Wednesday, June 12, 2019

The 14th Street busway debuts on July 1


[EVG file photo]

The 14th Street busway launches July 1, the DOT said this week.

In April, the city announced that an "experimental new transit improvement" would take place early this summer to help move commuters in Manhattan during the L-train restoration.



Here's more on what to expect. Starting July 1, private through-traffic will be banned between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. on 14th Street between Third Avenue and Ninth Avenue. Buses, trucks and emergency vehicles will be given priority in the center lanes between Third Avenue and Ninth Avenue. Cars will be allowed to make pickups and drop-offs as well as access local garages.

And how will the city patrol all this?

Here's Curbed:

To enforce the busway, new cameras on the buses will issue tickets to those violating the street’s new restrictions. But drivers will be given warnings and tickets will not be issued until at least September...

The busway also harkens the arrival of the new M14 Select Bus Service, which features off-board fare payments and all-door boarding. To also help speed up travel times, the MTA is eliminating 16 stops (down from a proposed 22) along the M14A and M14D routes (but not without a fight from local elected officials and some residents who were upset about the loss of the stops).

Per amNY:

The current M14 A and M14 D routes have an average speed of about 3.8 miles per hours — just a bit faster than the average human walking speed of 3.1 miles per hour and much lower than the citywide bus average of 7.4 miles per hour.

...and...

[T]he MTA and city tout that SBS treatments work, improving travel time between 10% and 30%. Citywide SBS routes are about 27% faster than other local or limited-stop bus routes.

The city continues to install SBS ticking machines along the M14 routes, such as here on Avenue A between Houston and Second Street...


[Photo from June 7]

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

So - there is not supposed to be a shutdown - so - why this ?
This will not help small businesses.

Anonymous said...

The fact that those NEW machines don't take credit cards is mind-blowing.

Anonymous said...

What good does it do for the buses to move faster if elderly or disabled people , pregnant women, people lugging groceries, who can’t walk between these stops, have to walk these extra blocks? The point by for people taking buses is to not walk, not to move faster. It seems like only the car drivers (and most of those seem to be Ubers) will benefit from this, not bus riders.

Anonymous said...

Wow 10% faster!

Anonymous said...

There has to be some reasonable balance between ideal for convenience (a bus stop on every corner) and ideal for speed (as few bus stops as necessary). We really, really don't have that balance now. On the stretch of Grand Street between the FDR and Essex (a fifteen minute walk), there are six stops. MTA wanted to drop to four, which gave us a stop every other block in the most populated portion. Totally reasonable. But protests brought the numbers back up to five, slowing down the buses with no real benefit. Oh, and if this was intended to help seniors, guess what? The new layout actually moves the buses further away from both of the actual senior citizen buildings (not just NORCs) in this neighborhood. The mind boggles.

Anonymous said...

I road the 23 abs the other day west, bus didn’t even use new bus lane! All kinds of vehicles in the way.

Anonymous said...

@June 14 @ 12:12pm: You presume that the MTA actually gives a rat's rear end about ANYONE's convenience, much less has consideration for the elderly, disabled, etc. as you mention.

And now, if you happen to be rushing for a bus on 14th St., you'll have to stop and do the "offboard boarding" dance at the street machines. If you think the bus driver is going to wait for you, think again! And it should be so much fun to use to "offboard" machines in a crowd in bad weather. Honestly, the MTA could hardly have come up with a WORSE way to handle this - but as always, follow the money: who's making $$$ on installing all those "offboard" machines??

The MTA has proven again & again that it sucks at planning (pretty much any kind of planning). It's changed the L-train "shutdown" plans & above-ground changes so many different times that I'd need a scorecard to keep track.

It's absurd for the city & the MTA to encourage everyone to "take mass transit" AT THE SAME TIME that they're making bus service LESS available to us.

But you will notice that the affected areas are far, far from Gracie Mansion. If it doesn't affect De Blasio directly, he doesn't notice it. And I seriously doubt that anyone of importance in the MTA is using any of the 14th Street buses.

Bottom line: Ordinary people get the short end of the bus service yet again.

PS: "All door boarding" is what's already going on with the buses; it's just that most of them aren't paying their fare!