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MTA gets bus route revamp rolling
All Queens lines affected; community board leaders express concern at Boro Hall meet
BY MARK HALLUM
New York City Transit
officials addressed
community board chairs
from across Queens on
Monday night about the
effort to revamp bus routes
throughout the borough
in a modernization effort
designed to increase ridership
and reliability.
The officials called
the effort a “blank-slate
approach” which will fully
assess all possible routes
to meet current and future
travel patterns as part of
NYC Transit President Andy
Byford’s Fast Forward plan.
“It’s the largest bus
network in North America,
we operate over 5,700 buses
over 300 routes. The problem
is most of those routes have
devolved simply from the old
trolley network and as New
York has changed, as our
world has changed, we haven’t
changed with it,” said Darryl
Irick, the president of MTA
Bus Operations. “We felt that
this was an appropriate time
to hit the reboot button, look
at the entire thing fresh.”
One example of this would
be the Q60 bus, which runs
primarily along Queens
Boulevard from Jamaica to
midtown Manhattan. The
route’s southern terminus
at Jamaica Avenue once had
a trolley barn where the bus
line now ends.
CB6 Chair Joe Hennessy,
however, was not enamored
by the idea of shaking up the
bus network, claiming the
moving a bus stop even one
block could have profound
impacts on the lives of seniors
with mobility issues.
Eugene Kelty, chair of
CB7, said he would like to see
the concerns of motorists
included in the upcoming
process to re-organize the
bus network as opposed to
only taking into account the
needs of riders.
But the agency does not
plan to do it without the help
of communities, according
to the NYC Transit
representatives at the
Monday meeting at Borough
Hall. there will be a series of
open house events where they
will hear recommendations
throughout May and June.
Six public workshops
were held in 2018 and surveys
of 12 locations have been
completed; the MTA also
gathered data from more
than 750 online surveys.
According to NYC
Transit, as the bus network
has remained unchanged
for decades, Queens
continues to see sweeping
changes in Long Island City,
Flushing and Jamaica while
congestion worsens.
The agency cited job
growth in Queens outside
the range of subway service
as another reason for an
immediate need to take a
fresh approach.
The plan will also
introduce more comfortable
and environmentally
friendly buses while
increasing bus priority
for more efficient
commute times.
With Queens being the
larges borough by landmass,
it also has 77 local and
30 express routes which
serve an average of 714,000
weekday riders, according
to the agency.
Local bus ridership alone
declined 2.5 percent between
2016 and 2017 with speeds
3 percent lower than they
were in 2015 with an average
of 8.9 miles per hour.
NYC Transit plans to
have a finalized plan of how
the bus network will look in
the coming decades by April
2020 with additional public
outreach planned.
Reach reporter Mark
Hallum by e-mail at
mhallum@schnepsmedia.
com or by phone at (718)
260–4564.
NEW PLAYGROUND AT LIC SCHOOL
City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer helps cut the ribbon on a new sensory playground at PQ4@Skillman in Long Island City
school for children with autism. Courtesy of Van Bramer’s offi ce
Vol. 7 No. 16 56 total pages
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