BRT Moving Ahead but City Pushes Back the Timeline a Bit

12:10 PM EDT on July 13, 2007

Dept. of Transportation Comissioner Janette Sadik-Khan tells NY1 Transit reporter Bobby Cuza that New York City and the MTA still plan to implement a Bus Rapid Transit program, with or without Albany's approval of congestion pricing.

In an e-mail to Streetsblog, Cuza also adds:

They're clearly going back and giving the program some more thought. She said they're now aiming to have "one or two" routes up and running by next spring, instead of by this fall, which had been the timeline former DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall announced last year, but she was very short on details. Sadik-Khan said the first one or two routes will definitely incorporate signal prioritization and off-board fare collection, but she couldn't tell me exactly how off-board fare collection might work in a MetroCard world which, of course, is what we've got for the foreseeable future. I also asked her about physically separated bus lanes and she said that would not likely be part of the initial phase.

Aaron Naparstek

AARON NAPARSTEK is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparsteks journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is the author of "Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage" (Villard, 2003), a book of humorous haiku poetry inspired by the endless motorist sociopathy observed from his apartment window. Prior to launching Streetsblog, Naparstek worked as an interactive media producer, pioneering some of the Web's first music web sites, online communities, live webcasts and social networking services. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Naparstek is a co-founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community group and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. You can find more of his work here: http://www.naparstek.com.

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