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For Select Bus Service to Succeed, Bus Lanes Must Be Separated

January 21, 2010

The Department of Transportation and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority recently presented preliminary designs for Select Bus Service along First and Second Avenues at a Community Advisory Committee meeting.

Last fall when the New York City Department of Transportation and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced the proposed stops for Select Bus Service on the Upper East Side, I was concerned about the siting of stops on First and Second Avenues at East 79th and 86th Streets. The original proposed SBS stops were set to be across the street from existing local stops.

In September, I wrote to the DOT and MTA and asked them to find a way to ensure that future SBS and existing local stops were on the same block on these routes (see the 2009 Publications section of this website). I was therefore very pleased to see that in the draft designs that were unveiled at last week’s Community Advisory Committee meeting the design proposals included that SBS stops would be sited on the same block as existing local stops. This goes a long way in promoting pedestrian safety.

My remaining concern is the lack of physically separated bus lanes in the agencies’ design schematics. This is a big negative impact on the quality of service that SBS can deliver. Last month, I joined with Assembly Member Brian Kavanagh in sending a letter to the DOT Commissioner in support of physically separated bus lanes (this letter can also be found in the 2009 Publications section of this website).

While I appreciate the need to address the needs of businesses that rely on deliveries, there are other ways to do this besides sacrificing separated bus lanes. The primary goal of SBS must be to provide mass transit consumers with uninterrupted, speedy service along the First and Second Avenue corridors–this should be the priority over all other small inconveniences.

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Written by Micah · Filed Under Blogroll, Community, Upper East Side 

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