Mamdani Needs a Miracle on 34th Street Amid Mystery Delay

It’s getting late early.

Mayor Mamdani may need a miracle on 34th Street if he hopes to follow-through on his pledge to put a busway on the crosstown corridor by the end of 2026 — as the end of road-striping season approaches and the street shows no evidence of construction starting “in the coming weeks” as the Department of Transportation told the Times back in September.

After criticizing former mayor Eric Adams for delaying the project last year on the campaign trail, the new mayor announced in June that the busway had “advanced” to be completed this fall. But as the calendar has flipped to November, Hizzoner is running out of time to paint the street red.

On a visit to 34th Street last Thursday evening, Streetsblog found no indication that any work had been done to transform the street into a bus-and-truck-only thoroughfare. The existing combination of offset and curbside bus lanes on the street had not changed, and no signage indicated that a busway was imminent at East 34th Street and 3rd Avenue, where the eastern gateway for the project.

It’s unclear what exactly is preventing the city from finally delivering on the project, which would ban non-local private car traffic from 34th Street between Third Avenue and Ninth Avenue. A City Hall spokesman insisted that some work would be done this year on the corridor, but declined to say if the busway itself was still on schedule.

“We are installing an overhead gantry at Ninth Avenue for future busway signage, and we are working to coordinate related street furniture installations by the end of the year,” the spokesman, Jeremy Edwards, said in a statement.

City officials first proposed the busway in May 2025, with plans to move forward on the project that same year, until then-Mayor Adams inexplicably halted it. Adams later reversed himself and allowed the busway to go forward as part of a deal to up-zone a large piece of Midtown — but only after Mamdani called him out in a video as the two men prepared for a general election match-up that never happened.

But before Adams’s DOT could actually begin the work, Trump Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and the Federal Highway Administration stepped in to stop the 34th Street busway over what it claimed were concerns about truck and emergency vehicle access on the corridor, which is technically part of the National Highway System. (New York City typically exempts trucks and emergency vehicles from most busways.)

Those same federal delays also held up implementation of the Tremont Avenue busway, which unlike 34th Street Mayor Mamdani’s administration did build in 2026.

The FHWA also publicly accused the city of failing satisfy regulations involving coordination with the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, a body that organizes regional planning for transportation projects that will need federal funding. However, one former city planning official questioned why NYMTC had to be involved at all.

“If the busway is going to get federal aid then it has to be in the TIP,” said Jon Orcutt, a former DOT official under mayors Bloomberg and de Blasio. “But if it’s not getting federal aid then they can just do it.”

A source with knowledge of the city’s conversations about 34th Street said that after the Times article raised questions about the apparent delay, DOT told community boards and elected officials that the there was a delay getting the busway through NYMTC’s Transportation Improvement Program, the council’s list of projects which get federal assistance.

Mamdani, who campaigned to make buses “fast and free,” repeatedly attacked Adams’s delays to the busway on the 2025 campaign trail.

Last August, the then-candidate raced the bus on foot with a large gaggle of elected officials, advocates and media to make the point that the bus moved slower than walking.

Yet the snail-pace persists 11 months into Mamdani’s mayoralty.

As of September, the M34 crawled across 34th Street at an average of just 5.3 miles per hour. The slow speeds force riders to spend an average of almost two and a half minutes more waiting for a bus at the bus stop, almost two extra minutes per trip. Only 66 percent of M34 buses get where they’re going within five minutes of the scheduled arrival time.

The busway, meamwhile, has had strong support from community boards. One Midtown civic leader blamed the delay on the Trump administration’s delay tactics.

“The M34 is one of the slowest buses in the city and neighbors, tourists, and workers deserve faster buses,” said Samir Lavigna, the 2nd vice-chair of Manhattan Community Board 5. “It is disappointing that the federal government has been delaying this project at every turn and I hope that the newly elected Democrats will let the city push forward with a busway as soon as possible.”

Ordinarily, the city’s striping season, when the weather is warm enough for DOT employees to put paint down on the streets, lasts from about May until October. But if there’s any solace to take in a rapidly warming world, and a winter that will most likely have higher than normal temperatures thanks to this year’s “super El Nino” it is that the city may have more time than usual to finish streets projects before the end of the year.

“Striping season used to end around now, but I’ve been riding around in a T-shirt all week. You’d think we’re almost to the point where we don’t have an off-season anymore,” said Orcutt.