MTA Chief Means Business on Getting Cars Out of Bus Lanes

Not in service, but still smiling! NYC Transit's hybrid ECO Saver IV. (Michael Coughlan/NYC Transit)

New Yorkers fed up with the city's overcrowded, snail's-pace buses can perhaps indulge in some guarded optimism now that new MTA "czar" Jay Walder is promising to improve the system. Walder was formerly the transit guru in London, where, he says, "You carry nearly twice as many people in the bus system as you do on the Underground." In New York, the opposite is true, and Walder wants to change that while simultaneously reducing bus overcrowding. Is this guy crazy?

The Times recently rode the bus with Walder in Brooklyn, and, as a car parked in the bus-only lane forced the bus to merge into traffic, he explained his radical bus philosophy:

What I’d like you to think about is a train system with rubber-tire vehicles. We’re on a bus right now where every seat is full. How many people are on this bus? Seventy-five? But we haven’t prioritized this bus any differently than a car which has one person in it... If I put train tracks down the street, you wouldn’t park your car on them. If I said this is a bus lane, somehow it becomes fair game. One person’s use of a road impacts upon another person’s use of the road. My point is, if we have to make a choice, make the choice for the bus, not for the car.

Suck on that motorists! But how will Walder turn the beat around? As previously mentioned, he wants the city to impose stricter fines on bus-lane blockers, install cameras on buses to take photos of violators, and finance a public advertising campaign to educate the public about bus lanes. And in a pilot program on Fordham Road in the Bronx, buses can send signals to traffic lights to delay red signals, allowing a bus to make it through the intersection! Next up: tractor beams to toss cars out of the bus lanes.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By John Del Signore in News on October 20, 2009 12:57 PM

Comments [rss]

Gwinny

Hope they implement this on Madison Avenue in Midtown, where tons of cars regularly ignore the 1000 bus lane signs and markers.

potatomato33

This is already being implemented in Singapore, and it works.

http://www.straitstimes.com/Free/Story/STIStory_237829.html

youngpro

pic...how appropriate: 'NOT IN SERVICE'

gowanut

These are great ideas, but:

<ul><li> They can make the fine $1,000,000 and it won't matter because the NYPD who drive to work every day and spend all day driving won't enforce the law anymore than they do now.

</li><li> Camera systems are a whole other can of worms</li>
</ul>I'm all for 10 foot tires though.

jt10000

Great ideas from the MTA chief and also from Spirit of 76!!!!

whitecastlerock

Problem solving suggestions like this reinforce why they pay this guy the big bucks...

pinball29

Taxis picking up or dropping off should be exempt from this. You are not going to want to get out of a cab and find yourself in the path of an oncoming bus.

Nanny Bloombergs NYPD must be salivating over all the new frivolous tickets theyll get to write. I can see the 'crackdowns' coming now.

moonbeam

Total bs. Taxis should be fined double. There's absolutely no reason anyone "needs" to be dropped off in a bus stop.

Noreaster76

I have no patience or sympathy for cabs. They are the epitome of selfishness, and they can drop off their fares in proper places just like everyone else.

Mordicai

Eff drivers, yay mass transit. Kudos to reasonable ideas.

TrippinJoJo

this sounds too practical for NYC.

hta

"buses can send signals to traffic lights to delay red signals, allowing a bus to make it through the intersection!"

why bother with the extra technology/money, i see buses completely ignore red lights all the time

grizzzly

Better yet, DOT sells the devices to motorists at $10,000 each to finance improvements. I'm too rich to wait at red lights!

grizzzly

I personally am very fond of the idea of more bus and bike only streets. Subtracting one street that isn't a major car artery won't cause much more traffic, but removing that many buses from the flow will certainly reduce it.

Kevin Walsh

Dedicated high speed bus lanes are the way to go; subway tunneling is no longer possible given the time and cost.

www.forgotten-ny.com

CR

This unfortunately won't fly as the cabbies will go apesh*t once they get ticketed. "I was just dropping someone off." Entitled NYers won't understand why they can't be dropped off where they want, and why they might have to walk a half-a-block when they paid for a cab. Being a cog in the wheel by not slowing everything down due to a sense of entitlement is alien to more NYers - it's all "ME ME ME."

scoboco

Here's the order of who/what should get preference:

Pedestrians

Bicycles

Mass transit

Any sort of animal, including pigeons

Partybikes

Trolleys

Cars

hotstepper

hey new jack, bright ideas are not welcome at the MTA.

Noreaster76

Jay Walder, you can count on my help if you need it. You are the man. God speed.

Spirit of 76

I've got a better idea. Monster buses with those ten foot tires! You block the bus lane, you're going to get your car crushed. And it would be fun for pedestrians to watch, too.

moonbeam

But it would cost us a fortune to replace all those squad cars...

jibbly

BUSASAUROUS REX - CRUSHING ILLEGALLY PARKED CARS IN A BUS LANE NEAR YOU YOU YOU!!!

One negative is that it might promote hill-billyism and massive consumption of chili fries and billy beer.