Talk Bronx New York

 A Library With a Past Ponders Its Future

TWO years ago, a lanky teenager named Adolfo Abreu who lives in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx got involved in a campaign to turn the shuttered Fordham Library Center into a youth center. Unhappy about the dearth of activities available to him and his friends, he spent months rallying support for the cause, only to learn in late May that the city was eyeing the former library for use as an animal shelter. 

“I felt like, wow, they care more about animals than us?” said Adolfo, a high school freshman who serves as the president of Sistas and Brothas United, the youth branch of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, a local organization. “We’ve been fighting for this for years. That part of the Bronx is like a wasteland, and having an animal shelter isn’t going to improve it.”

The former library, a handsome three-story red brick building with arched windows, sits on a downtrodden block of Bainbridge Avenue near Fordham Road’s bustling retail corridor. It has been locked since 2005, shortly before the new $50 million Bronx Library Center opened one block to the west.

Adolfo Abreu isn’t the only one with grand visions for the building. Members of local community groups have envisioned the nearly 30,000-square-foot former library as outfitted with a computer lab, a boxing ring and an art studio, and accommodating activities like after-school tutoring.

The city’s health department is working to open animal shelters in Queens and the Bronx, which currently have only pet receiving centers. The agency has a contract with New York City Animal Care and Control, a nonprofit group, to operate shelters.

Jessica Scaperotti, a department spokeswoman, confirmed that the agency was considering the former Fordham Library as a site for a shelter, but said there was no timetable for the plan. The issue was reported in The Norwood News, a local newspaper.

Despite potential obstacles, leaders of the effort to turn the old library into a youth center said they would soldier ahead. Among them is Fernando Cabrera, the pastor of New Life Outreach International in Kingsbridge Heights.

“There are plenty of other places an animal shelter would be suitable,” Mr. Cabrera said. “The community isn’t going to stand for that here.”

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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
• What is BRT?
• Public Involvement Process
• Project Team
• Keeping in Touch
• Project Update
• FAQs

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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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The Bronx Is More Than Just Yankee Stadium

THIS season is your last chance to catch a game in the old Yankee Stadium, before the House That Ruth Built is replaced by its modern cousin across 161st Street, the House That Steinbrenner and Taxpayer Subsidies Built.

That means a lot of first-timers will be heading into town and up to the South Bronx, and they might have no idea what else there is to see and do around the stadium. They shouldn’t feel bad: most lifelong Yankees fans who have been up there hundreds of times don’t know, either.

That’s in part because the area still suffers the hangover of decades of bad press. But Howard Cosell is dead, the Bronx isn’t burning, and sticking around after the game does not have to mean crowding into beer-soaked bars across the street from the stadium.

You don’t even have to go very far; you’re only three blocks away from the Grand Concourse, the once-stately, still-impressive thoroughfare that in its day was a most desirable address. It’s working-class these days, but you can still sense the grandeur in the sheer width of the 11-lane road and the architecture that lines it.

Not far from the stadium, at the intersection of 161st and the Concourse, are the Bronx County Courthouse (a handsome but imposing fortress), Joyce Kilmer Park (a spot to picnic on jerk chicken from the nearby Feeding Tree restaurant or a bresaola panini from the Press Cafe) and the former Concourse Plaza Hotel (once full of Yankees and politicians).

But the Concourse is best known architecturally for what is often called the biggest concentration of Art Deco buildings outside Miami. Walking north from 161st Street you’ll find at least one gem every few blocks, but be sure you walk at least the half-dozen blocks to 1150 Grand Concourse, the apartments known as the Fish Building for its aquarium mosaic. It’s enough to make you think (for a moment, anyway) that you’re in South Beach, not the South Bronx.

Ambitious Art Deco buffs could keep going for miles (on foot or by bus), all the way to Fordham Road past the old Loew’s Paradise, and cut east to eat in the Bronx’s Little Italy. Or keep going to the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, the slightly relocatedoriginal house where the poet retreated in what was, in the mid 19th century, bucolic hinterlands.

Your other option is to head south from the stadium down to Mott Haven, home to an ever-growing artists’ colony. (The closest train from Manhattan is the 6 train to 138th Street, but from the stadium take the 4 to 138th and walk east to Alexander Avenue.) The area has long been known for its antiques shops, which attract visitors from Westchester County and beyond, but now there are also arts spaces to check out, places to eat and even a new place to party.

Art makes its way into weird places in Mott Haven. Haven Arts recently moved into a 2,500-square-foot space in a former linoleum store (check out the freight scale built into the floor) and is currently showing “NY Press,” an exhibition of New York photojournalists from The New York Times, The Daily News and other publications. It also holds free painting classes from 5 to 8 p.m. on Thursdays, usually with a nude model.

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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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