City Councilman Lew Fidler is questioning the decision-making behind bike lane implementation in his district and across the boroughs, leading the city to re-evaluate proposed lanes in Canarsie and opening the door for challenges elsewhere.
In a letter to Department of Transportation Brooklyn Commissioner Joseph Palmieri, Fidler said it was “imperative that community feedback be factored into any proposed changes.”
The request came following months of outcry from Canarsie residents to the city’s plan to install bike lanes from Avenue D on East 95th Street to the Canarsie Pier, and from the pier to Ditmas Avenue on East 94th Street. The lanes would connect bicyclists to the Shore Parkway Greenway, which extends from Sheepshead Bay to Queens. Neighbors in Canarsie say the city is bike crazy and it doesn’t suit residents’ needs.
Fidler agrees that the plans, devised more than 10 years ago, are flawed and outdated.
We always wrestle with the decision to bring you news from far outside of our community, but it became clear during some of the recent conversations about commuting and the DOT that a significant number of residents prefer driving into Manhattan over taking mass transit. So the following information may prove very useful to those readers:
The New York City Department of Transportation is performing rehabilitation work on the Brooklyn Bridgeramps and approaches, which are in urgent need of repair. As part of the project, the steel components of the entire span will also be repainted to prevent corrosion. This work started in the spring and will continue until 2014.
To facilitate this work, DOT announces that the Brooklyn Bridge will be closed to Manhattan-bound traffic overnight, beginning on Monday, Aug. 23rd and will continue until the project is completed in 2014. All Manhattan-bound traffic will be detoured to the Manhattan Bridge or other crossings. All Brooklyn-bound traffic will be maintained, and there will be no closure of the pedestrian/cycling promenade. All work will occur during off-peak hours, and the bridge will be reopened for traffic in both directions each morning.
Closure Times
Sundays to Fridays: closures will begin at 11 PM and the lanes will reopen at 6 AM.
Saturdays: closure will begin at 12:01 AM and the lanes will reopen at 7 AM.
Sundays: closure will begin at 12:01 AM and lanes will reopen at 9 AM.
A downloadable brochure showing detour routes and closure dates and times is available at: http://nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/brooklyn_bridge_brochure.pdf. During closure times, a construction embargo will be in place on the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges, as well as on those local streets in Brooklyn and Manhattan that are utilized for detoured traffic.
Where will the restructured B4 operate starting this Sunday? No one seems to know.
The B4 will no longer operate on Neptune Avenue, but instead will use Avenue Z. It will also now terminate at Coney Island Avenue at all times when it operates, except on Monday through Friday between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. and from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. during rush hours, when it will continue to serve Plum Beach. (UPDATE 6/25/2010: We’re having trouble confirming the exact time the B4 will be running the Emmons Avenue/Shore Parkway route. The MTA’s webpage just says “rush hours.” Elsewhere on the site we read that means 6:15 a.m. to 9 a.m. / 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m., but we’ve heard from others that the B4 will run between 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. / 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.)
But even those in charge of placing signs around Coney Island Avenue appear to be confused where the bus is headed.
The new MTA map shows it operating eastbound along Avenue Z between Ocean Parkway and Coney Island Avenue, and westbound along the Shore Parkway north service road between these points at all times. However, DOT posted B4 bus stop signs in both directions all along Avenue Z.
As part of the deal to reinstate student metrocards, Albany is giving a thumbs up to camera enforcement of 50 miles of bus lanes along Select Bus Service / Bus Rapid Transit routes, for which Nostrand Avenue is slated for conversion.
Dedicated bus lanes are a key component of the MTA’s SBS service, which aims to make commuting by bus speedier and efficientto increase ridership. But even advocates note that without proper enforcement to keep them clear of idling cars, bus lanes will amount to little time saved. In the MTA’s Select Bus Service FAQ, the agency says cameras monitoring the bus lanes “would automate the enforcement process by issuing violation notices to vehicles that illegally drive or park in the bus lane.” Camera enforcement requires approval from State legislators.
According to Streetsblog, “If the MTA would eat the cost of student fares, Albany would allow it to keep its bus lanes free of traffic.” With the MTA’s part of the bargain fulfilled, the State has worked the following language into a budget bill:
WITHIN THE CITY OF NEW YORK, SUCH BUS LANE PHOTO DEVICES SHALL ONLY BE OPERATED ON DESIGNATED BUS LANES THAT ARE SELECT BUS SERVICE LANES WITHIN THE BUS RAPID TRANSIT DEMONSTRATION PROGRAM AND ONLY DURING WEEKDAYS FROM 7:00 A.M. TO 7:00 P.M.
Down in our neck of the woods, this may affect the stretch of Nostrand Avenue from Emmons Avenue to Avenue X, where dedicated bus lanes are planned for a Select Bus Service route replacing the B44, according to the MTA’s website. From Avenue X to Flatbush Avenue, buses will travel in mixed traffic, before returning to dedicated lanes for the remainder of the trip.
The MTA/DOT proposal to replace the B44 has already received a thumbs down from Community Board 15, which says the elimination of parking is not worth the six minutes saved. They also found the agency to be unresponsive to their questions, despite six years of study.
On Monday, May 17, New York City Department of Transportation and New York City Transit presented plans for the Nostrand Avenue Bus Rapid Transit / Select Bus Service route that will replace the B44 Limited in 2012.
Ted Orosz (Director, Long Range Planning, NYC Transit) and Robert Thompson (Senior Project Manager, Transit Development, NYC DOT) gave their 25-minute presentation in front of a crowd of around 20 people, mostly Community Board 15 members.
The Bus Rapid Transit / Select Bus Service is an initiative that aims to increase bus ridership by maximizing efficiency and shortening commutes. The staples of the plan include dedicated bus lanes, pre-boarding fare payment, low-floor buses and traffic signal priority. The majority of these changes will effect the northern part of the B44 Limited’s current 9-mile route from the Williamsburg Bridge to Emmons Avenue.
In Community Board 15 (Kings Highway to Emmons Avenue), NYC Transit plans to institute traffic signal priority so that stop lights will know when a bus is near and increase the duration of the green light. They say this, in addition to the low-floor buses and off-board fare payment, should effectively speed up the segment of our route without needing dedicated bus lanes (though portions of the route will have dedicated lanes during rush hour only).
Community Board 15 will have a meeting with DOT and MTA Transit about the Select Bus Service on Nostrand Avenue on Monday, May 17, at 6 p.m. The meeting will be in the Faculty Dining Room of Kingsborough Community College.
You might remember we told you the Community Board was looking for your input during their April meeting. Well, at the last minute they decided that it would be better for the involved agencies to offer a presentation (which wasn’t planned for the meeting). So now they’re going to have a much more rounded-out affair, eventually followed by a vote on whether the board will offer their support or not.
This is likely to be a major issue that has lasting effect on traffic and parking issues along Nostrand Avenue.
For details of the plan – and some of the objections to it – see our earlier report.
A proposal to bring an experimental bus program to the neighborhood has some asking whether its worth the hassle, and Community Board 15 is holding a public hearing this evening to discuss the issue.
Since 2004, the MTA’s Bus Rapid Transit project has been evaluating neighborhoods across the city to determine test routes for Select Bus Service. The experimental service is aimed at speeding up the city’s notoriously slow bus routes and easing congestion. The system will feature dedicated bus lanes, larger capacity vehicles and off-board fare payment. In Sheepshead Bay, the entire B44 Limited route will be replaced by SBS service, running the entire length of Nostrand Avenue to Rogers Avenue and then Bedford Avenue.
But benefits may not be as significant as the project’s advocates suggest. Community Board 15 Chairperson Theresa Scavo said that the SBS’s first and only test site, along Fordham Road/Pelham Parkway in the Bronx, has only shaved off six minutes from commuters’ trips. But the larger buses (and the bus “bulbs” associated with SBS service) eat up valuable parking spaces that businesses clamor for. Furthermore, the dedicated bus lanes reduce access for cars, adds to congestion, and makes turning difficult.
That's pretty. (Photo courtesy of Atomische • Tom Giebel via Flickr)
It’s no secret that parking is a huge problem along Kings Highway, but adding bicycle stations around the avenue is a wasteful solution, according to Community Board 15 Chair Theresa Scavo.
The Department of Transportation is proposing 122 new bike racks in the Kings Highway area, an addition that Scavo calls “excessive” and probably ineffective in alleviating traffic and parking problems along the bustling corridor.
“I believe the bike racks we have are not being utilized other than a few at the train stations,” said Scavo. She added that racks on the street and around Kingsborough Community College are everywhere and go unused. ”Yet there are no spots for cars at all,” she said.
The rack locations vary from Kings Highway and East 9th Street/East 10th Street, all the way down Kings Highway to Ocean Avenue. Department of Transportation is also planting dozens of bike lockups on Ocean Parkway and Coney Island Avenue from Avenue P to Avenue R. The racks themselves will not be the enclosed type preferred by commuters who cycle to subway stations. They will be traditional U-shaped racks.
Scavo requested the DOT reconsider the proposal, and officials from the agency promised another look before any installations.
The following is an open letter from Steve Barrison to Borough President Marty Markowitz. Barrison is the president of Bay Improvement Group and executive vice president of the Small Business Congress of New York City. In the letter he criticizes the city for taking us in the wrong direction on congestion, and says we need to plan for more vehicles on the city’s roadways.
Marty,
YOU ARE RIGHT!
We now have bike lanes to handle estimated 1.5 – 2 million bikers! YET, we only have about 3,000 in the winter and we grow to 8,000 – 12,000 in nice weather and peak at 25,000 once or twice a year for special events….we won’t have 1.5 or 2 million bikers for many lifetimes, if ever!
We have over 850,000 vehicles a day that are part of NYC’s economic engine too, whether for small business, business owners, deliveries of good and services, health care, elderly, handicapped, children and those that aren’t well served by mass transit or that a vehicle is simple needed.
The reduction of travel lanes is causing more congestion, more back ups, making traffic movement impossible and yes, causing more pollution! Vehicles flowing give off much less pollutants than when stopped in traffic. Oh yea, and by the way Times Square is supposed to be chaotic, crowded, crazy and have a mix of everything, that is what is expected there at the ‘Crossroads of the World!” not some sprawling mass of tourists spilling out all over and hanging out on chairs and benches squeezing vehicles into bottle necks ands causing New Yorkers to just avoid it all together.
Allan Rosen is a 25-year veteran of the MTA, including a former Director of Bus Planning. He’s also a Sheepshead Bay-area resident and one of the original planners behind the B4 route. He previously criticized the MTA’s latest round of cuts, and here he questions the revisions made and the amount of thought given to residents’ objections.
On Friday, the MTA announced a set of revised service cuts that are expected to be voted on by Board members on Wednesday. The fact alone that only two weeks were allowed to review and evaluate all the public comments for well over 100 major route and service changes is ridiculous in itself when the MTA ordinarily makes only about ten route changes per year and studies each of those for an average of two years.
The MTA is like a doctor doing surgery without doing the proper diagnostic tests. Standard planning practice is to use passenger traffic counts to determine schedule changes and origin destination surveys, i.e. asking people where they are beginning and ending their trips to determine route changes or eliminations. Yet the MTA uses the former to do both. Also, like doctors, they are playing with people’s lives. There are four nursing homes and assisted living facilities along Emmons Avenue where the B4 is now proposed for weekend and partial weekday elimination, leaving some visitors with no mass transit option to visit their loved ones or employees to get to work. At the same time the City and the MTA are promoting “Leave your car home and use mass transit” campaigns.
The revision to B4 service will restore weekday service, but only from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Friday and reroutes the bus from Neptune Avenue to Avenue Z. They are starting at 2 p.m. because I told them about the high afternoon ridership which apparently they overlooked. What else are they overlooking? The move to Avenue Z could be a great idea or it could be a bad one. Long story short, you would only know by doing the proper diagnostic tests, i.e. proper surveys, which are not being done. They are only guessing which is something New Yorkers just cannot afford.
