Select Bus Service

Starting on Monday, New York’s Select Bus Service will become even more select as the MTA and DOT are turning on five bus-lane enforcement cameras along the First and Second Ave. M15 SBS route. The city says the SBS route has sped up travel along the M15 corridor by 15 minutes, and with camera enforcement on tap, buses should move even smoother along the route.

“The City’s 2.8 million bus riders have been held hostage for far too long by motorists who routinely block bus lanes, and these cameras will send a clear message that bus lanes are for buses only,” MTA Chairman and CEO Jay Walder said in a statement. “We have already been able to speed up travel times along First and Second Avenues by more than 15 minutes on the M15 and these cameras will help to further improve service.”

The cameras were long a sticking point in the state legislature as upstate representatives objected on tenuous privacy grounds. Earlier this year, as part of a legislative compromise, Albany authorized the use of cameras along only Select Bus Service. Vehicles will be allowed to enter the dedicated bus lanes only to make the next available right turn or to “expeditiously” drop off and pick up passengers. Everyone else will be subject to a $115 fine.

Initially, five cameras will be turned on this Monday with more to come along the Manhattan SBS route and the Fordham Road corridor in the Bronx. DOT will be responsible for viewing the footage, and they will issue the summons — called here a Notice of Liability. The NYC Department of Finance will be responsible for adjudicated summons disputes.

“SBS is redefining East Side transit,” said Commissioner Sadik-Khan. “Dedicated lanes and paying before boarding are already speeding buses, and now camera enforcement will give M15 customers a VIP ride.”

These cameras will help beef up DOT’s initial video technology enforcement efforts that currently target only taxis. Until now, due to jurisdictional and home rule issues, DOT has been able to summons only taxi medallion owners who have been shown to violate bus lanes. Those disputes are heard by Taxi and Limousine Commission administrative law judges, but unfortunately, the number of summonses issued to taxi drivers has not been released to the public.

Ultimately, these cameras a much-delayed and welcome development as the city looks to speed up its bus service, but the plan isn’t perfect. Even if fewer cars are straying into the bus lane, those that are waiting to turn right or are discharging passengers have the potential to impact the SBS speeds. Ideally, the city would be building out dedicated bus lanes with physically separated rights-of-way as cities across the U.S. and Europe currently enjoy. Without it, SBS will be nothing more than a glorified version of the Limited service that falls short of a true bus rapid transit network.

The Rogers Ave. Select Bus Service has faced community opposition in a car-heavy neighborhood.

As the New York City Department of Transportation and the MTA continue the painfully slow Select Bus Service rollout, the agencies are expanding the pilot to include areas of the outer boroughs underserved by the city’s subway service. In Brooklyn, the targeted corridors would bring the innovations of SBS to the Nostrand Avenue and Rogers Avenue corridors. But motorists and small business owners in the area are presenting a united front against the better bus service, and a DOT open house last night drove that point home.

Nostrand Ave. is one of the sad stories of the subway system. Long on the list for subway extension plans, the city never built a Nostrand Ave. line due first to the outspoken community opposition against a new elevated line and later concerns over cost. Over the years, then, the area is developed into a car-heavy one that views itself more as a suburban outpost within New York City than as part of the urban landscape.

Now that the MTA and DOT want to improve transit in the area, these motorists are having none of it. Alex Rush from the Courier-Life filed a report from the meeting last night:

All of these [SBS improvements] are meant to ease congestion on Nostrand Avenue, which is the fourth busiest bus route in the city with 13.6 million riders, according to MTA reports. However, local drivers say that the service will increase traffic, take away parking spaces and make turning dangerous for cars. “I think it’s a terrible idea,” said Jay Schneider, who drives down Nostrand Avenue to get to work. “The street is already congested and difficult to park on, and the extra bus lane will just make things worse.”

Schneider was one of dozens of people who attended the city’s presentation about the service on Nov. 15 at Brooklyn College. Nostrand Avenue business owners also expressed their concerns about the service. “Right now, it’s convenient for customers to park in front of our liquor store,” said John Tam, whose shop is between Lefferts Avenue and Sterling Street. “But if we lose parking spaces on that road, our business could decrease.”

Spokespeople for the city and the MTA spent most of the meeting telling residents that only a handful of parking spaces would be lost because the bus lane would likely replace a traffic lane, not a parking lane. But residents remain convinced that other aspects of the service, such as expanding the sidewalks for bus stations and running buses that are twice the length of current B44 buses, will make parking more difficult. They are also skeptical that an exclusive bus lane will reduce traffic. “The plan will definitely be a problem in Sheepshead Bay,” said Carl Romali. “Nostrand Avenue is already overcrowded with people trying to park and trying to drive around cars that are double-parked.”

This isn’t, of course, the first time that this area has expressed its displeasure with the plan. Community Board 15 voted against it in April for similar reasons. “The select bus service will steal away parking spaces,” Theresa Scavo, chair of CB 15, said. “And the service’s traffic signal priority system could lead to speeding buses, which would make the roads more dangerous for cars who are also trying to reach green lights.”

As much as I want to dismiss the windshield perspective out of hand as being wrong-handed and misguided, if the city and MTA are serious about bringing transit improvements, they’ll have to be responsive to the concerns of the community. How do you convince people so accustomed to driving that the bus improvements will truly be better for their lives and neighborhood? Paternalistically, it would be easy for the city to simply mandate the SBS routes for Nostrand and Rogers Avenues, but drivers must be willing to change their transit behavior and understand how and why the bus is preferable to streets that are “difficult to park on.”

Ultimately, the city needs to expand and improve its bus offerings, but if it is faced with communities that do not want Select Bus Service, the answer is easy: Award it somewhere else. If those along Nostrand Ave. and Rogers Ave. truly do not want better bus service, I’m sure the communities along Flatbush Ave. would gladly accept it instead. Only by showing instead of telling, the MTA and DOT can convert the driving skeptics.

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.

Other countries have recognized the importance of bus-lane cameras for proper enforcement. (Photo via Manchester Evening News)

Over the last few years, we’ve witnessed the beginnings of a bus renaissance in New York City. With the help of the NYC Department of Transportation, the MTA has begun to roll out a series of improvements designed to speed up bus traffic. The Select Bus Service, a not-quite Bus Rapid Transit plan that involves dedicated bus lanes and pre-board fare payment options, has been met with early success as the Bx12 in the Bronx has seen marked decreases in travel times.

Yet, the one enforcement technique that would truly improve bus service and make those supposedly dedicated lanes truly bus-only has been blocked at nearly every turn. Without approval from Albany, DOT and the MTA can’t implement a camera-based enforcement system, and this key piece to the bus puzzle has hit legislative roadblocks at every turn. In 2008, David Gantt, an Assembly representative from Rochester, killed a home rule-endorsed camera-enforcement measure over what he said were civil liberties concerns. This year, the Assembly has, for now, removed a watered-down camera plan from the state’s 2010 draft budget.

Still, the MTA marches on. Per WNYC, Transit is going to test a camera enforcement system along some of the Select Bus Service routes in the coming months. Page 59 of this week’s MTA Bus Committee meeting report offers up more information. The authority plans to spend $167,000 to work with a London-based vendor over the next ten months. This timeframe will allow the MTA four months for startup work and six months to engage in a pilot program.

During the 10-month rental period, the MTA and DOT are going to test a series of bus lane enforcement systems. DOT will be conducted the fixed-post test in which cameras are stationed on – you guessed it- fixed posts along the bus lanes, and Transit will be experimenting with two systems: one that mounts cameras on the backs of buses and another that utilizes roving unmarked road maintenance vehicles. The MTA will test these systems on two road maintenance vehicles and two M101 buses.

While Zenco, the London-based contractor, has expertise in the field, the MTA has to work within an additional parameter. Because New York City law allows cars to use bus lanes for “the expeditious drop-off/pick-up of passengers and to make right turns,” the camera technology has to be able to identify between those cars making a legal use of a bus lane and those that are not.

Although the MTA cannot do anything but collect data about bus-lane violators during this trial, it is a forward-thinking proposal. If the State Senate and Assembly can come to terms on a bus-lane enforcement solution this year, the authority will be well on its way toward identifying potential partners and solutions for a problem that demands a complicated solution. The grant of enforcement remains out of reach, but one day, the city will be able to exploit its needs for a better bus system. When Albany acts, the MTA and DOT might just be ready to take advantage of their new-found enforcement powers.

As the MTA and New York City Department of Transportation gear up for a citywide rollout of Select Bus Service — SBS on 1st and 2nd Aves. is rumored to be coming on October 10 — the agencies are still facing some growing pains. In particular, the concept of pre-board fare payment has proved elusive for many riders along Fordham Road’s Bx12 SBS route.

From the get-go, the fare system faced some hurdles. New Yorkers have long paid their bus fares while boarding, and although some passengers skip the MetroCard swipe by hopping in through the back door, the driver has served as a generally adequate deterrent. There is, in any business, the risk of some shrinkage, but with SBS, the MTA has to lower the shrinkage rate to make it work. Because bus rapid transit service relies upon pre-board fare payment in order to cut bus dwell times, drivers aren’t watching people as they board. Rather, the riders are supposed to carry proof-of-payment with them in case of an inspection.

During the early days of the Bx12, the MTA and NYPD vowed increased enforcement of the fare-jumpers on Select Bus Service lines, but according to a Daily News report, that enforcement has failed to materialize. Mike Jaccarino traveled the Bx12 recently and found rampant fare-beating. He writes:

Recent stakeouts by The News at a number of stops along the route found dozens of riders still brazenly boarding the buses, distinctive for their flashing blue lights, without first buying the required tickets at kiosks at the stops. Over the course of an hour at each stop, 40 fare-beaters boarded the bus at Fordham Plaza sans tickets; 22 did so near the Pelham Bay IRT subway stop, and 27 at the stop on Pelham Parkway at Williamsbridge Road…

The Bx12 SBS began rolling June 30, 2008, as a way to speed up the ride across the congested Fordham Road corridor. The line now carries an average of 30,500 riders weekly. A squad of eagle-eyed cops and retired police officers were supposed to enforce the bus honor system with spot checks. The MTA said its has issued 6,532 summonses, each carrying a $100 fine, to date.

Unsurprisingly, those fare-beaters confronted by Jaccarino weren’t too pleased. A few cursed at the reporter, but another offered a half-hearted defense: “I don’t have enough money to feed my kids, and I’m going to pay for a ticket on a bus when no one checks whether I’ve bought one or not? Why should I?” I wonder if the same rationale would fly if he or she were caught stealing from the supermarket.

Those who pay are obviously upset at the free-riders, and it’s hard to understate how the need for enforcement is tied in with the future success of SBS. The MTA and DOT want to bring Select Bus Service to every borough along major arteries, and both the mayor and MTA CEO and Chair Jay Walder see the need to speed up bus service. The MTA, though, has to capture revenue from this new service, and if the solution to this fare-beating problem is a massive week-long crackdown and guerrilla proof-of-payment inspection efforts, so be it. We need SBS; the MTA needs its money; and people should pay for the rides they take.

Here come the Select Bus Service route plans. Here comes the BRT controversy. As MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder pledges to speed up the city’s buses, the two transportation agencies have seemingly settled on a design that, while progressive for New York City, leaves much to be desired.

DOT unveiled the new plans last night at a meeting of the First Avenue/Second Avenue SBS Community Advisory Committee, and the agency’s presentation is available here as a PDF. The story I want to tell is best express through the liberal use of pictures and excerpts from the slides. Click any picture for a larger image. Let’s dive in.

The basic premise of the 1st Ave./2nd Ave. Select Bus Service is one of adaptation to changing neighborhoods. The route starts in the cramped and densely populated Lower Manhattan area, shoots up past residential neighborhoods in the East Village and Murray Hill, navigates its way through an overly congestion midtown and settles in for a ride up through the Upper East Side and Harlem. Along the way down Second Ave., it must also contend with some massive subway construction efforts, and DOT has included bike lanes in any street overhaul as well.

To combat these problems, the simple and best solution would involve physically separated bus and bike lanes from South Ferry to 125th St. Cars would lose a lane, and businesses would have to get creative with deliveries. But travel times would be markedly improved, and buses would no longer be subject to the whims of surface traffic and dense midtown congestion. Instead, DOT and the MTA have proposed three different alignments for the various neighborhoods, and each will require major enforcement efforts to keep bus lanes free and buses moving.