Bus Rapid Transit

Guangzhou is one of the fastest growing cities in the world. The economic hub of China's southern coast, it has undergone three decades of rapid modernization, and until recently the city’s streets were on a trajectory to get completely overrun by traffic congestion and pollution. But Guangzhou has started to change course. Last year the city made major strides to cut carbon emissions and reclaim space for people, launching new bus rapid transit and public bike sharing systems.

As the New York Post continues its increasingly tedious assault on pedestrians and crosstown transit riders, its writers always seem to suggest that giving priority to buses in an important retail area is both radical and self-evidently bad for business. If they bothered to look just one borough away, they'd see that nothing could be further from the truth. The eight bus- and pedestrian-only blocks of downtown Brooklyn's Fulton Mall make up the most successful retail strip in the city outside of Manhattan.

Three years ago, when Streetsblog first wrote up NYC DOT's proposal for a transitway and pedestrian plaza on 34th Street, we called it a "transit miracle." For this story, however, there will be no Hollywood ending.

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) provides faster and more efficient service than an ordinary bus system. While a proper BRT route operates like a surface subway, the cost is much lower. In the latest installment of "Moving Beyond the Automobile," Streetfilms explains the key features of bus rapid transit around the world and how BRT helps shift people out of cars and taxis and onto buses.

Pedestrians who navigate Midtown's crowded sidewalks won't get as much as they could have from the proposed 34th Street Transitway. The Times reported last night that NYC DOT will not pursue plans for a pedestrian plaza between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue as part of the project.

The Post's unhinged crusade against the 34th Street Transitway appears to be bleeding over from the editorial page into news content. The paper ran a story yesterday strongly implying that Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer opposes plans for separated bus lanes along 34th Street (headline: "Beep blasts 34th St. plan"), while in reality, Stringer seems to support the basic idea of the plan, urging mainly that DOT proceed with care. Here's Stringer's statement to us, in full:

Over the last decades, the economic geography of New York City has begun to shift. While Midtown and Lower Manhattan remain job centers without peer, more and more of the city's jobs are located outside of the central business districts. As employment shifts into the other boroughs, however, the transit system hasn't shifted with it. That means longer waits and worse service for many New Yorkers, especially for low- and middle-income workers, according to a new report from the Center for an Urban Future.

A preliminary design for the proposed 34th Street Transitway is due this spring, DOT said officials at a community board meeting last night.