Daniel Convissor's Website
Bus Lanes in New York City
Bus lanes will work very well in New York City. The congestion of too
many automobiles on the streets wreaks havoc on bus headways and running
times. NYC Transit published a report "Faster Than Walking? Street
Congestion and New York City Transit Buses," which cited, for example, the
M104 bus meets its headway about 50% of the time and takes 59% longer to
make its midday runs than its midnight runs. These congestion induced
problems increase transit capital and operating costs let alone wasting
massive amounts of bus riders' time. This report proposed on street bus
lanes as the solution and provided several examples of how it could be
done. NYCT asked the MTA board to approve a contract with one of the
local universities to study what it will take to implement a bus lane
network. I assume it was approved by the board.
The political obtacles are surmountable if the Transit Authority is
willing to work with the communities from the start, educate their riders
and the public in general of the dire need for the bus lanes and, most of
all, be persistent.
As far as Curatiba's prepayment/boarding tubes I remain skeptical of their
ability to make it in NYC. To resolve the delay of boarding stairs and
wheelchair accessability, NYCT is looking at creating the bus of the
future, which has low floors and runs on alternative fuels.
This article was written by me as a posting to the nyc.transit and
misc.transport.urban-transit newsgroups on 27 September 1995 in response to
someone talking about an article in New York Magazine which
compared NYC's bus system with the one in Curiatiba, Brazil.
PLEASE NOTE:
My name is Daniel Convissor.
You are viewing a sub-page of My Main MTA Page.
I am a public transportation advocate, not an MTA employee.
If you want to contact the MTA or want more information about them, you should go to The MTA's Official Web Site.
If you have feedback about the page you are currently reading, feel free to e-mail me.
This page is hosted by Daniel Convissor
Home Page: http://www.panix.com/~danielc/
Email: danielc@panix.com
This URL: http://www.panix.com/~danielc/nyc/buslane.htm
Last updated: 4 April 1999