Earlier this month, the Taxi and Limousine Commission approved the Group Ride Vehicle Pilot Program that will allow livery vans to make pickups along defunct bus routes. The vans will carry up to 20 people at a time and charge $2.00. Pickups will only be allowed at designated points, and the pilot program is rolling out on just three routes – the B23 (Kensington to Borough Park), the B71 (Park Slope, Carroll Gardens and Prospect Heights), and the B39, (Williamsburg into Manhattan).
If the program is successful, the TLC said, it could be expanded to other lines, including the Sheepshead Bay stretch of the B4 route that’s been all but eliminated.
Dear readers of Sheepshead Bites, I don’t think I need to expound upon the daily lunacies experienced by Q and B train riders. We’ve all had our share of sociopaths and weirdos, and, yes, we all love to share them like war stories, chests swelled with the glory of surviving the encounter.
If you haven’t heard of People Of Public Transit, make sure you have a lot of time to waste and then go check it out. The site chronicles much of this scintillating subculture, as well as general subway behavior faux pas.
Well, yesterday they published the above video caught on the Q train. I’ve seen this guy. Janelle F., who pointed it out to us via Facebook has definitely seen him. You’ve probably seen this guy, too.
So, you know, I’m republishing it. For the historical record and all. People in the future need to know these things happened.
Got a subway or bus story you’d like to tell the world about? Send it to us here.
Stern predicts that service cuts are here to stay as the MTA embarks on the long road to financial recovery, leaving many Brooklynites smothered by inefficient service, made worse by spiteful regulations that bar a private-sector alternative.
Blame for the agency’s malfeasance is targeted at its insulation from elected officials, and its financial situation has given way to a change in priorities, Stern argues. Where mass transit was once considered a vital public service, it’s too frequently seen now as a money-making enterprise. And like any business, deficits mean cuts and not the double down in commitment from the city and state that is required.
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.
There’s no shortage of anger against the MTA’s proposed bus cuts, and now one local bread-biz is slamming the agency’s half-baked idea.
Bread Plus is outraged about the MTA’s failure to provide adequate time to comment on the proposed cut to the B64 line, which runs in front of their business. So to let residents cut through their frustration, they’re baking a giant MTA bread loaf and inviting neighbors to slice away. The protest is not only against the cut, which they say will hurt their business, but also in support of a proposed bill by Assemblyman William Colton (Bensonhurst, Gravesend, Bath Beach, Dyker Heights and Midwood).
Colton’s eminently sensible bill requires the MTA to notify local community boards of changes that will affect their residents. The idea – so obvious that it’s hard to believe they weren’t already required to do so – will hopefully put useful information in the hands of community leaders, who will be more effective at disseminating to constituents.
“Unfortunately, the MTA was not mandated to do so before, and you see the horrendous results that happened,” Colton said. “The MTA must be receptive and responsible to the riders. Let them stop taking their many chauffeured limousines and see how they like walking the extra blocks they force their riders to do.”
The protest takes place today at 11 a.m. at the bus stop in front of the Bread Plus bakery at 2851 Harway Avenue (off of Bay 50th Street). The MTA is cutting B64 bus service along Harway Avenue south of 25th Avenue to Stillwell Avenue terminal. The cut will affect residents of several senior homes, as well as students and employees of John Dewey High School.
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.
B49 bus shelter gets demolished (Photo by Ray Johnson)
The B49 bus shelter located in front of 2900 Ocean Avenue has been demolished to make way for a brand new one.
The operator of the hydraulic excavator who was sitting in the cab of the truck, as if in the “calm after the storm,” told us that a new bus shelter will be installed by the next day.
When asked if there was something wrong with the shelter, or if there was some accident that prompted the replacement, he replied, “No, as far as I know, nothing was wrong with it. The city has a lot of money to spend.”
We will replace every bus shelter and install an additional 200 (3300 bus shelters total) by 2011. DOT is working closely with community leaders to identify the best locations for additional shelters to ensure that new locations best serve each community and the riding public. For the first time ever, all of our bus shelters will offer seating, especially important for the eldery (sic) and disabled. The City is also exploring exciting new technologies like Bluetooth, LCD screens and real-time bus arrival information.
The DOT tells us that the they are replacing every bus shelter in order to best serve each community. But to fully understand why the city would destroy a perfectly intact bus shelter (a day before Earth Day, nonetheless) to build a new one, we have to figure out the private enterprise that will benefit most from these contracts with the city.
This photograph was taken on Wednesday, April 21, 2010. Has anyone seen the new fancy bus shelter? Let us know, and shoot us a photograph if you have one.
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.
