Eyes on the Street: NYC’s Newest Bus Zones on 23rd Street, Jay Street

New dedicated bus lanes on 23rd Street, where Select Bus Service is set to launch in the fall. Photo: Stephen Miller
The new bus lane on 23rd Street, where Select Bus Service is set to launch in the fall. Photo: Stephen Miller

DOT crews recently put down new terra cotta paint for buses on 23rd Street in Manhattan and Jay Street in Brooklyn.

In the fall, Select Bus Service will bring faster bus service to the M23’s 15,000 daily riders with dedicated lanes, off-board payment, and consolidated bus stops. The bus lanes are set to run eastbound from Ninth Avenue to Second Avenue and westbound from mid-block between First and Second Avenue to Eighth Avenue.

The red lanes are here already — Streetsblog alum Stephen Miller snapped this photo of 23rd Street looking west from Seventh Avenue.

And in Downtown Brooklyn, there’s fresh red paint on Jay Street at the long bus stop alongside the Myrtle Avenue plaza:

The redesign of Jay Street allows cyclists to pass around buses while remaining protected by a wide buffer zone. Photo: Brandon Chamberlin
The curbside bus stop at Myrtle, with red paint to discourage placard abusers. Photo: Brandon Chamberlin

DOT’s redesign of Jay Street calls for bus drivers to pull across the new protected bike lane to access this curbside bus stop. The red paint treatment is an extra measure that wasn’t included in DOT’s renderings of the redesign [PDF]. The more the city does to ward off the parking placard abusers drawn to any available curb space on Jay Street, the better. Those plastic posts in the buffer zone may also help keep placard holders out of the bus stop.

DOT did not include red lanes or flexible plastic posts in its original renderings of the Jay Street bike lane. Image: DOT
The red paint is an addition to the design DOT showed previously. Image: DOT

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

Eyes on the Street: West 125th Street Gets Its Bus Lanes

By Stephen Miller |
It’s finally happening. More than a year after bus lanes were installed on 125th Street east of Lenox Avenue, the first signs have appeared that DOT will soon be painting red bus-only lanes in West Harlem. The first round of camera-enforced bus lanes, from Lenox to Second Avenue, have helped speed local buses on 125th Street between 7 and […]

Eyes on the Street: Select Bus Lanes Appear on 125th Street

By Brad Aaron |
Following the installation of off-board fare payment machines last month, Select Bus Service lanes are going in on 125th Street. Joseph Cutrufo of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign posted this pic on Twitter yesterday. SBS lanes were originally intended to be installed between Morningside and Second Avenues, but DOT chopped off the bus lanes west of Lenox […]

Eyes on the Street: Painting SBS Bus Lanes on Nostrand Avenue

By Stephen Miller |
Brooklyn’s B44 bus carried more than 12.5 million passengers last year between the base of the Williamsburg Bridge and Sheepshead Bay, making it the city’s fifth-busiest bus route. But the B44, which runs primarily along Nostrand Avenue, is notoriously unreliable and spends less than half of each run in motion. Half the time, it’s stuck in traffic or at bus […]