Source: Flickr/haagenjerrys
Once again, the MTA has announced plans to raise fares and tolls – this time by 2 percent a year for the next two years. The 30-day MetroCard will definitely jump from $112 to $116.50, but the MTA is deliberating on whether to raise the price of the single ride MetroCard to $2.75, or keep it the same, effectively eliminating the bonus on the 30-day card.
Here’s a chart via Gothamist:
As you can see, both options kind of suck.
Fares on the LIRR and Metro-North will also see varying increases, as will bridge tolls – including the dreaded Verrazano-Narrows Bridge toll, which may jump a dollar. You can read more about that on the MTA website. The MTA plans to make a decision in March after hearing from commuters next month.
If you’d like to tell the MTA to take their fare hikes and shove it, be at the Walt Whitman Theater at Brooklyn College, 2900 Campus Road (near the Flatbush junction), on Thursday, December 11. Registration is open from 5pm to 9pm. The hearing begins at 6pm.
Comments can also be submitted online through the MTA website, or by letter to MTA Government Affairs, 347 Madison Ave., New York, 10017.
The famed Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge, which connects Queens and Manhattan. Source: Wikipedia
THE COMMUTE: In Part 1, we asked if the real purpose for the new 25 MPH speed limit is increased safety or increased revenue. If the city is as concerned with increased safety as much as it claims, let us look at some traffic safety hazards the city has not been paying adequate attention to.
It took more than two years to repair the lighting on the Belt Parkway between Flatbush Avenue and Knapp Street after Superstorm Sandy. Dark dangerous stretches of highways with non-reflective exit signs were a problem long before Sandy, and will continue to be a problem.
Street markings are allowed to virtually disappear before being repainted. Lanes mysteriously merge into each other without any notice, and left and right turn lanes appear out of nowhere, forcing motorists to try to switch lanes in heavy traffic or make a turn they didn’t want to make in the first place, and risk getting lost. These are accidents just waiting to happen.
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Source: NYC.gov/DOT
THE COMMUTE: The 25 mile per hour (MPH) default speed limit is now the law. What proponents of this legislation fail to realize is that with a 30 MPH speed limit, the average speed limit on city streets is only 20 MPH or less. A maximum speed limit of 25 MPH will bring the average speed limit down to 12 MPH in most cases. That means that your average automobile and truck trip (yes, we forget about trucks, don’t we?) will now take almost twice as long. That is if everyone complies, and of course few will.
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Source: changeschanging / Flickr
THE COMMUTE: Last week, a one-and-a-quarter-mile afternoon trip took my friend one hour and 20 minutes using two buses. He waited 28 minutes for the B68 and another 30 minutes for the B82 in Coney Island. Three B68s came at once, and he just missed the B82. BusTime obviously is not being used to regulate the buses. What the MTA is doing, however, to help buses adhere to their schedule is putting pressure on bus drivers not to be late. What other explanation could there be for the following?
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The MTA’s East Side Access plan. Source: mta.info
THE COMMUTE: The big news headlines this week were that subway ridership reached a new record level on September 23rd, with more than 6.1 million paying swipes, and the budget shortfall in the MTA’s new capital plan. (Notice I did not say paying customers as the MTA did, because I consider a customer as someone making a round trip. The correct term for someone making a one way trip is “passenger.” However, the MTA refuses to use that term as if it were a dirty word and now considers everyone a “customer.”) The headline only refers to subway riders; bus ridership reached its peak ten years ago.
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Heads up to anyone who might be riding the subway late tonight with a MetroCard that’s low on funds — you better have some cash on you, just in case.
All MetroCard vending machines will experience an outage because of a system upgrade on Saturday, October 25 from 2-6am, during which time no credit or debit card purchase will be accepted. You can still use cash, though.
The MTA says they expect the system to be back up and accepting cards no later than 6am.
Source: Wikipedia
THE COMMUTE: New Yorkers must wait until 2023 for the completion of East Side Access, a project that will improve LIRR access to Manhattan, free up trackage at Penn Station to improve rail service to the Northeast Bronx, but degrade LIRR service for Brooklynites. It is a project first conceived in the 1950s and will have taken 70 years to complete by the time it opens. Its budget, originally $4.3 billion, now exceeds $10.8 billion. The scaled back Fulton Transit Center, a project costing $4.2 billion $1.4 billion is also way behind schedule and should finally be fully completed in December of this year.
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THE COMMUTE: In parts 1 and 2, we specifically discussed routing deficiencies in Brooklyn and hinted at similar deficiencies in Staten Island and Queens that are even more severe. This week, we will discuss…
Routing Problems In Borough Park And Bensonhurst Go Back To The 1940s!
There has been a need for through Fort Hamilton Parkway and 13th Avenue routes since the 1940s. Instead, one route fulfills the need for two. However, there was an obstacle that prevented a through 13th Avenue route. There was no bridge over the Sea Beach cut at 62nd Street until 1937, which separated the two portions of 13th Avenue. A trolley line operated over the former B1 route along 86th Street, 13th Avenue and Bay Ridge Avenue to access the ferry to Manhattan since the 1890s. The B16 bus route was added in the early 1930s along Fort Parkway and 13th Avenue to Ocean Avenue, a logical route back then. Israel Zion Hospital, a small institution located at 49th Street and 10th Avenue, did not require a north-south bus route. However, during the last 70 years it has greatly expanded, serving all of southern Brooklyn and changed its name to Maimonides Medical Center. Still, it has no north-south bus service.
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An old bus map, clearly a relic from the Cenozoic era. Photo by Allan Rosen. Click to enlarge
THE COMMUTE: Last week, we discussed bus routing inefficiencies in Sheepshead Bay. I am going to venture a guess that Sheepshead Bay residents have a need to leave the area on occasion (although Ned may disagree) and are interested in routing deficiencies in our adjacent neighborhoods.
The Bus Routing System Was Never Planned
Many of the routing problems exist today because the bus system just incrementally developed over time by route combinations and extensions and absorption of former trolley lines. This is what caused today’s inefficient and indirect bus routing. In fact, while doing research for my Master’s thesis, I learned that when the B21 was created in 1946, bus riders protested in front of Coney Island Hospital on the first day, that the new route did not meet their needs.
Yet it remained in place for 32 more years, and if not for me it may have still been in existence today, 68 years later not serving our needs. More likely, had it not been incorporated into the present B1 and B4, it would have either been discontinued without a replacement or else become a shuttle route between Ocean Parkway and Kingsborough Community College, thus reducing mobility even further.
Other areas still have non-functioning routes, such as the B21. That is because the MTA does not do comprehensive bus studies, because the ones they have done in the past failed due to their unwillingness to compromise with communities. It was always the MTA’s way or the highway. Only recently have they restarted that effort with studies in Co-Op City and Northeast Queens at the behest of local elected officials.
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Passengers prepare to board the Q35 at Riis Park Beach en route to Flatbush Avenue. Source: Ryan Janek Wolowski | Flickr
THE COMMUTE: Regular readers of The Commute know that my favorite topic is the need for better bus routes. I have written about this on numerous occasions. We also often hear about reliability issues, a subject we have also addressed.
The big push now by the MTA, the mayor, and New York City administrators is to greatly expand Select Bus Service (SBS), conceived more than 10 years ago, and first arriving in Brooklyn last year on the B44. The MTA recently sponsored a discussion at the Transit Museum about their plans to greatly expand SBS. I did not attend because I heard their spiel many times before. That SBS makes service better for everyone. Buses travel faster and everyone benefits. Ninety-nine percent of the SBS riders love it. We can’t afford to build any more subway lines (except in Manhattan, of course), so this is the answer for the next generation. I knew there would be no opportunity to challenge these claims.
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