-separated dedicated bus lane remain to be seen.
If the MTA and DOT can adhere to their published schedules, Select Bus Service will come to the East Side by the summer of 2010. This early roll-out, though, will be missing a few features of the overall service. Phase 1 will include better service patterns and pre-board fare payment as well as what the agencies are calling “enhanced bus lanes. Phase 2, set to arrive in mid-2011, will feature the bus bulbs and, more importantly, a preferred signaling system for transit vehicles. In other words, buses will enjoy longer green lights and fewer red lights.
For now, with the Second Ave. Subway inching along, this East Side corridor needs its bus rapid transit service. Even after Phase I of the SAS opens, the MTA claims that “passenger demand on the M15 will remain high.” The problem though of dedicated lanes persists. Until the buses can lay claim to their own spaces, enforcement costs will be high and a lack of enforcement would not significantly speed up bus service along these crowded avenues.
In the State of New York, it is illegal to use a handheld phone while driving. Since the start of this month, it has also been illegal to text while behind the wheel. Luckily for one New York City Transit bus driver, he got caught texting while driving before the Nov. 1 ban went into effect. So that means this bus driver gets to keep his job, right? Well, what if I told you he subsequently hit and killed a pedestrian crossing the street? What if I told you this bus drivers had been suspended for texting but was not fired despite Transit’s wishes? Rather, the arbitrator in this labor dispute decided to send the driver to what the Daily News called “driver safety and customer service training courses.”
Today, in the wake of this tragedy, the Daily News editorial staff wonders why Transit does not have the power to fire a driver caught on the phone. It is a very good question. According to the editorial, 108 drivers were “disciplined for using phones.” Already this year, due to increased enforcement efforts, that number is up to 170, and the News urges a sensible brightline policy: “More enforcement won’t amount to anything until a zero-tolerance standard is set: If you use a cell or text while in command of a bus, you will never drive for the TA again.” Sounds about right to me.
When the Straphangers Campaign released their latest takedown of the MTA’s bus system last week, something about it bothered me. While the Campaign doled out its usual Pokey and Schleppie awards for, respectively, the slowest and least reliable bus routes, they added a Trekkie, highlighting the MTA’s longest bus routes.
On the surface, the purpose of the Trekkie seemed to be to highlight the inanities of long bus routes. The M4 won the award for a rather circuitous route that runs from Penn Station up Madison Ave. to Fort Tryon in Northern Manhattan. The route is slightly more than 11 miles, and on-time end-to-end trip would take an hour and 50 minutes — or 23 minutes longer than Amtrak’s Northeast Regional service from Penn Station to Philadelphia.
Two items with similar themes that I read over the weekend made me realize the problem with this new award: It doesn’t highlight an understanding of local bus service. First, Andrew left a comment on my original post over the weekend. “I don’t see the point of the Trekkie,” he said. “Nobody rides a long local bus route like the M4 from start to finish. If you want to go from Penn Station to Fort Tryon, take the A train.”
Then, in a Brooklyn Eagle piece in which he tries to verify the Straphangers’ findings, Harold Egeln offers up a critique of the Straphangers’ survey. Although he focuses on the B63, winner of Brooklyn’s borough-specific Pokey Award, his observation is just as valid for the Trekkie:
Slow, yes. But the fact is that the bus serves an economically vibrant route brimming with shops, restaurants, schools and businesses, and directly serves Business Improvement Districts in Bay Ridge, Park Slope, Sunset Park and the proposed Atlantic Avenue BID area.>
That hyperlocal nature of the bus route is what makes the system effective. That ride along the B63 covers approximately 7.3 miles and does so at an average speed of 4.9 miles per hour. By any standard, that is a slow ride, but the point of the bus isn’t to provide end-to-end transportation. For that, a non-physically disabled rider would simply take the R from 95th St. to Atlantic Ave./Pacific St.
Rather, the bus is designed to provide easy access across various commercial strips, BIDs and residential neighborhoods. A properly designed and routed bus system will allow residents from nearby residential areas fast and reliable service to business areas that are just too far to walk. A good bus system will complement a subway system by providing service to those in-between areas. For someone at 60th and Fifth Ave. who wants to go to the Guggenheim, It doesn’t make sense to walk all the way over to Lexington Ave. to take the subway, but it does make sense to wait for that Trekkie M4 bus for a 28-block ride.
New York City’s bus system runs into problems when the bus is viewed not as a complement to the subway but as a replacement. It runs into problems along busy corridors — Fordham Road, 34th St., 2nd Ave. and 1st Ave. all come to mind — across which there is no subway service. Here, where buses are subject to the whims of surface traffic and the subway is just too far away or not an option at all, buses drag. No pre-boarding fare payment options create long load times. Non-preferential signal treatment and no dedicated bus lanes or adequate lane enforcement leaves buses stuck in traffic.
In the end, the Trekkie is a funny idea from the Straphangers Campaign, but it doesn’t work. It highlights the absurdity of long bus rides while ignoring the purpose of long bus routes. To enhance public transit, we need those long local routes. To improve the buses, though, we need a better Bus Rapid Transit plan.
Amidst news of upheaval at New York City Transit and some changes atop the MTA management structure, the Straphangers Campaign announced its latest awards for New York City’s much-maligned bus system. The group closed with calls for bus reform as new MTA CEO and Chair Jay Walder looks to improve the city’s surface transit options.
As has become an annual tradition, the Straphangers doled out awards for the slowest bus and the least reliable bus. This year, the group added an award for the bus with the longest scheduled run time end-to-end. This award could be bolstered with a distance comparison amongst bus lines, but it certainly underscores the absurdities of taking buses in New York City along certain routes.
The slowest bus this year is again a crosstown bus in Manhattan. The M42 was clocked at average speeds of 3.7 mph at noon on a weekday as it ventured across the busy thoroughfare. “The M42,” the Straphangers press release said, “would lose a race with a five-year-old riding a motorized tricycle with a speed of 5 mph, as advertised by X-Treme Scooters.”
This year, the group also highlighted slow buses in the Outer Boroughs. Averaging just 5.1 miles per hour, the B63 was Brooklyn’s slowest. The Bronx’s Bx19 averaged 4.9 mph while Queens’ Q56 reached 6.3 mph, still slowing than my average running pace over five miles. Staten Island’s S42, the slowest of that borough’s buses, was downright speedy at 10.6 miles per hour.
The Schleppie, an award for the bus with the least reliable service, went to a Brooklyn-based route. The B44 “arrived bunched together or came with big gaps in service” 21.7 percent of the time, according to official Transit statistics. The M15 took home the title for Manhattan.
Finally, the group handed out the Trekkie to the M4. This bus runs from Penn Station to Fort Tryon, a route of approximately 11 miles, and is schedule to take an hour and 50 minutes. As the Straphangers note, Amtrak from Penn Station arrives in Philadelphia, 99 miles away, in at most an hour and 27 minutes.
The real meat of the report, though, comes at the end when the Straphangers talk about speeding up buses. “The only way to stem the tide of falling bus speeds is by giving buses more priority on the street than the rest of traffic,” Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives said.
In effect, the MTA and NYCDOT need to implement a few key upgrades to improve bus service. A pre-board fare payment system or a contactless mode of payment would greatly enhance bus loading efficiency. A system of physically separated bus lanes with priority signaling would do wonders for New York’s buses. Finally, enforcement of bus lanes should be a priority as well.
These options are not revolutionary. They are in place in numerous countries and cities around the globe, and Walder should pursue them as low-cost, high-result techniques for improving bus service. The MTA, too, knows this and in a statement responding to the survey, discussed new approaches to buses:
Buses were introduced to New York City more than 100 years ago and despite being, by far, the most efficient vehicles on rubber tires as far as the numbers of people they carry, they are still forced to vie for the same street space as a single-occupant automobile. However, with recent innovations such as Select Bus Service (SBS) and signal light prioritization, as well as plans to further improve service recently outlined by MTA Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jay H. Walder, it is important for the city’s 2.3 million bus customers to know that we are working to achieve improvements in bus speeds and reliability.
Future plans call for the eventual expansion of SBS routes, new methods of fare payment, stricter bus lane enforcement, the use of cameras to nab offenders and the development of a reliable system offering next bus information to waiting bus customers. Since the start-up of SBS, travel times across the Bronx route have been reduced by 20%, ridership has increased, and an overwhelming majority of customers have indicated that they are satisfied or very satisfied with the service.
Better bus service for all. It’s a simple mantra easy to implement and with obvious immediate benefits. Let’s see it happen.
Of all the MTA employees who are not working on the tracks, bus drivers have it the worst. They are exposed and vulnerable to violent and unruly passengers. Over the weekend, another threat — Halloween pranksters — emerged. Heather Haddon reports on the death of a man who threw a heavy object and shattered a bus window. (For what it’s worth, the Daily News simply called the incident a jaywalking death.) Another bus faced an attack by a BB gun, and city buses are often egged on Halloween. Although the MTA workers tried to help each other out, bus drivers remain in a precarious position when under attack.
As far as public transit imagery goes, London’s buses are among the more iconic vehicles in the world. The red double-deckers just scream London, and the system is generally fast and efficient.
Here in New York, the buses are pretty much the exact opposite of that. They’re slow, unreliable and don’t enjoy any sort of preferential lane treatment. Commuters often see riding a bus as a chore rather than a convenience. But that will change if Jay Walder has his way.
The New Yorker-turned-Londoner-turned New York knows what an efficient and reliable bus system can do for surface transit. In fact, across the Atlantic, where Walder helped lead Transport for London, buses carry more passengers than the Tubes, and now Jay wants to improve New York’s bus system. He spoke at length with Times reporter Michael Grynbaum about our buses, and the takeaway is simple: “In London, you carry nearly twice as many people in the bus system as you do on the Underground,” he said. “We must close the gap and make more of the bus system.”
Grynbaum had more about Walder’s plans:
Mr. Walder’s plans include an expansion of dedicated bus lanes with stricter enforcement, aided by cameras mounted on street poles and on the buses themselves that can snap photos of offending cars. He wants to introduce the contactless fare cards — which can be quickly waved over a sensor — to the subways and buses, reducing boarding times. And he wants GPS devices on buses so passengers can tell when a bus is coming, even if the familiar bulky shape is not visible on the horizon.
“What I’d like you to think about is a train system with rubber-tire vehicles,” Mr. Walder said, peering out at the passing street. A single red car was parked in the bus-only lane on Flatbush Avenue, forcing the bus to merge into an adjacent lane and bringing traffic to a standstill.
“We’re on a bus right now where every seat is full,” he said. “How many people are on this bus? Seventy-five? But we haven’t prioritized this bus any differently than a car which has one person in it.”
That last line — prioritizing a full bus with 75 times as many people as most cars — proves to me that Walder gets it. Buses can be an effective tool used to get people out of their cars. Doing so, of course, requires enforcement, and the new MTA head is ready to go bat for his buses. “If I put train tracks down the street, you wouldn’t park your car on them. If I said this is a bus lane, somehow it becomes fair game,” he said to The Times. “One person’s use of a road impacts upon another person’s use of the road. My point is, if we have to make a choice, make the choice for the bus, not for the car.”
In his dubious transit plan for New York City, Michael Bloomberg has made improving the buses a top priority. With Walder, the MTA CEO and Chairman, fully on board, nothing is stopping the city from overhauling the bus lane system. Without securing approval from Albany, New York could install a series of dedicated bus lanes and preferential signaling. The NYPD could ramp up bus lane enforcement, and the MTA can implement pre-boarding fare payment systems as they research and develop a contactless fare card.
The buses are New York’s most underutilized resource. They show up sometimes and generally not with any correlation to the posted schedule. They slog through rush hour traffic at speeds often slower than a quick walk. We know the system needs work, and we know the city leaders are paying lip service to the improvements. Now let’s see some action.
New luggage racks are coming to seven airport-bound bus routes. (Photo courtesy of New York City Transit)
As urban airports go, New York City’s are generally transit-accessible. Subway lines to JFK’s Airtrain lead to 50-minute rides from midtown Manhattan, and although no subway heads directly to LaGuardia Airport, the M60 is a popular route for those flying out of the city’s soon-to-be 70-year-old commercial airport.
And yet, despite this transit-oriented approach to air travel, it is remarkably inconvenient to take a suitcase on public transportation. Have you tried lugging a giant wheeling suitcase on the subway, let alone the M60? It is a royal hassle.
Today, at the end of a semi-three-day weekend during which many New Yorkers travel, New York City Transit has unveiled a pilot program to equip airport-bound buses with luggage racks. The new racks, shown above, “should make for a more comfortable ride for passengers carrying luggage onboard while providing more room for everyone,” says the agency’s press release. No longer will suitcases block the narrow bus aisles. Instead, a good six bags can be stored on these luggage racks leading to more space and freer aisles.
Although the convenience of these racks is nearly indisputable, MTA plans a trial run and slow roll-out on seven airport-bound bus lines. The first luggage rack went into service today on the M60, and the rack is located across from the bus’ rear exit door.
“We believe that the racks will be a great amenity, making things more comfortable for our customers and even helping our bus operators speed their trips. We are going to have our managers out monitoring these buses, asking our customers and bus operators if they are seeing an improvement,” Joseph Smith, the Department of Buses’ senior V.P., said. “If the results are positive, we will expand the installation of the racks to other buses on these routes.”
For now, look for the customer-focused initiative to pop up on the M60, B15, Q3, Q10, Q33, Q48 and Q72 routes. Ten buses total will be outfitted with these luggage racks, and it won’t be long before taking the bus to airport is even easier than it is today.
During his New York introduction on Monday, new MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder spoke at length about buses. Surface transit, he believes, is one area in which New York could see massive improvement in short order. As the MTA attempts to rescue its buses from the travels and travails of surface congestion, Walder could make an immediate impact on the commuting landscape in New York City, and bus lanes are the key.
Right now, New York City buses are the third wheel in the transit picture in New York. For many, they are a convenient way to transverse the city, but for the vast majority of people, they are slow and inconsistent. They rarely arrive as scheduled; they stop every two blocks; and they are sometimes slower than walking. Many might wonder why should we judge the buses in the city as anything other than a failure.
Elsewhere, though, buses can serve as the complement to a vibrant rail system. It’s true that buses will never be as fast as subways, and without running at super-high capacity levels, buses will never service as many people as subways can. But with a little bit of innovation and some dedicated lanes, buses can be an integral part of an integrated rapid transit system in any urban environment, including the congested streets of New York City.
When the MTA first started implementing bus rapid transit — known here as Select Bus Service — the city appealed to Albany for a home rule measure that would allow them to enforce bus-only lanes. David Gantt, an upstate representative from the Rochester area, blocked this effort, and NYCDOT and the MTA have tried to figure out ways around this Albany denial. At the time, Gantt worried about the civil liberties concerns behind red-light camera enforcement of bus lanes. Recently, though, Albany has seemed more amenable to granted the city the ability to enforce bus lanes.
To that end, Jay Walder believes bus lanes are key to improving the city’s bus-centric future. In an interview with WCBS TV, Walder talked about his belief in the power of bus lanes. “You and I would never think of stopping our car on a train track, but some how the idea of stopping a car in a bus lane seems acceptable. It’s not,” he said.
Walder stressed his belief in bus lane enforcement. “You go through a process of saying you recognize the license plate, you issue tickets and when you begin to prove to people that a bus lane is meant for a bus and that there’s actually an enforcement that takes place people respond. They respond,” he noted.
Although the CBS coverage features man-on-the-street comments from New Yorkers who know little to nothing about public transit, the truth is that bus lane enforcement — or even physically separated bus lanes — could revolutionize bus transportation in New York City. Imagine bus routes with prioritized signal that do not need to fight with cars and taxis for lane space. Imagine buses that don’t have to worry about parking in bus stops or double parking in traffic lanes. Imagine buses that can go three times as they fast as they currently go.
Jay Walder understands that buses are a more cost-efficient way of adding transit capacity. He understands that while projects such as the Second Ave. Subway cost billions of the dollars, the entire city could be outfitted with select bus service for just that cost. Bus lane enforcement is just the first step, and if Walder can deliver that, we can look forward to numerous transit improvements under his watch.
With its proposed Capital Program for 2010-2014, the MTA is finally making a true effort catch up with transit system innovation and technology from the 1970s. Earlier today, I examined the impending 2011 arrival of subway arrival boards. Now, we turn our attention to the surface streets and look at how the implementation of this technology is progressing for buses.
Buses in New York, as long-time SAS readers know, have had a tortured history with this technology. The MTA had to abandon a pilot a short time ago when the technology, in place in various cities with tall buildings, could not handle Manhattan’s density and skyscrapers. While the authority is currently embroiled in a lawsuit over that failed bus tracking experiment, a new trial is in place along the 34th St. select bus service corridor, and this time, the agency feels that a wider roll-out is on the horizon.
In fact, the latest Capital Program Q-and-A document — available here as a PDF — further explores the plans for the bus system. The explanation starts with a statement of commitment. “NYCT and MTA Bus are committed to pursuing an Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) system, which will be used to provide automated real-time bus location and arrival information to bus customers,” the document promises. “This technology will be rolled out initially along existing and planned Select Bus Service (SBS) routes, with the eventual goal of providing real-time information on all bus lines.” All of the bus lines, however, won’t receive this service until the 2015-2019 capital plan.
Currently, the MTA is testing out preexisting technologies. According to the report, the 34th St. corridor pilot is being fronted by technology from Clever Devices. This pilot is set to run through February 2010, and it comes “at no capital cost” to Transit.
At the same time, the agency has issued a request for information to all AVL providers. “Extensive market outreach is also being conducted to identify all suppliers who can competitively provide this technology,” says the MTA. “The goal of this effort will be the development of specifications that can be successfully met by existing, proven and competitively available technologies.” In other words, why reinvent the wheel if the technology already exists?
By 2010, the MTA will have its specifications in place to issue a request for proposals with a target date for the award of a contract by the end of next year. That contract, however, will cover select-bus service routes only for now including the First and Second Ave. corridors. The MTA plans to work with NYCDOT on both costs and implementation.
As to the former, this is not a cheap system. The MTA has already received $30.7 million for AVL roll-out through the current capital plan and is asking for another $50 million in the next capital plan. A systemwide cost estimate for non-SBS routes is “not currently available,” but those costs will include a technological retrofit of the entire bus fleet. It won’t be a cheap investment.
That is not to say that it shouldn’t be made. As the MTA notes, this is a necessary program, and one could argue that, as the respective implementation plans stand, the bus countdown clocks will be more useful than those underground. “AVL is expected to result in improved customer service by providing a comprehensive history of running time data that can be used to update bus schedules to better reflect actual conditions, resulting in more reliable service,” the MTA says. “AVL will also improve the ability to dispatch services, particularly in response to congestion or other unplanned events, resulting in a more efficient use of NYCT and MTA Bus resources.” A more efficient bus system would be a boon to New York’s transit infrastructure indeed.