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BROOKLYN WEEKLY, OCTOBER 20, 2019
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
As transit buffs hail a new
dedicated “busway” installed on
Manhattan’s 14th Street as both
a resounding success and — perhaps
too enthusiastically — as
“sexy,” advocates are now looking
to clear private vehicles off of
Kings County streets to pave the
way for a bus-only thoroughfare
in Brooklyn.
“The busway is exciting, it’s
sexy, and it’s improving bus performance,
but there’s a lot of ways
to do that and we should do everything
in our toolbox to clear cars
out of the way of buses,” said Ben
Fried, a spokesman for Transit
Center.
The Department of Transportation
launched the 14th Street
busway as an 18-month pilot project,
which saw six blocks of the
bustling crosstown boulevard
closed to all traffi c except buses,
deliveries, drop-offs, and emergency
vehicles.
The city’s radical transit
scheme didn’t make everyone
happy — the move spawned protests
and legal challenges by angry
residents — but DOT Commissioner
Polly Trottenberg
claimed the busway increased
bus speeds by up to 30 percent,
and transit advocates and progressive
pols have lauded it as
the “Miracle on 14th Street.”
And that miracle comes amid
the Oct. 2nd launch of a boroughwide
revamp of Brooklyn’s bus
network — where buses crawl
at a sluggish average speed of 7.7
mph — and Trottenberg has already
hinted that city transit offi
cials are scheming to slap down
some of the busway’s distinctive
burgundy paint on an outer-borough
roadway.
“Where might we go next?
Stay tuned,” Trottenberg told
Streetsblog . “We’re thinking
about that next. People’s worst
fears did not come to pass and I
hope it’ll be a template for other
parts of the city.”
So the question becomes,
where will Brooklyn’s fi rst busway
go? Here are a few likely test
subjects for the city’s latest progressive
transit scheme.
Utica and Nostrand
avenues
Utica and Nostrand avenues
host some of the busiest bus routes
in Brooklyn, the B46 and B44 respectively,
which provide a crucial
connection from Williamsburg to
transit-starved neighborhoods in
southern Brooklyn via local and
Select Bus Service shuttles.
And with both Kings County
and Brookdale hospitals located
there, retrofi tting Utica Avenue in
particular for use as a dedicated
bus route would improve commutes
for both patients and staff,
according to one transit buff.
“Areas close to Utica Avenue
have the highest concentration
of healthcare workers who live
there and if there’s any group of
commuters we want to have reliable
commutes it’s that group,”
said Transportation Alternatives
spokesman Marco Conner.
Fulton Street
Already host to a dedicated
bus route between Flatbush Avenue
Extension and Boerum Place,
extending the Fulton Mall’s busonly
regulations further east to
Greene Avenue in Fort Greene
would improve transit times for
four buses — the B25, B26, B38,
and B52.
The city proposed extending a
bus lane all the way to Grand Avenue
in Clinton Hill in 2017, but
walked back the scheme to only
take effect during a limited time
on weekdays after residents, business
owners, and Councilwoman
Laurie Cumbo (D–Clinton Hill)
threw a fi t.
“They had to water down the
hours because a small but vocal
opposition,” said Connor.
Church Avenue
This crosstown artery services
the B35, where the city recently
tried to expand a dedicated
bus lane at the expense of parking
along a narrow stretch of the
route between Ocean Parkway
and E. 16th Street.
But transit honchos caved to
protests by congregants a local
synagogue by scrapping the noparking
zone along the block of
their house of worship, because
members worried they wouldn’t
be able to park there on the Sabbath,
according to the Brooklyn
Eagle.
Myrtle and Dekalb
avenues
Getting from Bushwick to
Downtown Brooklyn is a real
hassle best exemplifi ed by subway
commutes along the J, Z, and
M trains, which take commuters
from the borough’s northern
frontier to America’s Downtown
by way of Manhattan!
The route was formerly serviced
by the Myrtle Avenue elevated
train , but that line carried
its last passenger more than 50
years ago, and — while the G train
offers some cross town service —
the only contemporary substitute
to the alfresco train line are a slate
of slow buses including Myrtle Avenue’s
B54, Dekalb Avenue’s B38,
Gates Avenue’s B52, and Halsey
Street’s B25.
Although the design of the
city’s streets would have to be
changed on a city level, local state
Sen. Julia Salazar (D–Bushwick)
recently came out in favor of a local
busway along this stretch on
Twitter .
Bus-ting
into Bklyn
Busing in: A simple candidate for a
busway in Brooklyn would be an extension
of the Fulton Mall further east
beyond Flatbush Avenue.
Illustration by John Napoli
A map showing potential candidates for a Brooklyn busway in the wake of a recently
installed Manhattan prototype. Illustration by John Napoli
Transit buffs ID likely candidates
for Brooklyn’s fi rst ‘busway’