NYC’s coming congestion fee: It’s time for a bus renaissance in the city

In February 2019, as Albany debated congestion pricing, transit workers and riders stood outside the Barclays Center, demanding bus priority lanes on Flatbush Ave.

Now, with congestion pricing almost here, we urge leaders at the MTA and in city government to embrace this once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform bus service and provide faster, more reliable options as the transportation landscape shifts.

Congestion pricing will cut the number of cars traveling within and toward Manhattan’s Central Business District. Many drivers will leave their cars at home, opening up scarce space on our streets, and look for faster, more reliable alternatives. There will be an opening and a demand for much better bus service citywide than we’ve ever known.

As policymakers in cities around the world that implemented congestion pricing know, improving bus service is the quickest way to offer options to drivers getting out of their cars. London added 17% more bus service, buying 300 new buses and painting miles of new bus lanes. When the Bloomberg administration proposed congestion pricing in 2007, better buses were the carrot to accompany the stick of the new charge.

To make better service possible for new and existing bus riders and the bus operators who move them, our leaders must put politics aside and prioritize buses on our streets.

Congestion pricing is the biggest change in traffic management since Robert Moses built the highways that crisscross our neighborhoods. For the aging subway system, it cannot come soon enough. But unlike in the Moses era, when wealthy suburbs dominated planning, leaders today must prioritize neighborhood residents, low-income workers and underserved communities.

Making the most of congestion pricing’s start means taking the opportunity to fix the subway and make our streets fairer and more effective arteries for all New Yorkers by putting buses, bus riders, and bus operators first.

Back in 2007, the city’s foundational PlaNYC report lamented: “New York City has the highest bus ridership in the United States, but the slowest buses.” It promised bold corrective action: “New York City and the MTA will launch five Bus Rapid Transit routes, one in each borough.” Sadly, the improvements that came with Select Bus Service were accompanied by other, opposing trends. If anything, bus speeds have gotten worse citywide.

This year, with congestion pricing rolling out, the city’s “New” New York panel offered a multi-pronged approach to increase bus speeds. Panelists advised more busways like the successful one on 14th St. that boosted speed and ridership by more than 30% and urged compliance with the Streets Plan law, which mandated 20 miles of bus lanes and busways in 2022 and 30 miles per year starting with this year.

While labor and materials shortages got the Streets Plan off to a slow start, with congestion pricing coming, it’s time to kick bus priority into high gear. During state budget negotiations last spring, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, when urged to add more bus service, objected that more buses would get stuck in gridlock without more priority on city streets.

For his part, Mayor Adams has championed delivering better for everyday New Yorkers, including millions of bus riders and tens of thousands of transit workers. He set out to exceed the requirements of the Streets Plan law, “revolutionize how New York City residents move around New York City” and “create a Bus Rapid Transit system that doesn’t simply connect communities to Manhattan but to communities within boroughs and interboroughs.”

As the spine of Brooklyn, which also connects Manhattan’s Central Business District with the beach in the Rockaways, Flatbush Ave. is an obvious choice. One million New Yorkers live in the seven community boards along Flatbush. The majority of nearby households have no car and 70% of workers ride public transit to their jobs. The corridor exemplifies New York’s diversity: 44% of residents are Black, 31% white, 12% Latino and 7% Asian.

Flatbush buses are slow, with major portions of the route too often moving at less than a walking pace. Traffic congestion and double parking waste bus riders’ precious time up and down the corridor. But on Flatbush and other major routes throughout the city, real change for bus riders and bus operators is possible in the next year given enough political will.

With congestion pricing coming soon, now is the time to move transformative bus priority projects like Flatbush Ave. forward. At this pivotal time, riders and workers alike look to our leaders to use congestion pricing as the opportunity we need to make a brand new start and deliver the much better bus service all New Yorkers deserve.

Plum is executive director of Riders Alliance. Patafio is vice president, buses, of Transport Workers Union Local 100.