Talk Bronx New York

Project Description

The MTA New York City Transit (NYCT), the New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT), and New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) are planning to introduce Select Bus Service (SBS) to New York. SBS will utilize innovative bus rapid transit elements that will improve the speed and reliability of bus service on the implemented routes.

Goals and Objectives

SBS Benefits Include:

• A new high performance transit option for NYC.
• Improve the speed, reliability and appeal of the bus system, city-wide.
• Provide measurable benefits to current customers as well as attracting new riders and supporting growth and redevelopment.

The goals of the study are:

• Identify the opportunities for SBS in NYC with the greatest potential benefits and the highest probability of successful implementation.
• Move a comprehensive, cost-effective city-wide SBS demonstration program into implementation.
• Improve those corridors not selected for the SBS demonstration by using techniques identified by the study.

Project Phases and Schedule

The first SBS corridor, Fordham Rd-Pelham Parkway  is expected to be implemented in the summer of 2008.

Major Planning Activities Include:

1. Identify strategic issues relating to SBS implementation in NYC;
2. Based on U.S. and world-wide experience, identify the range of SBS improvements that might work well in NYC;
3. Identify and evaluate all candidate corridors with SBS potential in New York City;
4. Select the 15 corridors with the highest probability of success and potential benefit; Project Update
5. Develop a preliminary concept plan for each corridor tailored to the market and physical environment in that corridor;
6. Select the best corridors and develop more detailed plans while identifying improvements that can be implemented elsewhere.
7. Comprehensive Project Reassessment.
8. Preparation of detailed plans for Fordham Road-Pelham Parkway Corridor.
9. Implementation of Fordham Road-Pelham Parkway Corridor.

• NYCSBS Main Page
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• Public Involvement Process
• Project Team
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• Project Update
• FAQs

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A Bigger Penalty for Riders Who Cheat on the Fare

The bad old days of subway turnstile jumping may be gone, but the fine for trying to sneak a free ride went up on Monday anyway, to $100 from $60 — the first increase in nearly a quarter century.

From Jan. 1 through July 6 this year, transit police issued 41,090 tickets for fare evasion and arrested an additional 8,437 people for not paying the subway fare, according to police data. That is an average of 263 tickets or arrests a day for fare evasion in a subway system with a volume of more than five million rides on an average weekday.

Things were very different in the early 1990s, when the system was in the throes of a fare-beating epidemic.

In the first six months of 1991 the transit police issued 123,773 summonses and made 9,942 arrests for fare evasion, according to a report in The New York Times. That was an average of about 743 tickets and arrests a day, at a time when ridership was much lower.

Just a year earlier, in 1990, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority estimated that more than 200,000 people jumped a subway turnstile every day. By 1997, with stronger enforcement, an improving transit system and the advent of new turnstiles for use with MetroCards (the turnstile barriers are longer and harder to squeeze past), the estimate of farebeaters had fallen to 35,000 a day.

The authority no longer makes such estimates public, but the data on arrests and summonses suggests that while turnstile jumping has not gone the way of the token, it is no longer as common as it was in the early 1990s. But even as fares rose and the subway system improved, the fine for fare beating remained unchanged.

It was set at $60 in 1984 and went into effect the following year, when a special tribunal was set up to handle transit offenses, like turnstile jumping, riding on the outside of a subway car or playing loud music in a station.

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Riders Will Pay Before Boarding, and Save Time, on Revamped Bus Route

Beginning on Sunday, passengers on a revamped bus route in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan will pay their fares before they get on the bus, as part of a series of innovations intended to allow faster travel.

The time it takes to cross the Bronx on the upgraded Bx12 route should eventually drop by 20 percent under the new system, said Ted V. Orosz, the director of Manhattan and Bronx bus service planning for New York City Transit.

The new service will replace the Bx12 Limited, which took 58 minutes at midday on a weekday (when traffic is usually heavy) to travel the full seven-mile length of the route, from Co-op City in the Bronx to 207th Street and Broadway in Upper Manhattan. The buses travel for long stretches on Pelham Parkway and Fordham Road, across the heart of the Bronx.

Officials hope to ultimately shave 10 or 12 minutes off that trip. But the initial schedule does not reflect such large savings. The transit agency has scheduled the new buses to make the midday trip in 55 minutes, just three minutes quicker than before. But more buses are being used on the route, so at the busiest times buses will run from four to eight minutes apart.

Officials said that they would monitor the route closely and that they expected to see increasing improvements in time.

Mr. Orosz said he expected 25,000 people a day to use the new service at the start, with the number growing as more people become familiar with it.

“It looks cooler, it’s faster, it will run a little more frequently,” he said. “All those things should increase ridership.”

The new service, called Select Bus Service, will save time mostly by requiring riders to pay fares before they get on the bus, using coins or swiping their MetroCards at curbside machines at each stop.

The idea is to cut boarding times by eliminating the lines that often form at the front door of a bus while passengers wait to swipe or pay. That wait is a primary factor in slow travel times for buses.

There will be more than one machine at each stop, to keep lines from developing there. The machines will provide receipts, and when the bus arrives, passengers may board either in the front or the back, with no need to show the receipt to the driver or to swipe again.

To keep people honest, inspectors will ride the buses and ask passengers for their receipts. If a passenger does not have one, the inspectors may give them a $100 ticket for fare-beating. Officials said that during the first week, while passengers are adjusting to the system, the inspectors will hand out warnings instead.

The route will have other innovations as well.

The Fordham Road part of the route will have computerized traffic signals that communicate with the buses, helping them by holding a green light or shortening a red light by up to 15 seconds as a bus approaches.

And the stretch of the route along Fordham Road and 207th Street will have dedicated bus lanes painted in red with overhead signs telling other vehicles to stay out of the lane on weekdays from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

What the route’s buses will not have are cameras mounted on the front to take pictures of cars and trucks encroaching on the bus lane. Legislation pushed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to allow for such cameras was blocked in committee in the State Assembly.

“It hurts bad,” said Mr. Orosz of the absence of the bus cameras. “That would have been a huge lift, a huge improvement in the bus lane.”

Instead, the police will patrol the route to keep other vehicles away.

The buses, all articulated models, with two carriages connected with accordianlike devices, will look a little different too, decorated on the outside with a wavy blue pattern covered with blue plus signs. Inside, the seats are covered in a blue polka dot fabric.

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City Reaches Out to Bronx On New BRT Route

NYC DOT and NYC Transit have begun presenting at Bronx community boards to help promote the June 29 launch of NYC’s first bus rapid transit route along Pelham Parkway and Fordham Road in the Bronx. The new service, known as Select Bus Service, has distinct features that will make riding the bus a new experience for transit riders along the corridor.

As MTR wrote earlier, Select Bus fares will be paid under a “proof of payment” system where riders would pay at stations and show a receipt if asked by on-board fare collectors. This will shorten delay caused as passengers pay one by one at the head of the bus.

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Buses Bloom In The Bronx

Bx12 Select buses greeted attendees of the “Buses in the Boroughs” symposium Tuesday morning.

With spring colors and fragrance in full bloom at the New York Botanical Garden Tuesday morning, TSTC along with Transportation Alternatives, the Straphangers Campaign, and the Pratt Center for Community Development hosted a symposium on bus rapid transit to showcase how this transit option has transformed major cities around the world and to preview New York’s plans for BRT throughout the five boroughs.

Walter Hook and Oscar Edmundo Diaz, both of the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy, discussed BRT systems in nearly two dozen cities around the world (both presentations are available on TSTC’s website). Hook’s presentation spanned multiple systems and highlighted some technical “dos and don’ts” for BRT providers (such as the advantages of median bus lanes, the need for multiple-door buses, how to fit BRT into narrow streets, etc.). His presentation drew on the broad and detailed knowledge of ITDP, which consults governments around the world in planning BRT systems and produces an 850-page BRT Planning Guide.

Diaz, a native of Colombia and a specialist in urban transport systems, focused on what many consider the world’s most successful BRT system, the TransMilenio of Bogota, Colombia. TransMilenio can carry up to 42,000 passengers per hour per direction and travels an average 18.1 mph, more than twice as fast as the average bus in NYC. It is top-of-the-line BRT, with pre-boarding fare collection, level boarding at platforms, and enclosed stations — a worthy transit system for a city of 7 million. Of course, the quickest way to get a sense of TransMilenio is through pictures:

Clockwise from top left: TransMilenio in dense urban areas, level boarding between bus and station platform, fare collection at turnstiles (not on the bus), interior of a TransMilenio bus.

Diaz emphasized how a well-built system can dramatically improve the lives of commuters and residents who lack transit access, and as a result, economic and social opportunity. While 21% of TransMilenio riders own cars, the system is also accessible to low-income commuters, mothers with children in tow, the handicapped, and the elderly. In surveys, the #1 reason TransMilenio riders said they liked the system was because it allowed them to spend more time with their families. Read more..

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