Good morning. It's Thursday. Today we'll find out how a push to keep bus lanes clear is going. We'll also get details on legislation to limit background checks on prospective tenants in New York City.
They are almost as much a part of the cityscape as the buildings: Cars or delivery trucks stopped in lanes painted red and marked for buses only. Richard Davey — the president of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority unit that runs the buses and subways in the city — said he saw multiple cars and trucks parked in bus lanes when he took the M31 bus to a news conference last week. The route includes a 1.1-mile-long stretch of bus lanes on 57th Street. The news conference was about cars and trucks parked in bus lanes. When Davey got there, he stood at a podium with the words "If you're not on the bus" under the microphone. He did not take long to finish the sentence: "Get out of our bus lanes." It is a message that has been amplified in the last couple of weeks by the Police Department's Bus Lane Enforcement Task Force, which assigned roughly 85 traffic enforcement agents to bus-lane duty on weekdays. The agents are writing summonses when cars or trucks are parked in bus lanes; they are also calling in tow trucks when drivers are nowhere to be seen. Since the task force began concentrating on bus lanes on Dec. 4, just over 4,511 traffic summonses have been issued and 230 vehicles have been towed, a police spokesman said. Officials said the agents were concentrating on 18 "bus corridors" that were among 39 identified by the city's Department of Transportation as candidates for "priority enforcement." The M.T.A. posted video of Davey as he walked along 57th Street with police officials and an officer who told drivers parked in the bus lanes to move on. The officer issued tickets to several trucks that had been left unattended. Davey slipped one of the tickets under the windshield wiper of one truck. Davey said that the M57 bus line was the third slowest in the city. "It's super, super slow," he said. In fact, it is tied with the M31, the line he rode to the news conference, with an average speed of 4.67 miles per hour. Only the M42, on 42nd Street, and the M50, which runs across town on 49th and 50th Streets, are slower. "Bus lanes make no sense unless they're free for buses," Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University, said. "Right now, they're used for trucks for deliveries, all kinds of residential delivery services as well as people who are double-parking. That's adding to the parking capacity, not the flow of traffic." Sarah Kaufman, the director of the Rudin Center for Transportation at N.Y.U., said that stepped-up enforcement would help buses get where they are going faster. "One blockage from a car that's double-parked or waiting for somebody, or a truck that's loading or unloading, can back up a whole bus route," she said.
Other transit advocates have noted that drivers who receive tickets once rarely violate bus-lane rules again. Davey said that in 2024 "our buses will actually become more ticket-writing machines," once additional onboard cameras are turned on. "We'll actually be able to ticket cars that are double-parked in bus stops," he said. The transit agency plans to activate cameras on 500 buses in the spring. The city already has bus-lane cameras at more than 190 locations across the city. The city issued 551,852 fixed bus-lane tickets based on video from those cameras in 2021, the most recent year for which figures are available, and collected $36 million in fines. The city also took in $4.2 million cameras already installed on buses. Davey was asked at the news conference about drivers who stop in a bus lane to load or unload luggage outside hotels. "That's OK, as long as it's, like, literally actively loading," he said.
WEATHER It's a sunny day in the low 40s. The evening is mostly clear, with temperatures in the high 20s. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Dec. 25 (Christmas Day). The latest New York news
We hope you've enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Limiting criminal background checks by landlords
An estimated 750,000 people in New York City have criminal records. Background checks by landlords have often prevented them from renting apartments, according to city officials, housing advocates and landlord groups. Until now. The City Council passed a bill limiting how landlords can use criminal records to screen tenants. Landlords can still reject an applicant who has a criminal record, but only if there was a conviction within the last three years or a felony conviction within the last five years. The bill also says that landlords can screen based on convictions for certain sex crimes. Cities like Detroit and Oakland, Calif., have passed similar legislation. Proponents say that background checks penalize people who have already served their sentences or who may have been treated unfairly by the criminal justice system. And the billion-dollar tenant screening industry does not always deliver accurate reports. Background checks make it more likely that people with convictions on their records will slip into homelessness, supporters of limits on screening say. The bill approved by the City Council on a 39-to-8 vote, with one abstention, attempts to balance tenant rights with safety concerns. The bill also incorporates feedback from some landlords and tenants, many of whom said that the rules could be overly restrictive. "New Yorkers with convictions are overwhelmingly Black and Latinx because of deep racial disparities in the criminal legal system," said Juanita Lewis, the executive director of Community Voices Heard, a nonprofit antipoverty group. "People impacted by pervasive discrimination now have new hope in being able to move forward with their lives," she added. Mayor Eric Adams signaled his support for the bill, saying in a statement before the vote that the City Council had put "the proper guardrails in place" while ensuring that the measure had "the maximum intended impact." METROPOLITAN DIARY Celebrating Whitman
Dear Diary: It was 96 degrees and carousel music was playing, as I approached the academics who were hosting the annual Walt Whitman celebration at Brooklyn Bridge Park. I asked if there were room for another reader and was told to talk to the woman in blue. She was a literary professor and had the final say. When I talked to the woman in blue, she said that participants needed to register online. I wanted to read, so I told the truth. "I'm kind of a big deal," I said. "Your audience will love me." With a look of uncertainty, she handed me the mic. And with the Brooklyn Bridge as a backdrop, I borrowed a book from a woman who was standing there, faced the audience and sounded out my barbaric yawp. Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturned love; But now I think there is no unreturned love — the pay is certain one way or another;(I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not returned; Yet out of that I have written these songs.) As I bowed and began to take my leave, people cheered. As I exited the stage, I realized for the first time what it felt like to be absolved. — Danny Klecko Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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N.Y. Today: New York’s message to drivers
December 21, 2023
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