Dear Mayor de Blasio: Why are you consigning bus riders to “miserable” service?
That’s what an all-star team of city and state pols is asking this week, as the group of two borough presidents, four state senators, 17 Assembly members and 15 Council members demands that the mayor reverse his plan to cut $8.4 million through next year on his own Better Buses initiative.
The cuts “all but ensure bus riders a grim return to miserable pre-COVID levels of service,” the group said in a letter to City Hall sent on June 10 and coordinated by Riders Alliance, the Straphangers Campaign and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. “The cuts also condemn the MTA to waste its increasingly scarce resources in stalled, inefficient street traffic. With public transit so fiscally imperiled and at the same time the basis of our city’s economic recovery, we implore you to take the critical step of investing in a more efficient and effective street network.”
The letter follows a demand by the MTA for the city to create 60 more miles of dedicated bus lanes and car-free busways this year — a demand that was met by a mayoral promise this week to create 20 miles of such infrastructure, which itself is far more than the city has ever created, even in its best year.
The letter reminded de Blasio — who has pledged an equitable recovery — that bus riders are among the poorest transit users, and 75 percent of bus riders are people of color. During the crisis, bus service has declined the least of any transit service because so many essential workers ride buses. The decrease in traffic during the pandemic has allowed the MTA to provide higher-quality service than before, a situation that will likely change as traffic returns and the cash-strapped agency has to make tough choices.
Bus lanes can help.
“Sixty new miles of bus priority along busy commercial streets in neighborhoods throughout the city and along corridors adjacent to subway routes will support an equitable recovery,” the letter concluded. “Permitting unplanned traffic congestion to roar back will paralyze the economy. Given the immense benefits of better bus service to essential workers, emergency response, and air quality, the choice is obvious to us.”
We reached out to City Hall and will update this story when we hear back. The full text of the letter is below.
Bus Letter to de Blasio by Gersh Kuntzman on Scribd
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June 12, 2020 at 01:50AM
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Pols Ramp Up Demand for De Blasio to Help Long-Suffering Bus Riders - Streetsblog New York
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