MTA

Here are more highlights from Thursday's City Council transportation committee budget hearing.

Electeds and advocates called for changes at the MTA and for Mayor de Blasio to focus street safety resources on northern Brooklyn after another pedestrian was killed by a bus driver this weekend.

Update: NYPD identified the victim as Martha Tibillin-Guamug, 25, according to the Times Ledger.

The MTA capital program, which funds maintenance and expansion of the transit system, is on the final year of its five-year cycle. A new plan is being developed, and the big question is how the state is going to pay for it. At a hearing of the Assembly Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, state legislators got briefed on the need to plug the enormous funding gap in the next capital program. At the same time, one State Senator is trying to create a new tax incentive to drive.

The Straphangers Campaign and Transportation Alternatives today handed out their annual awards for the slowest and least reliable NYC buses, with Manhattan routes taking the honors.

After years of planning, B44 Select Bus Service launched yesterday on the Nostrand Avenue corridor.  Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, and MTA Chairman and CEO Tom Prendergast marked the occasion this afternoon at a newly-expanded bus stop at Church and Nostrand.

Yesterday was the first day of service for Brooklyn's first Select Bus Service route, upgrading the B44 Limited with a dedicated bus lane, off-board fare collection, bus bulbs, and fewer stops. It's the sixth SBS route to enter service, following two in the Bronx, two in Manhattan, and one in Staten Island.

The MTA is working on a plan for a short busway in Ridgewood that would run for six-tenths of a mile beneath the elevated M tracks, between Fresh Pond Road and Palmetto Street. While the project wouldn't transform a car-choked traffic sewer into a pedestrian-friendly transit boulevard (the right-of-way is currently a series of weed-strewn parking lots), it could be NYC's first new separated busway since the Fulton Mall opened in the 1970s.

Nearly a year after the Bronx became the second borough to get real-time bus tracking on all its buses, the MTA's Bus Time program is set to expand to Manhattan this month, according to signs spotted in Manhattan subway stations by Twitter user David Rose and Second Avenue Sagas.