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BROOKLYN WEEKLY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2019
Borough’s busiest bus faces cuts
MTA targets B46 straphangers for cuts that drew protests in Downtown Brooklyn
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will increase wait times along the B46 — Brooklyn’s busiest route — but add longer articulated buses, starting in January 2020. Photos by Elissa Esher
BY KEVIN DUGGAN AND
ELISSA ESHER
Transit honchos are applying
a similar suite of controversial
service cuts that drew protests
from B38 straphangers to the
busiest bus route in Brooklyn.
The Metropolitan Transportation
Authority will run less
buses along the B46 route’s Select
Bus Service from Williamsburg
to Mill Basin starting January
2020, which will lead to
$2.4 million in savings for the
agency, while forcing commuters
to wait an extra one to three
minutes between buses, according
to a release by the agency.
The sting of reducing the
overall amount of buses from
the line will be tempered by
the addition of new longer
buses that will increase capacity
from 85 to 115 riders, which
an agency spokeswoman claims
will result in a net positive for
straphangers.
“When we’re running longer
buses, buses with more people
on it per bus, then you’re
increasing capacity,” said
Amanda Kwan.
The agency announced the
cuts the same day that advocates
rallied in Downtown
Brooklyn against service reductions
to the B38 and B54,
of which, the former was also
affected by a nearly identical
cost-saving scheme, with less,
but longer buses.
Transit officials claimed
the new less-is-more strategy
would enhance reliability along
the route, ensuring drivers hit
their marks and made stops on
time, but riders claimed that delays
and issues such as bunching
continued to plagued the
B38 following service changes.
“I’ve waited for more than 40
minutes for the buses to arrive,
just to have three of them come
together at the same bus stop,”
said Pedro Valdez-Rivera, a B38
rider, who joined Thursday’s
protest.
The B46 and its express bus
line represent the busiest bus
route in the borough and the
third-busiest citywide, carrying
more than 38,000 riders a
day from Williamsburg to Kings
Plaza in Mill Basin, through
Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant,
Crown Heights, East Flatbush,
and Flatlands along the transitstarved
Utica Avenue corridor.
The B46 SBS currently has
a mix of both shorter and longer
buses, and Transit Authority
figures show that buses
routinely arrive at stops over
capacity, with buses being 108-
percent full during morning
rush hours on weekdays and
121-percent full on Saturday
midday.
Meanwhile, the agency plans
to spend $5 million under its recently
announced capital plan
to study an extension of the
subway along Utica Avenue, either
from Fulton Street’s A and
C stop or the Eastern Parkway
3 and 4 stops, according to The
City .
But commuters are having
a hard time accepting the good
with the bad, with one Crown
Heights woman saying transit
officials went over the community’s
head.
“I’m past frustrated, I’m angry,”
said Mary Gibbs. “They
never asked the community
about this. Nobody at the MTA
asked us what we wanted to do
with our own line.”
Another rider said that local
residents already suffered from
living in the transit-starved
area and that the cuts will
lengthen his commute.
“We already have so little
public transportation here,”
said Freddy Williams, also
from Crown Heights. “It’s just
messed up. I take the line every
single day. If there are less
buses I’ll have to leave earlier
in the morning.
Crown Heights straphanger Mary Gibbs
was not impressed by the transit agency’s
move, saying the Authority went
over the community’s heads.
Photo by Elissa Esher