Bus Rapid Transit

BRT Moving Ahead but City Pushes Back the Timeline a Bit

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.

By Aaron Naparstek

12:10 PM EDT on July 13, 2007

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, Naparstek's 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. He was also one of the original cast members of the "War on Cars" podcast. You can find more of his work on his website.