BY KEVIN DUGGAN
The city plans to install a
roughly half-mile busway on
Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn
in August, Mayor Bill de
Blasio announced June 8.
The 0.6-mile stretch between
the Fulton Mall and Tillary
Street is part of a 20-mile
bus lane expansion project
Hizzoner announced on June
8 to help commuters move
around faster and safer as the
city starts to reopen and ease
coronavirus-related restrictions.
“These 20 new miles of
busways and bus lanes are going
to help over three quarters
of a million New Yorkers
get around more easily,” said
de Blasio at his daily briefi ng
at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
“Look, more service equals
less crowding, equals more
health and safety, that’s what
we want to achieve.”
City transit gurus will open
16.5 miles of bus lanes and
3.5 miles of busways between
June and October, starting this
month with two lanes in Manhattan
COURIER L 18 IFE, JUNE 12-18, 2020
and the Bronx, and a
new short busway in Queens.
On busways, the city bans
through-traffi c on the street
for most of the day, seven days
a week. Vehicles can still make
pick-ups, drop-offs, and deliveries,
but have to turn off the
street after a block or two.
The Fulton Mall — the original
busway which dates back
to the 1980s — only allows buses
and deliveries, while private
cars can traverse the commercial
corridor on cross streets.
Bus lanes reserve a lane or two
of a street for buses, usually
during the day on weekdays,
but still allow car traffi c on
other lanes at all times.
The announcement follows
the successful pilot of the 1.1-
mile 14th Street busway on the
distant isle of Manhattan last
year and the 20 miles of new
red-painted lanes will make
traveling faster for almost
750,000 daily riders, including
35,000 straphangers on the
Kings County thoroughfare,
according to Hizzoner.
The busy downtown roadway
suffers from rampant
placard abuse along with frequently
blocked bike and bus
lanes — often by police and
other city agency vehicles —
which will make it challenging
to convert into a busway,
according to one transit advocate.
“Jay Street is very much a
contested space,” said Transportation
Alternatives spokesman
Joe Cutrufo. “They’ll
have their work cut out for
them there.”
The mayor’s citywide
scheme included no other lanes
in Brooklyn and fell well short
of demands by both the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority
— whose offi cials demanded
the city add 60 miles of
bus lanes — and four out of the
Straphangers board a B54 bus on Jay Street. File photo by Kevin Duggan
fi ve borough presidents, who
together with transit advocates
demanded City Hall add
40 miles, as bus ridership has
become more popular than the
subway during the pandemic.
“It’s a step in the right direction,
but it’s been clear for
the last weeks that the mayor
was underprepared for this
moment,” Cutrufo said.
The newly-announced lanes
also don’t match the proposals
transit advocates put out in the
last months for busways, and
Cutrufo said that like with de
Blasio’s Open Streets initiative,
he was going for roads
that were easiest fi rst.
“Given how this city has
approached reclaiming open
streets, they tend to go with the
lowest hanging fruit fi rst, and
that may be the safest way to
approach this politically,” he
said.
NEXT STOP: JAY STREET
City to install half-mile busway on Downtown
thoroughfare this August, says mayor
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