Regular riders of the Bx12 bus who complain that most days the buses are crowded, and that there are not enough of them can look to the latest findings from both the Metropolitan Transportation Administration (MTA) and NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) for confirmation. Officials from both agencies updated residents and Bronx Community Board 7’s Traffic & Transportation committee at the last committee meeting before the summer break on Thursday, June 1.

 

Reading from a slide show presentation, one official said, “The Bx12 is the busiest bus route in The Bronx, and second busiest in NYC after the M15.” The M15 travels a north-south route on Manhattan’s east side from East 125^th Street to the Staten Island Ferry. The Bx12 travels an east-west route from Isham Street in Inwood to Pelham Bay Park. This route operates year-round but during the summer months additional Bx12s go all the way to Orchard Beach.

 

Other bus lines also travel through some of Fordham Road’s most congested areas, making matters worse for Bx12 riders. The Bx22 travels eastbound along Fordham Road from Valentine Avenue until it turns south after the Bronx Zoo, and then westbound on Fordham on its return trip. The Bx9 travels along some of Fordham Road’s busiest commercial stretch from near the Bronx Library Center before turning south at Southern Boulevard and then back again.

 

Add to all this private taxi services, delivery trucks, commuters, and residents driving in the area, and it is perhaps not surprising to learn that, sadly, 83 people were killed or significantly injured on Fordham Road between the Major Deegan Expressway and Boston Road from 2014 to 2018, according to the agency officials.

 

They said that although a dedicated bus lane initially helped buses make better time along Fordham Road, DOT found that traffic conditions have deteriorated because of the non-compliance of commercial trucks in the area. Along some parts of the curbside bus lanes, they said a two-hour window is given to delivery trucks to make their rounds with minimal disruptions to bus services. However, agency officials found that “existing curbside bus lanes are frequently blocked throughout the day.”

Also complicating matters are the legal “pick-ups and drop-offs which are allowed at any time regardless of bus lane hours” but which cause “further delays for buses needing to weave in and out of traffic,” according to city officials. The MTA’s Rob Thompson pointed to statistics tracking the performance of the Select Bus Service for the Bx12, which showed that after initial improvement and growth in route speed and ridership from 2007 to 2012, speeds started declining in 2014, and ridership since 2015.

 

Thompson said, “[This] continued for several years as the bus lanes became more and more compromised [with] more people parking or stopping in bus lanes, and then ridership also started to decline over the course of a number of years in response to that.”

 

DOT concluded that “the existing condition on Fordham Road does not work for any road user.” In March 2022, three alternatives were put forth for possible implementation.

 

A DOT official said, “Based on all the feedback that we received from the Fordham community, which includes bus riders, businesses, and other stakeholders, as well as the traffic analysis results that we’ve been going over, we’ve decided that we will be continuing to move forward with refining Alternative A, and not advancing Alternatives B and C into the next phases of design.”

 

Agency officials said MTA’s “Automated Camera Bus Lane Enforcement (ABLE)” program has proven to enhance bus traffic flows. They said buses have been equipped with cameras since 2019 to take photos of infractions by non-bus drivers in dedicated bus lanes. Originally implemented and limited to Select Bus Service (SBS) corridors in 2010, they said ABLE was used from November 18, 2022, to April 21, 2023, to catch bus lane violators on Fordham Road from Sedgwick to Southern Avenues.

They said with nearly 16,000 tickets issued, they found buses later traveled 4.7 percent faster than before. Impressively, 86 percent of drivers were ticketed with only one violation, 9 percent with two violations, and just 5 percent with three or more. The city points to these statistics as evidence that the ABLE program changed non-bus driver behavior and had a positive effect on bus speeds along Fordham Road.

 

During the month of June, agency officials said they will continue to present these findings to Bronx Community Boards 11, 5, and 6. The summer will be spent refining the design and taking in feedback from the affected communities.  They said City officials hope to start implementing the final plan by fall 2023.

 

Reaction to the plan was mixed and appeared to be split along the lines of bus riders versus car owners.

 

In the meantime, the MTA said the Bx12, Bx41, Bx19, Bx35, and Bx36 now all have automatic bus lane enforcement cameras activated.