Queue Jumps: A Simple Fix to Speed Up NYC’s Buses

By David Meyer
Oct 5, 2016

With the City Council set to take on NYC’s declining bus service tomorrow morning, here’s a look at one of the many strategies DOT and the MTA can employ to speed up the city’s slowest-in-the-nation buses: queue jumps.

Queue jumps give buses a green light before other vehicles at an intersection, often via a dedicated “queue jump lane” that allows buses to skip to the front of the line. Using footage from Seattle, Streetfilms’ Clarence Eckerson put together this short to demonstrate the concept.

There are already a few queue jumps in NYC — on the M86 Select Bus Service route, for example — but there should be a lot more of them. In its recent Mobility Report, DOT showed that it can now pinpoint specific street segments where buses get slowed down. These are locations where targeted improvements like queue jumps can make a big difference.

If DOT and the MTA think big about how to turn around NYC bus service, they’ll identify intersections all over town where buses should get a queue jump.

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This short bus lane segment on East 97th Street lets M96 bus bypass the bottleneck preceding the traffic light.

Queue Jumps for Buses — The Ethical Way to Cut in Line

By David Meyer | Apr 25, 2017

Cutting in line is pretty much unacceptable behavior, but there's one exception to the rule: A bus carrying dozens people should go to the front of the line at traffic lights. That, as TransitCenter explains in a new video, is a "queue jump" - and NYC needs more of them.

All-Door Boarding Works. Why Won’t the MTA Commit to It on Every Bus?

By David Meyer | Oct 7, 2016

Buses on the M86 are moving faster and people have noticed — ridership on the crosstown route is on the upswing again after declining for years. The improved performance is due mainly to two changes the MTA and DOT launched last year: off-board fare collection with all-door boarding, and “queue jumps” at two locations that let buses move […]

Targeted bus lanes can speed up service in congested areas. Photo: NYC DOT

The Top 10 Bus Corridors Where DOT Should Make Streets Work For Transit

By David Meyer | Feb 9, 2017

New York City bus service is the slowest in the nation and riders are abandoning the bus in droves, even as the city's population steadily increases. To win people back over to the bus, the advocates at the Bus Turnaround Coalition have pinpointed 10 routes where DOT can make service faster and more reliable.

It’s Time to Think Big to Turn Around Lousy Bus Service in NYC

By David Meyer | Jul 20, 2016

Bus service in New York is getting worse and losing riders, and unless policy makers step in and make systemwide improvements, those trends may accelerate in a vicious cycle. New York can turn things around, advocates say, with a suite of policies to get buses moving quickly and reliably again. Today a coalition of transit advocates unveiled […]

While MTA Waffles on Proven Solutions, New Yorkers Continue to Abandon the Bus

By Ben Fried | Feb 22, 2017

MTA ridership numbers for 2016 are in, and it's clear that New Yorkers continue to abandon slow, unreliable bus service. If the MTA and NYC DOT don't act urgently to improve bus speeds and reliability, warn transit advocates, they risk "a downward spiral of increasing congestion, slower travel speeds, and a slower New York."

First Look: Woodhaven BRT Could Set New Standard for NYC Busways

By Ben Fried | Nov 6, 2014

NYC DOT and the MTA have developed three design concepts for Select Bus Service on Woodhaven Boulevard and Cross Bay Boulevard in southeast Queens, and two of them go further than previous SBS routes to keep cars from slowing down buses [PDF]. All of the options include some measures to shorten crossing distances for pedestrians […]