Eyes on the Street: Bus Lanes Are Coming to Webster Avenue

Select Bus Service lanes are being painted on Webster Avenue in the Bronx. Above, looking north from Claremont Parkway. Photo: Stephen Miller

The Bronx is set to receive its second Select Bus Service route along Webster Avenue and Melrose Avenue. Within a quarter-mile of the route, 61 percent of residents commute by transit, according to DOT, and nearly three-quarters of households are car-free. While buses won’t run in the center lanes — an alignment that Chicago is pursuing on Ashland Avenue because it leads to fewer conflicts with car traffic — the dedicated transit lanes will extend for more than four miles, from East 167th Street to East Gun Hill Road.

Completion of the bus lanes and off-board fare collection machines is scheduled to wrap up soon, with service beginning this summer. Next year, DOT is expecting to install bus bulbs — sidewalk expansions that provide more space for passengers and faster boardings at bus stops. Extension of this Select Bus Service route south to the RFK Triborough Bridge and LaGuardia Airport, meanwhile, is still in the study phase.

  • Daphna

    125th Street from Morningside Avenue (9th Ave) to 2nd Avenue could have been getting on offset bus lane just like the one pictured on Webster Avenue but NY State Senator Bill Perkins fought off this great amenity that would have benefited his constituents. Bill Perkins and just a few people (very very few) from community Boards 9 and 10 and from the BID were loud and vocal against the SBS; most of them did not even know or understand the plan, but fought against it anyway. Now the plan may be installed from east of Lenox (6th Ave) to 2nd Ave but this might be delayed indefinitely. Harlem could have had the dedicated bus lane for the longer length of 125th Street installed later this summer if community so-called “leaders” had not fought it. These leaders should be working to bring these positive changes to their neighborhoods and should be informing themselves so that they understand the plans and should then to try to truly educate the community instead of using scare tactics against such positive changes.

  • Andrew

    Service begins this Sunday.

    Thank goodness the lanes aren’t in the center – a narrow strip of pavement (it would have to be narrow, given the width of Webster itself) in the middle of the road is hardly a pleasant place to wait for the bus, and riders won’t have to wait for the light to cross Webster to catch the bus every time they ride.

    Successful center-running BRT systems are generally on much wider streets than this.

  • Bronxite

    Lanes should have terminated at Melrose Ave and E 149th Street. Currently ends just short of reaching a rapid transit station.

  • Bronxite

    Lanes should have terminated at Melrose Ave and E 149th Street. Currently ends just short of reaching a rapid transit station.

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