The Bus Mayor has become the Bust Mayor.
The Department of Transportation has presented just six bus projects through the first seven months of 2024 — a total of only seven miles of bus priority lanes, and that's if all of the projects go in as planned.
Seven miles would be the lowest bus lane mileage installed since 2018, and would also be less than one-quarter of the 30 miles the city needs to paint under the Streets Master Plan law, which required 150 miles of dedicated bus lanes in five years.
The seven miles of announced projects is the current maximum of what the DOT has on its plate for 2024, so the agency could still come in under that number. Here are the projects that the city has presented for installation this year:
- Shifting the curbside bus lane on Second Avenue between East 59th Street and Houston Street to an offset bus lane (2.9 miles)
- A busway on Tremont Avenue between Third Avenue and Southern Boulevard (0.6 miles) and bus lanes on other pieces of the corridor totaling about 0.9 miles
- Bus lanes on 96th Street between West End Avenue and Central Park West, and between Fifth and Second avenue (slightly less than 2 miles)
- An offset bus lane on Pike Street from Delancey Street to South Street (0.7 miles)
The seven miles would be less than half of what the DOT installed in 2023, when the agency put in 15.7 miles of bus lanes. And it's even fewer than the 11.9 miles of bus lanes the city put down in 2022.
The backsliding has not gone unnoticed.
"It's disappointing to learn that bus lane installation has slowed down significantly during the Adams administration," said Regional Plan Association Vice President for Transportation Tiffany-Ann Taylor. "At a time where we are seeing record highs of congestion, the city should be prioritizing this type of transportation policy to ensure reliable, accessible, and diverse options for mobility for more New Yorkers."
In addition to those four projects, the DOT has also finally revealed options for a bus lane on Flatbush Avenue between Livingston Street and Flatbush Avenue, but that project is for 2025, and has announced its intention to do a bus priority project in 2025 on Queens Boulevard between Hillside Avenue and Springfield Boulevard.
The DOT also has sketches of bus priority projects it included in its Connecting the Core plan that was supposed to guide the city's street redesigns after the implementation of congestion pricing. The agency has said that those projects will happen, but the agency has not presented specific proposals yet, making installation in 2024 difficult.
Community boards remain on summer break through August, meaning any Connecting the Core proposal would need to be presented in September at the earliest and then installed before the end of painting season when the weather gets too cold to paint the street, typically in November.
Bus riders who deal with slow commutes could really use the help.
"The bus is busy everyday, it's full everyday," said Alex Gean about the Church Avenue B35 that he rides across Brooklyn. "It always gets stuck in traffic, it doesn’t matter what day it is or what hour it is."
The culprit for the slow buses there was a familiar one.
"The bus gets caught in traffic when people double-park," said B35 rider Nick Thomas.
As the city dithers on bus priority, speeds have tanked and are back to their pre-pandemic average of 8.1 miles per hour. Meanwhile, bus speeds in lower Manhattan have cratered to under 7 miles per hour on 81 percent of buses that run during the afternoon rush.
Mayor Adams talked big when he took office in 2022, pledging to install 150 miles of bus lanes in his first term, which was even more than is required under the Streets Master Plan. The mayor also had a highly touted Transit Improvement Summit with MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber, in which the pair announced a series of bus priority projects.
But Adams has never been the full-throated champion for bus riders that he said he would be. After the 2022 summit with the MTA, which identified Tremont Avenue, Flatbush Avenue, Livingston Street, upper Broadway and Second Avenue as priority corridors for immediate improvements, the city has only finished a project on Livingston Street and hasn't even revealed a plan for upper Broadway.
Almost three full years into the Adams administration, the lack of progress on the first tranche of big ideas has stalled any kind of forward momentum for better bus service, advocates say.
"This is the problem with getting nothing done, whether it's politics or bureaucracy, or both," said Riders Alliance Director of Policy and Communication Danny Pearlstein. "How do we move forward if we can't even tread water? We're sinking."
The Adams administration's shortcomings on bus lane construction affects more than just long-suffering riders. Just last week, the MTA noted that it won't save $10 million from the expected faster bus service in Lower Manhattan that congestion pricing would deliver.
Adams's declared opponents in the 2025 mayoral race wasted no time in saying that the mayor needs to do better on bus service.
"It’s unacceptable that Mayor Adams has not prioritized improving bus speeds, service, and reliability with the tools he has at his control," said state Sen. Zellnor Myrie (D-Brooklyn). "The city should direct DOT to meet the targets set by the Streets Plan for bus lanes; work with the MTA to improve service, dispatching and reliability; and expand bus stop amenities so people waiting for the bus have a place to sit out of the rain."
Adams himself has said that the issue is not that he doesn't build bus lanes, but rather that community opposition to the transit projects is driven by longtime residents while newcomers try to change their neighborhoods. Another of the mayor's 2025 foes said that isn't any way to run a city.
"You go into a neighborhood, you roll up your sleeves, take all the incoming, you work it out, but at the end of the day, you get it done," said former comptroller Scott Stringer. "You don't use community engagement as an excuse to not get things done and that's clearly what's happening here. I want to see commissioners in communities talking about the benefits of build-outs like this. We should stop screwing around especially when we have a transportation crisis in the city, and we have to start getting people moving again. And the best way to do that is through our bus lanes."
Another comptroller-turned-mayoral candidate said he'd pick up the pace on bus priority projects.
"Rather than slow-rolling projects that would improve the quality and affordability of bus service, I’ll push forward with dedicated bus lanes, transit signal priority, and all-door boarding — and I’ll also focus on improving capital projects management and reforming procurement so we can move transit and transportation projects forward on time and on budget," said Comptroller Brad Lander.
When it comes to bike lanes, the DOT appears to be on better pace for the mileage it needs to reach the 250 miles required by the Streets Master Plan. The DOT has presented 20 miles of protected bike lanes for installation in 2024, which would be 41 percent of the 50 miles the DOT needs to install to keep up with the street plan's pace.
Still, 13 cyclists have been killed through July this year, leaving open the possibility that the city reaches at least 20 cycling fatalities for the second straight year under the Adams administration.
A spokesperson for the DOT said far more mileage would end up being installed by the end of the year, presentations or not.
"This analysis represents a significant undercount of our work and will not reflect our total mileage for 2024," said spokesperson Mona Bruno.
Streetsblog reached out to DOT for additional specifics, but DOT did not respond on Sunday. We will update this story if it does.
Additional reporting by Ibrahim Hersi
