New York City hardworking and rundown bus riders don't need another fake friend – and yet.
City Council Member Gale Brewer (D-Upper West Side) on Thursday put her considerable political weight behind an effort to stop a dedicated bus lane on 96th Street mostly outside of her district – cynically citing her past support for bus priority projects while rallying with NIMBYs who want their block cut from the badly needed project.
"In the past, I supported bike lanes, supported bus lanes on 14th Street, 34th Street, 181st Street," said Brewer — before calling on DOT to carve out the two blocks of W. 96th between Amsterdam Avenue and Central Park West from its crosstown proposal.
"In this particular case, there are concerns that we have," said Brewer, who was Manhattan borough president before winning back a Council seat she previously held. "I think that you have to look at alternatives to making the bus go faster."
The project at issue is about as simple as it gets — a crosstown bus lane on 96th Street between West End and Second avenues to speed up buses that move as slow as 4 miles per hour on some stretches.
Brewer and other opponents on Thursday argued that because rush-hour speeds on the eastbound M96 average between 6 and 8 miles per in the two-block stretch no bus lane is needed — ignoring that the bus drops to 4 miles per hour in the westbound direction.
The group also falsely claimed that DOT's bus lane plan would eliminate parking spots. In fact, DOT plans to install an offset bus lane one lane in from the curb — a design it employs to save parking spaces and allow residents to access the curb.
When pressed by Streetsblog and other reporters, bus lane opponents admitted their real concern was their ability to illegally double park for long stretches of time on the street without consequence.
"The concern is that there is going to be no legal way for us to unload passengers on 96th Street if they put a bus lane in the second lane [of traffic]," said Ellen Harvey, a member of the 96th Street Neighborhood Coalition, before admitting that she knew that double-parking was actually against the law.
A sense of entitlement to consequence-free street obstruction drives the opposition, according to transit advocates. If drivers and others want loading zones, they should advocate for them in the curbside space — but not taking space from bus riders, said Sara Lind, the co-executive director at Open Plans.
"This is a smart, common-sense proposal from DOT that puts the bus lane in the existing travel lane — meaning it won’t change a thing about residents’ access to the curb, or their free parking," Lind said.
An updated proposal DOT plans to share with community members and elected officials will include loading zones, the agency said.
Brewer, whose district only touches a half-block of the project area, tried to make her case that that the area between Amsterdam and Central Park West is "too residential" for a bus lane. But along with endorsing the literal not-in-her-backyard position, Brewer also stood by as opponents argued that any bus lane on West 96th Street would back up traffic, lied about how automated bus lane cameras work, trashed the Streets Master Plan that calls on DOT to install the very bus lanes she says she generally wants.
One speaker went as far to tell reporters that bus riders don't deserve more frequent service, an odd argument in 74 percent of the households do not have access to a car and 68 percent of residents commute to work via public transit, walking, or biking.
"There's a lady here who told me once she had to wait 10 minutes for the bus," said a 96th Street resident who introduced herself as Kathleen. "That's New York City — you wait for the damn bus!"
Yes, you do; buses in New York City are the slowest in the country, having barely budged from the scandalously slow 8.1 miles per hour average in July 2019 to the 8.2 miles per hour average in July 2024. The people who have to deal with buses stuck in traffic-clogged streets are bus drivers themselves and their overwhelmingly working-class passengers who are mostly invisible to bus lane opponents and car owners.
Offset bus lanes, like the one the DOT is proposing on 96th Street are able to speed up buses by up to 20 percent.
Transit advocates, who do in fact have better things to do than sit around waiting for a bus that could come faster and more often, said Brewer owes it to bus riders not to rally with people who don't care about them.
"Like New Yorkers in every neighborhood, M96 bus riders deserve much better service," said Riders Alliance Senior Organizer Jolyse Rase. "Riders need our elected leaders to rally in favor of transit priority projects like this one, not to side with grumpy elites whose motto might as well be, 'I Got Mine.'"
At the rally, Brewer inexplicably still cast herself as a champion of the Streets Master Plan and its requirement that the Adams administration install 30 miles of dedicated bus lanes every year. She said the Streets Master Plan should move forward — in fact, it's moving "slow as hell," the self-proclaimed "data nerd" told Streetsblog.
But then she simply ignored DOT bus speed data to endorse the bus lane opponents' claim that no dedicated bus lane is needed for the corridor's 15,000 daily riders.
"I'm a bus rider who takes this bus every day. It's not slow," Brewer said.
Brewer took the heat for the area's actual Council Member, Shaun Abreu, who declined to show up after news broke on Wednesday that the group had claimed he would attend. He insisted via text that he does not endorse the group's goal to scrap the two blocks from the project.
"I'm not opposing the bus lane," Abreu said. "I do believe that DOT intends to add loading zones, but it matters where they go and we don't have that information."
