Phase III of the City’s reopening plan is set to go into effect on Monday, Jul. 6, incorporating personal care services like manicuring and tattooing. Indoor dining has been postponed because of the recent rise in coronavirus cases in cities which reopened indoor dining too soon. In June, Mayor Bill de Blasio, in conjunction with the City’s Department of Transportation (DOT) announced that nine major bus lane projects were underway in preparation for reopening, including one major bus project along the 149th Street corridor in the Bronx.

 

The corridor incorporates four bus routes, Bx2, Bx4, Bx17 and Bx19, and caters to 55,000 daily riders. These bus routes serve vital connections across the Bronx to ten subway lines 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, A, B, C and D, as well as to The Hub, Lincoln Medical Center and Hostos Community College. The new bus lane will serve these critical transit connections along East 149^th Street. “As New Yorkers head back to work, they’ll be relying on the bus more than ever, and I’m proud to offer them faster and more reliable options,” the mayor said.

 

The racial inequalities identified during the COVID-19 pandemic pushed City officials to see what could be done to redress the imbalance. DOT identified that 79 percent of the City’s frontline workers were Black, Hispanic or mixed race, and that this bus corridor was a major carrier of essential workers, with roughly half of frontline workers commuting during off-peak hours. In fact, out of all NYC transit riders, 38 percent are frontline workers, including nurses and medical workers, transit workers, postal/courier workers, and grocery store workers.

 

The 149th Street bus project aims to increase bus safety, speeds, and reliability, and address concerns over the growth in vehicular traffic, potentially caused by those who choose to drive rather than use public transport, due to COVID-19 concerns. “We’ve got to give people confidence to come back to mass transit,” the mayor said at the launch of the various bus improvement projects in June.

 

The bus improvements aim to keep buses evenly spaced along the route, minimize crowding and allow social distancing onboard. They will also allow emergency vehicles to use bus lanes, thereby improving response times. The Lincoln Medical Center made 149th Street a key corridor for transporting frontline workers during the COVID-19 crisis, and it became clear that a better bus service would get frontline workers to their jobs quicker, and on-time both during and after the crisis.

 

As part of the East 149th Street bus improvement project, which began in June, DOT is implementing “offset” bus lanes for most of the 2.7-mile corridor from Southern Boulevard to River Avenue. An offset bus lane is a travel lane for buses one lane away from the curb. This makes parking or standing at the curb still possible. Double parking, or stopping of any kind, is not permitted in an offset bus lane. Meanwhile, a curbside bus lane is a travel lane for buses at the curb. Parking and standing at the curb are not permitted during the hours the bus lane is in effect.

 

DOT analyzed the 149th Street bus routes and identified that slow bus speeds, high traffic volumes between Exterior Street and Grand Concourse, double parking, weaving and merging of traffic were the key issues which needed to be addressed to improve the service. In terms of bus speeds within the Bronx Community Board 4 district, DOT discovered that buses on 149th Street move at walking speed or slower with eastbound traffic moving at an average speed of 3.3 miles per hour from Exterior Street to Grand Concourse between 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., and westbound traffic traveling at an average speed of 2.9 miles per hour from Grand Concourse to Gerard Avenue between 6:00 a.m. and 6 p.m. These are bottlenecks that cause back-ups across the entire bus route.

 

DOT identified that each traffic direction had two travel lanes and one parking lane and buses tended to get stuck in heavy traffic at all times of the day, causing delays and resulting in two to three buses arriving at the same time. This also hampered the flow of emergency response vehicles. In addition to the new bus lane, certain streets along the 149th Street bus route will be widened therefore.

 

DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg said, “As New York City emerges from the difficult days of COVID-19, our commitment to faster and more reliable bus service has never been more important, as buses serve a critical role, both in communities hit hard from the pandemic, and by essential front-line workers”. She added, “We are proud to undertake transformational work on some of the busiest bus corridors in the City, including 149th Street in the Bronx. We look forward to working with our partners at the MTA to get these transformational changes finished this year.”

 

With most of the City bus projects slated for other boroughs, Norwood News asked the mayor’s office why that was, given the Bronx is one of the least-connected boroughs, especially when it comes to east-west subway connectivity. A representative from the Mayor’s office said the 149th Street bus project is a major step in making the Bronx better connected, adding that the mayor hopes to soon expand the program even further. He also said that even though it’s just one project, the 2.7-mile bus route stretch that’s being added in the Bronx represents more mileage than what is being added in Brooklyn or Manhattan.

 

“We’re going to do everything we can do,” the mayor said. “But, we’re always going to tell you what we think we can do right now, and then as we see the next opportunity to do more, we will, of course, do more.”

 

More information about the 149th Street bus project can be accessed by clicking on the the following latest presentation.