City unveils new Lower Manhattan bus lanes
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
The city unveiled on June 10 three
blocks of new bus lanes and a buspriority
traffi c signal at Battery
Place near the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel in
Lower Manhattan, which offi cials say will
relieve congestion for commuters heading
to Staten Island.
“Bus improvements at Battery Place will
save valuable time for Staten Island bus riders,”
said Department of Transportation
(DOT) Commissioner Hank Gutman in a
June 10 statement. “In a year’s time, each
commuter will have gotten more than a full
day of their lives back.”
The DOT added a curbside bus-only lane
to three westbound blocks of Battery Place,
between Broadway and West Street, along
with a traffi c signal allowing buses a head
start when turning right toward toward the
inter-borough tunnel.
The last block at West Street also has a
raised ridge with plastic fl appers to discourage
other drivers from illegally hogging the
red-painted lanes.
The changes — which are in effect
24/7 — will mostly benefi t the 12,000
daily riders of the Staten Island express
buses who fi nd themselves routinely stuck
The three new blocks of bus lanes at Battery Place and West Street in Lower
Manhattan.
in bumper-to-bumper traffi c during the
evening rush hour, according to one senior
DOT rep for the island, who related her
own commute home from the agency’s
headquarters at nearby Water Street.
PHOTO BY KEVIN DUGGAN
“I get on the bus on Water Street, then
I sit in traffi c along State Street and then
Battery Place, anywhere from 20-40
minutes — and that’s a good night,” said
DOT Staten Island Borough Commissioner
Roseann Caruana. “You can only imagine
the frustration after a long day at work
sitting on the bus — sometimes standing
on the bus — watching traffi c lights turn
green, then yellow, then red, and sometimes
moving a few inches for each cycle.”
In contrast, the buses zoom past other
drivers once they reach the far side of the
tunnel due to high-occupancy vehicle lanes
there, according to DOT.
The new bus lanes came at the request
of Staten Island Borough President Jimmy
Oddo, and are part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s
Better Buses initiative to speed up the city’s
notoriously slow bus network through the
addition of dedicated lanes and busways
around the Five Boroughs.
“The redesign of the express bus system
for Staten Island has been one of the most
challenging endeavors of my career,” Oddo
said in a statement. “Moving 30,000+
Staten Islanders to and from Manhattan
every day will never be easy. That’s why
it is that much more important to aggressively
correct and improve everything in
our control.”
The DOT has committed to build or
improve 28 miles of Better Buses projects
this year, serving almost one million riders
a day.
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16 June 17, 2021 Schneps Media
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