AMNY Subway Tracker

Transportation officials are preparing to turn a section of 34th Street
into a pedestrian-friendly thoroughfare, testing special bus lanes and ramping up traffic enforcement along the way.

Starting yesterday, the city began enforcing the bus-only lanes on 34th
Street. The city also is installing video cameras along 34th Street to
catch taxis using the red-colored lanes and will soon begin placing a soft
barrier, possibly raised dots, between the lanes and other traffic.

The city hopes by 2011 to turn 34th Street between 5th and 6th Avenue
into a pedestrian plaza, blocking non-bus traffic completely. Non-bus
traffic would be one-way west from the plaza until 11th Avenue and
one-way east until 1st Avenue.

(via flickr's lorenzodom)

Police on Monday will begin cracking down on cars in bus-only lanes along 34th Street.

All vehicles—except for cars making right turns—are prohibited from the newly-painted red lanes between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. weekdays. The lanes were created between 1st and 11th avenues to improve bus speeds on 34th Street, officials said.

A news conference on the lanes is set for Monday afternoon.

Photo courtesy of NYC Transit.

NYC Transit is putting double-decker buses into service Tuesday for a 30-day test run. The buses are expected to be in use on Fifth Avenue and some express routes between the Bronx and Manhattan. The 13-foot-tall buses have seating for more than 81 passengers. Double-deckers once regularly plied Fifth Avenue. The last of them, a 1939 model, was operated by Fifth Avenue Coach and taken out of service in 1953, according to Transit.

A broken scaffolding in Times Square shut down streets and rerouted buses for the past several hours, officials said.

The scaffolding’s motors burned out at about 8:30 a.m., stranding two window washers on the 30th floor of a building near 7th Avenue and 43rd Street. Authorities closed down the streets and rerouted buses as a precaution as rescuers worked for almost two hours to remove a window and get the window washers inside at 10:30 a.m., police said.

No one was injured, including the window washers who were checked out before being released. Police have not released the identities of the men.

The following bus routes are delayed and remain rerouted as authorities try to remove the faulty scaffolding:

--M10, M20-Southbound regular route, right on West 57th Street, left on 9th Avenue, left on West 42nd Street, right on 7th Avenue and then regular route.
--M27-Westbound regular route, left on 7th Avenue, right on West 42nd Street and then regular route.
--M42-Westbound regular route, left on 7th Avenue, right on West 41st Street, right on 8th Avenue and then regular route
--M104-Southbound regular route, left on West 50th Street, right on 7th Avenue to Broadway, right on West 42nd Street, left on 7th Avenue and then regular route.

In an effort to get rider feedback, the MTA began handing out report cards to Queens bus riders Tuesday. Riders get a chance to rate their line and different aspect of service like how long they waited, the politeness of their driver, and other subjects.

The cards are being handed out during the morning rush through May at locations around Queens, starting with Queensboro Plaza and Queensbridge. The MTA previously handed out more than 75,000 report cards in Brooklyn and Staten Island.

Report cards are also available online.

NY1 has this story.

photo by So Cal Metro on flickr.

A new articulated bus is going into service tomorrow. The 30-day test run for the Mercedes-Benz manufactured Citaro may mean a new start in America for a bus that has been widely disparaged in London. Although popular elsewhere in Europe, the 60-foot long "bendy" as Londoners called it, proved prone to bursting into flames shortly after it arrived in 2004. It was quickly taken out of service. Mercedes fixed that problem, but not before wary passengers dubbed the buses "Chariots of Fire."

When they were re-introduced pedestrians and bicyclists continued to literally have difficulty getting their heads around the articulated buses. In 2006, 500 bendy buses were "involved in 1,751 accidents in which 90 pedestrians and cyclists were badly hurt," the Mirror reported. In the same article from October 2007, "one Scotland Yard source" attempts to describe the odd beasties: "The vehicles are really two single-deck buses joined by a piece of flexible tube." Really.

It wasn't immediately clear on Tuesday if the trial Citaro was a hybrid. There is a fuel-cell powered version in experimental trials in Europe that has zero emissions and reportedly costs about 1 million pounds.

Bus drivers and Local 100 union members protested outside of MTA Headquarters today, their booming voices heard when the agency announced the winning bid for the West Side railyards.
The protesters say they've working without a contract since 2003 and no increase in pension packages for about 10 years. The angry employees work for MTA Bus, an agency the Metropolitan Transportation Authority created when it took over private bus lines.
About 1,900 members of Transit Workers Union Local 100 work for MTA bus, a press release said.
MTA CEO Elliot Sander said he hopes to resolve the contract negotiations, saying it's a complex situation the agency inherited when it took over the bus lines.

A new express bus route could run from the Throggs Neck Section of the Bronx to Lower Manhattan if the congestion pricing plan is approved by the State Legislature and the City Council, the mayor and transit officials announced today.
The new proposed route, the BXM-19, would run from Throggs Neck down to Battery Place, extending the BXM-9 which currently terminates at Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street.
From a release from Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

The BMX-19 would provide Bronx residents with a one-seat ride to Lower Manhattan. Taking place at a bus stop at the intersection of Layton and Vincent Avenues, the Mayor noted that he can not yet cut the ribbon on a service that would benefit thousands of Bronx residents because funding does not exist without congestion pricing. The new express route, along with 44 other new and enhanced routes and over 300 new buses, would be funded under the Urban Partnership Agreement, which would award $354.5 million in federal funds to the City if the Mayor’s congestion pricing plan is adopted. The Mayor was also joined by Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Assemblyman Michael Benedetto, City Councilman James Vacca, Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, Gene Russianoff, Senior Attorney for the NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign and local resident Audrey Izzard.

New York City grabbed $2.75 million in state money that could upgrade ferry terminals, the governor announced yesterday.

The state Department of Transportation doled out transit grants to the city, which has 90 days to decide where the funding will go. In the past, the grant money, which is given out annually, has bought new ferry boats among other transportation improvements.

One City Councilman hoped some money could go toward making city ferries more environmentally friendly. Councilman James Gennaro recently introduced legislation that would require ferries to use low-sulfur diesel fuel and other pollution reduction technology by 2010.

“We want to get money for some of the good things we want to do with ferries,” he said. “We want to have a green, clean ferry fleet.”

More than $30 million in state and federal funding was given out statewide yesterday. Local governments and transportation authorities in urban areas will receive $16 million in state transit grants. While, smaller public transportation systems in the state’s rural areas earned another $14.7 million in federal funds.

About $142 million in transit grants have been given out statewide since the 90s, a department of transportation spokeswoman said.

The transit grant program has helped fund about 225 new clean-fuel buses across the state and helped upgrade bus garages and terminals, transportation officials said.

An MTA board member is not to happy with a new spring and summer bus schedule that will be presented to the transit committee Monday.
Bus riders on lines like the M11, M101 and M104 will wait a few minutes extra on some days, according to the new schedule. The wait for an M11 from 8 to 9 p.m. on weeknights will be two minuts longer while waits for the M104 and a Lexington route wait will increase from 12 to 15 minutes on Sundays.
The wait for a B7 will increase from 15 to 20 minutes at times during the warmer weekends. Transit officials say ridership falls off in the warmer months, Board Member Andrew Albert said, but he wonders if the agency isn't just looking to save money.
"I understand can understand if it's school kids riding less buses during the summer, but who else is riding less?" Albert said of the schedule changes set to start in April. "What happens in April that causes people to ride less? Schools are certainly in. It's another thing if they said it would start on June 29."

(via mta.info)

Ridership on the MTA Bus Company, which operates 46 outerborough local routes and 35 express buses into Manhattan, surged by 11 percent in 2007, the MTA said today.
Its 1,336 buses carried an average of 367,900 riders per weekday, an
increase of 9.7% compared with 2006. Ridership increases were even
greater on weekends, with a 2007 average of 196,300 riders (a 15.1%
increase) on Saturdays and 138,900 (a 13.0% increase) on Sundays.
From a press release:

The MTA attributed the increasing ridership to five MTA Bus
initiatives:
*Improved reliability, including revised schedules to more
accurately reflect traffic conditions and improved bus operator
availability, and extensive bus maintenance overhauls to improve fleet
availability and reliability.
*Large-scale maintenance efforts undertaken to repair and restore
air conditioning and heat on older buses and enhancing cleanliness
throughout the fleet.
*The replacement of fleets of old buses with 475 new high
capacity, high customer amenity express buses and 284 new
environmentally friendly hybrid-electric local buses.
*Achievement of 100 percent wheelchair accessibility for the MTA
Bus fleet.
*Improved customer information, with updated timetables now
available on the MTA’s website at mta.info/busco/schedules.
*Improved scheduling as MTA Bus increased the frequency and hours
of service on routes where ridership levels indicate the need.
*The revision and extension of travel paths on selected routes to
serve new markets, improve connections, and provide more direct, faster
service.
The MTA Bus Company was created in September 2004 to consolidate and
operate routes formerly run by the seven private companies, began
assuming operations in January 2005 and took complete control on
February 20, 2006.

Slow and steady may win the race, but try telling that to bus commuters hoping to make it across 23rd Street in Manhattan.
The Straphangers Campaign and Transportation Alternatives gave the M23 the sixth-annual Pokey Award for its average speed of 4 mph at noon during a single weekday test ride.
Meanwhile, the M-1, which connects Harlem and the East Village, earned the groups' newest award, the first-ever Schleppie, for least reliable service. One-third of the route's buses have big gaps in service or run off schedule.
Check out where your bus rates in the rankings.

Perhaps foreshadowing what’s to come in New York, at least one bus rider on the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority is fed up with the onboard TVs that blast commercials, news, and public service announcements, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.

“It's a constant assault of commercials about gray hair, mortgage rates and the weather in Atlanta," Cassel says.

…

Transit TV generates about $100,000 annually for the cash-strapped Metropolitan Transportation Authority, broadcasting commercials, weather reports, trivia, classic TV scenes and public-service announcements on screens mounted in its buses.The agency received about 40 complaints a month, mostly about the noise, after the service debuted in June 2005. Complaints subsided after audio levels were lowered - something riders can simply ask the driver to do.

MTA spokesman Dave Sotero also said the TVs are intended to be an amenity - not a nuisance - to passengers.

-- Chuck Bennett

The first part of Bus Rapid Transit will be a 2-mile stretch of Broadway downtown, the Daily News reported.

Trying to ease worsening traffic jams downtown, the city will create a nearly 2-mile, bus-only lane on Broadway this summer, officials said.

The lane will run down Broadway from W. Houston St. to the southern tip of Manhattan.

Along the route, the Department of Transportation will build sidewalk extensions that will serve as passenger loading bays - and shorten the time it takes to pick up and discharge riders, officials said.

…

The Broadway bus lane will give bus riders the first glimpse of some of the components of the DOT's larger, $21million project to create "Bus Rapid Transit" routes in the city. The first two of five planned Bus Rapid Transit routes are expected to be unveiled in the fall.

Writing in this quarter’s NYU Wagner Rudin Center Transportation Journal, Sam Zimmerman suggests a novel way for the city to approach Bus Rapid Transit.

“New York City Department of Transportation and MTA could establish a new BRT operating company, not bound by past practices of either agencies. The operating company could establish service parameters, fare structures and performance objectives. They could also establish conditions of service providers (e.g., union labor, etc.) The operating company could then request bids for provision of service-stressing innovation and design, and customer needs.”

Wonder what TWU Local 100 prez Roger Toussaint thinks about that? And what's that about fare structure -- would you be paying more for a faster ride?

-- Chuck Bennett

A group of TWU Local 100 activists plan to rally this afternoon at the Queens County Courthouse in a show od soliadarity for bus driver Henry Ye, who was "savagely beaten" while driving his route on Feb 4.

The suspect in the attack is being arraigned later in the day.

The rally will also "highlight the dangers to bus operators around the city, who are vulnerable to attack on a daily basis," a union spokeswoman said.

-- Chuck Bennett

At long lost, city buses will be tracked via GPS.

the state-of-the-art Service Management and Customer Information System (SMCIS) bus management system, which uses a combination of global positioning satellite and dead reckoning tracking technology to pinpoint the exact location of all 176 buses assigned to MTA New York City Transit’s 126th Street Depot.

went online today and will be expanded citywide soon.

-- Chuck Bennett

After the MTA board meeting today, MTA Chair Peter Kalikow assured there would be no cuts to MTA Long Island Bus despite a budget crunch.

"The last thing we want to do is cut routes. We are working on it now," he said. "We are going to fix the problem."

Suffolk County MTA Board Member Mitch Pally was pleased.

-- Chuck Bennett

Lee Sander's now former firm, DMJM + Harris got an additional $1.7 million added to its $2.8 million contract to study Bus Rapid Transit. Luckily, NYC Dept. of Transportation will foot the bill. But, the MTA is still waiting for the city's approval.

Already the firm identified a couple sites for Bus Rapid Transit, including the M15 along 1st and 2nd Avenues, the B44 along Nostrand Avenue.

-- Chuck Bennett

At a City Council transportation hearing today, DOT Commissioner Irish Weinshall said:

"I believe we could somehow make ferry transit more affordable and make the system more seamless, what I mean if there were buses that took people to ferries than more people would use them."

She than praised new MTA chief Lee Sander, called him a "friend," and said she would soon pay him a visit.

"We are going to talk to him about getting the buses and incorporating more ferry service," she said.

-- Chuck Bennett

Image of Filipino banka ferry. Unlikely these will be cruising the Hudson anytime soon.

Check out the city's new "street furniture" bus stop -- sponsored by CEMUSA. Now what about those public toilets??

Photo: AP

Don't lose your head: Weekend tourism tip -- head to Sleepy Hollow to check out this new Headless Horseman statue along Route 9. If you take Metro-North's Hudson line, just watch out for the gap at the Tarrytown train station.

Vent Your Inspiration: You may be a poet and not know it -- when it comes to your subway commute. Check out this contest, and put the Poetry in Motion series to shame. [NY1]

An 'Easier' commute: It won't change how wretched that commute is, but highway signs will soon tell you how much longer your slog to certain destinations will be, thanks to live E-ZPass data. [Daily News]

Boost for Fossella: Bus drivers' union backs GOP U.S. Rep. Vito Fossella, who promises to keep the pressure on for public transportation improvements on Staten Island. [Staten Island Advance]

Heat for Port Authority: More on the case transgender activists are making against the Port Authority for arrests at the bus terminal. [New York Blade]

-- Rolando Pujol

The Daily News follows up on the MTA's absorption of the private bus lines, and finds that the city is spending more money that it initially said it would to help the agency handle the costs. New York had initially committed to spending $150 million yearly, but the News say that for the fiscal year ending June 30, that bill increased to $234 million as costs soared. Still, service has improved, with scores of news buses replacing creaky ones.

-- Rolando Pujol

Photo: Alan Raia

... the M14A, which runs from 11th Avenue to Avenue A along 14th Street. The Straphangers Campaign also added a new category this year: The Unreliables. The most unreliable was the M1, which runs from Harlem to the East Village along Fifth and Madison avenues.

Update: Here's the story, and tell us about your slow-bus experiences here.

-- Rolando Pujol

The Straphangers Campaign will issue it fifth annual Pokey Awards tomorrow morning for the slowest moving bus lines in the city. Will the M34 crawl away with the Golden Snail again? We'll let you know here on The Tracker the minute we find out. Here's last year's release.

-- Rolando Pujol

Car-free Chinatown: Thoughts on amNY's story today on banning cars from some Chinatown streets to boost tourism and ease congestion. [StreetsBlog][Curbed]

Art of the commute: BlogNYC suggests poking around this site to help plan a tour of subway art. But the site doesn't tell you which trains to take. There's a good Google map mashup idea.

Movement on Moynihan: Moynihan Station is now a step closer to reality. [The New York Sun]

NJ Transit worker rapped: Bus driver suspended after crash, above, with light-rail train. [AP via New York Times]

Train power pain: The summer of power trouble continues: LIRR Babylon line knocked out last night night, and power outage in Bronx slows subway trains today.

Photo taken on car 2229 of the No. 1 train today. Note the novel pink marker graffiti at bottom of window.

-- Rolando Pujol

Photo: AP

This summer 50 years ago, the first air-conditioned bus debuted in Manhattan.

“This was a revolutionary feature for buses, ranking with automatic transmission and the air suspension system in importance,” said Larry Reuter, president of MTA NYC Transit in a statement. “And though it was a luxury a half-century ago, today a well-maintained air conditioned transit vehicle is a necessity.”

Elsewhere, air-conditioned buses were on the road, according to the MTA’s bus expert Charles Seaton, but the General Motors 3100 (operated by Fifth Avenue Coach, the city’s first bus lines) was the first with the A/C to be powered off the main engine and be integrated into the bus system.

The historic bus cruised the M4 and M5 lines until the early 1970s. It was saved from the scrap heap by nostalgic bus employees and has but completely restored -- except, ironically, the A/C isn’t working anymore.

Air-conditioning on buses wasn’t common for another 10 years when NYC Transit ordered 637 A/C bus. Over the next 40 years, A/C went from a novelty to luxury to necessity. Average temps on summer buses range between 68 to 72 degrees.

During the heat wave, the MTA even donated some buses to become mobile cooling centers for the infirm and elderly.

And for the hardcore bus buffs or foamers, check out this event:

13th Annual New York Transit Museum Bus Festival

Boerum Place between State Street and Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn
Sunday, September 17, 2006 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
This event operated by: New York Transit Museum
Information: 718-694-1867

-- Chuck Bennett amNY.com

Not as exciting as the fear-mongering black out e-mails, but some positive news from the MTA:

The transit agnecy donated some buses to become “mobile cooling centers” today. Imagine, the heat is so bad that people need to just sit on air conditioned buses for relief. Apparently, they park some outside residential buildings, nursing homes, and assisted living centers during power outages.

“We’ll often ask the MTA to bring in buses so people can be comfortable. And that’s the circumstance we did there. Until the power came on, we were able to get some MTA buses to keep people cool. It’s kind of a mobile cooling center and the MTA has been very good about allowing us to do that,” said Office of Emergency Management Commissioner Joe Bruno today.

-- Chuck Bennett amNY.com

Queens residents formed a blockade around a Jamaica bound Q25 bus to protest removal of a local bus stop, the Queens Chronicle reported. Apparently, the MTA removed a popular, convenient stop on Linden Place and 35th Ave. So to “send a message” angry residents and Councilman John Liu formed a human chain and wouldn’t allow the bus to pass for a minute. Let’s see if the MTA now brings back the bus stop.

-- Chuck Bennett amNY.com

MTA critic and City Councilman John Liu, who chairs the council transportation committee, has again been accusing the MTA of keeping a slush fund -- unused money for the now abandoned $645 million LaGuardia Access project to bring the R train to the airport.

“The MTA is still holding on to their remaining $204 million slush fund like there's no tomorrow,” he said. “What about the twelve subway station renovations across the City scrapped by the MTA just last year for lack of funding while they kept this slush fund hidden and untouched?  Keeping $204 million hidden under the mattress indefinitely is another clear example of the lack of accountability and transparency at this behemoth authority."

The old LaGuardia money has been used for new buses and depot upgrades in Queens (more than $100 million), a new Yankee stadium Metro-North station ($40 million), and perhaps another $40 million for the new Mets stadium.

Last June, Michelle Goldstein, Director of Government Affairs for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, denied it was a slush fund at one of Liu’s hearings.

“All I can say is that it was absolutely not hidden,” she said during the sometime tense hearing.

But, Goldstein won’t be in Liu’s hot seat anymore. Today Mayor Bloomberg announced she’ll once again work for City Hall -- this time as director of the Office of State Legislative Affairs aka the mayor’s lobbyist.

So, with Goldstein out. Who’s the next MTA person with the responsibilty of denying the existence of a “slush fund?”

Newsday photo, Liu is center

-- Chuck Bennett

The Upper East Side building explosion is snarling bus service. Commuters are urged to take the Lexington line subway instead. Here's the latest advisory.

-- Rolando Pujol

(Getty Images)

Rain delays: As expected, this morning showers made a tough morning commute. As of 10 a.m.  the F train is suspended in both directions between Jamaica-179th Street and Forest Hills-71st Avenue. Remember, some of the water pumps in the subway date back to the digging of the Panama Canal. [MTA] and [amNY]

No strike today: Kids got to summer schools via regular private bus operators today as negotiations between management and ATU Local 1181 continue. The strike threat is on for tomorrow. [NY1] Update: No strike as a tentative deal is reached.

It’s not just the tourists who are baffled: Steve Cuozzo, executive editor of the New York Post, uses his position at the paper to bash the MTA over seemingly illogical patchwork of repairs and indecipherable instructions on how to navigate around them.  “I've ridden the subway all my life, but I'm as stumped as an Iowa corn farmer by the MTA's current blizzard of stunts (supposedly needed to facilitate track work and station reconstruction),” he writes. [NY Post]

Bus lawsuit: The family of Amber Sadiq, the 8-year-old girl tragically killed by a school bus in May after a troubled classmate fiddled with the brake, said they are suing the city for millions in a wrongful death suit. [Daily News]

The “Busfellas.” An allegedly mobbed up Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181 has a strike authorization vote tonight. The local’s contract expires June 30th and a walkout could leave nearly 40,000 kids -- about half of them in special ed -- with no way to get to summer school. The Tracker thinks the union is just posturing -- after all, summer school doesn’t even start until July 5 and if they strike the workers lose summer unemployment benefits -- but we’ll see. [amNewYork]   

Bus Rapid Transit.  Dedicated, color-coded express bus lanes could be coming to First and Second avenues in Manhattan, Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn and Union Turnpike in Queens. [The New York Post]

Givebacks. Retired transit workers and other unions donated about $100,000 to the TWU Local 100. The union still has to pay off $2.3 million in fines from its illegal December strike. Some on the donors enjoying life in Florida say they appreciated the union’s efforts to strengthen retiree benefits. [Daily News]

Confused in Chelsea.  Attorney General candidate Sean Patrick Maloney tells supporters to meet him “at the Number 1 subway station at 23rd Street and 8th Avenue in Chelsea” for a petitioning drive. The No. 1 is on 7th Avenue. [The Empire Page]   

-- Chuck Bennett

Sweet dreams.  So, what does fate have in store for the latest station-booth worker caught napping on the job?  He's done it before, the Post explains, but he may yet keep his job.  [New York Post]   

Second Avenue  fantasy?  How much work has really been done on the Second Avenue Subway? And will it ever really happen?  [The New York Sun]

E-Z tap. Folks on the  overcrowded Lexington Avenue line would benefit big time from a  Second Avenue  Subway. But there's this consolation for now:  They'll be the first in the subway system to experiment with tapping cards on the turnstile and zipping right into the system. [The New York Post]

Step on it!  Speaking of the need for speed, the TA is gauging public opinion for its rapid bus service plans. They've targeted 15 corridors, but which routes couldn't benefit? Public sessions are coming to a neighborhood near you, and the first is Monday in the Bronx. [Gothamist]   

-- Rolando Pujol

OT, Oy Vey: The transit strike cost the NYPD $10.4 million in overtime, lower than first thought. A City Council oversight hearing today is set to address walkout costs with Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.  [amNewYork]