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Street Wars: Broken promises about new bus lanes
Street WarsA weekly series on the battle for space on New York's streets and sidewalks.
What's holding up new bus lanes in New York City?Buses have little of the subway's sex appeal. In New York City, their riders lean working class and older. A transit advocacy group gives out decidedly unglamorous "Schleppie" and "Pokey" awards to the city's slowest and most unreliable buses. It has many to choose from. But in the age of bloated subway construction costs, subway extensions are almost never built here. And transit experts consider improving bus speeds low-hanging fruit in the effort to make New York City, which has the nation's largest bus system, a more navigable (and tolerable) place to live. And yet, in the jurisdictional tangle that is the city, building better bus routes requires the cooperation of the mayor, whose Transportation Department controls its streets, and the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees its buses. In an indication that all is not well between the two, the departing president of New York City Transit, which operates the subway and buses for the M.T.A., delivered a broadside against the administration of Mayor Eric Adams. The president, Richard Davey, in his final week on the job in June, sent a letter to Mr. Adams's transportation commissioner, declaring that his agency was "very disappointed" with the administration's decision last year to water down a proposal to speed up buses in a busy section of the Bronx. The weakened version, he wrote, has instead done next to nothing. The New York Times acquired the letter through a Freedom of Information Law request, and it was first reported by Streetsblog. Mr. Davey pressed Ydanis Rodriguez, the transportation commissioner, to adopt one of the more robust proposals for the route, which would have given more space to the buses that provide 85,000 rides along Fordham Road every day. Mr. Davey's interim successor at New York City Transit, Demetrius Crichlow, signed the letter, too. "We both want to reiterate that the Fordham Road bus priority project remains of critical importance," they wrote.
City buses provide nearly three million rides each weekday along streets packed with double-parked cars and delivery trucks — streets controlled by the mayor. They often operate in areas poorly served by subways. They are the nimble workhorses of an aging system. Fordham Road has the busiest bus route in the Bronx, the city's poorest borough. About half of Bronxites travel by public transportation to work. When he was running for mayor, Mr. Adams highlighted his working-class origins and promised to build 150 miles of bus lanes in four years. But the numbers suggest a different story: New York City is on track to build just seven miles of bus lanes by the end of this year, according to an analysis by Streetsblog. Three Transportation Department officials, who requested anonymity to discuss internal projections, told The Times that the Streetsblog estimate is in the right ballpark, with one saying the mileage might actually be lower. The city built 14.7 miles of new bus lanes last year and 5.4 miles the year before, according to the Transportation Department. That means that the administration is on track to have built fewer than 30 miles in its first three years, which suggests that it will fall well short of the mayor's initial goal of 150 miles in four. His administration's bus lane construction also falls well short of the 30 miles of protected bus lanes required to be built each year by a law known as the Streets Master Plan. Liz Garcia, a spokeswoman for Mr. Adams, said the mayor had made it "easier, safer and more affordable to get around New York City — especially for young people and working-class New Yorkers." She noted that last week the city and the M.T.A. announced an expansion of bus-mounted camera enforcement against cars blocking or double-parking near bus stops. She also touted the city's efforts to drive down subway crime, its investment in subsidized fares for low-income New Yorkers, and its commitment to building more than 40 miles of new protected paths for cyclists and pedestrians known as greenways. "We are reviewing the data on Fordham Road, and continue to consider upgrades for the corridor as we build a New York City that works for everyone — straphangers, cyclists, pedestrians and drivers alike," Ms. Garcia said. Three men trying to unseat Mr. Adams in next year's Democratic primary for mayor are saying they could do better. In interviews last week, Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller; Zellnor Myrie, a New York state senator, and Scott Stringer, a former comptroller and Manhattan borough president, all said that if elected, they would better abide by the law and bring more dedicated bus lanes to city streets. Mr. Stringer said the mayor "has shown an aversion to creating a transportation network that would meet the needs of all communities, especially beyond Manhattan." Mr. Lander said, "The only thing moving slower than the buses in New York City are Mayor Adams's projects to do anything about it." Mr. Myrie, a graduate of Fordham University, knows the Fordham Road bus ecosystem better than most. When he was in college, he would generally avoid taking the bus along Fordham Road, since walking or running was faster. The state of New York City's bus system "should be a source of embarrassment," Mr. Myrie said. Initially, the M.T.A. and the city's Transportation Department considered building a true busway along Fordham Road, like the one they built along 14th Street in Manhattan. Access for private vehicles would be severely limited. Buses would have primacy. Then they proposed a bus lane that was offset from the curb, which could have averted conflicts between buses and other vehicles trying to access the curb. Business leaders in the area rose up in protest, complaining that their patrons would lose valuable parking spots. The Bronx Zoo and New York Botanical Garden opposed the more aggressive proposals, too. "Buses are important, but so are cars," said Peter Madonia, another Fordham graduate and the chairman of the Belmont Business Improvement District, which encompasses the Bronx's Little Italy. He was a key opponent of the more aggressive bus lane proposals. "In Belmont, 85 percent of our clientele comes from 10 to 40 miles away, and they come by car. And they bring dollars and jobs from the tristate area to New York City," he said. So planners merely repainted the existing bus lane instead, promising more enforcement against vehicles that infringed on it. The Transportation Department wants to increase bus speeds by 15 percent on Fordham Road. Instead, according to the letter from Mr. Davey and Mr. Crichlow, bus speeds have improved by just 2 to 4 percent. "Improvements have been marginal at best, so additional measures are warranted to speed up bus service for our customers," Mr. Davey and Mr. Crichlow wrote. Mr. Davey, who now runs the Massachusetts Port Authority, declined to comment further. At a recent media availability, Janno Lieber, the M.T.A.'s chief executive, expressed frustration with the pace of bus lane construction in New York. "I'll tell you this: We need more bus lanes," he said, noting that building more was required by law. "I stood with the mayor a couple years ago and said that we want to really make buses faster, and bus lanes are a part of that. And I want to renew my offer to do everything possible to enable the city to make good on their commitments."
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Tackling 'a public health issue that needs to be taken seriously': street noise
During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Washington Heights and Inwood, two neighborhoods in Upper Manhattan, were "inundated with noise," said Tanya Bonner, a longtime resident of the area. Fireworks, dirt bikes, street parties, boomboxes and outdoor dining all contributed to the cacophony. "It was insane," said Ms. Bonner, who has lived in Washington Heights since 2005. "I was staying in hotels because I could not sleep." New York City is known for being loud. More than 50,000 noise complaints were filed last year with the city's Department of Environmental Protection, which is just one of the agencies that receives and handles such complaints. Nearly 20,000 of those complaints were filed in Manhattan, according to the department. Washington Heights and Inwood are among the neighborhoods where a significant number of complaints have been filed over the years. In 2020, when more and more people started gathering outside, the problem came to a head, Ms. Bonner said.
She and some of her neighbors formed a group known as the Washington Heights-Inwood Task Force on Noise, which brought together elected officials, police and fire officers, and others in hopes of addressing the problem. The situation has improved, but the noise is still an issue, said Ms. Bonner, who chairs the task force. "You have some people try to stereotype the people who are complaining as just a bunch of gentrifiers, colonizers or whatever," Ms. Bonner said. "This is not true. Noise is a public health issue that needs to be taken seriously." She added: "I'm a Black woman and I live here, and I'm complaining. I'm surely not a gentrifier." The task force is working with Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health on a noise study and is currently recruiting people to take part. The goal is to ensure that participants reflect the community, which is largely Spanish-speaking. Once the pilot study gets underway, sound level meters will be placed in the homes of 30 participants, said Arline Bronzaft, an environmental psychologist and longtime New York City noise activist who is also a member of the task force. The meters will monitor the noise outside each apartment. Cameras will also be installed to determine where the noise is coming from. And participants will wear wrist devices that measure their sleep health by looking at how long they sleep and whether their sleep gets disrupted. "You can look at the sleep and look at the time to see whether a sound was coming into the apartment at the same time," Ms. Bronzaft said. The goal of the study is to get public officials to take meaningful action to reduce noise. "While we may have research worldwide on the effects of noise on sleep, public officials tend to be moved more readily when it is their constituents that are being affected," Ms. Bronzaft said. The task force's recommendations include updating the city's noise code, reviving noise education programs that were once taught in schools and for police officers to more frequently carry noise decibel readers.
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