Buses

Starting in January 2019, service on the L train west of Bedford Avenue will be suspended for 15 months to allow for Sandy-related repairs. The only way to keep hundreds of thousands of people moving is to dedicate significant street space to buses on both sides of the East River. But at a presentation to elected officials on Friday, the MTA and DOT did not indicate that bus lanes are part of their plan, except on the Williamsburg Bridge itself.

Bright red bus lanes are being painted in downtown Baltimore as the city prepares to launch a revamped bus network in just over a month.

Today is the grand opening for the QLine, Detroit's 3.3-mile, mixed-traffic streetcar on Woodward Avenue. It's getting tons of local press attention, but TransitCenter reports that the Motor City's true transit renaissance is not due to the streetcar, but the city's successful, under-the-radar turnaround of its bus system.

Off-board fare payment is a huge time saver for the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who ride the city's Select Bus Service routes. It cuts out the time-consuming process of each passenger dipping a MetroCard one by one. But the technology that off-board payment relies on could be better.

The current level of transit service in Memphis is bleak. So a week ago, 11 Shelby County public defenders took part in Bus Rider's Day, which Commercial Appeal columnist David Waters called "an exercise in empathy and, as it turned out, endurance" to understand the transportation challenges facing their clients.

While bus ridership is down citywide -- and especially in Manhattan -- there are some routes that are bucking the trend. One that's gaining riders is the M86, which got a package of upgrades from DOT and the MTA in 2015. The improvements included off-board fare collection and queue jumps -- short bus lane segments that enable buses to cut ahead of other traffic at signals.

Some streetscape improvements are planned for the Bronx portion of the route. The biggest changes are proposed for 161st Street, where DOT would widen sidewalks and limit eastbound traffic in the tunnel under the Grand Concourse to buses.

Cutting in line is pretty much unacceptable behavior, but there's one exception to the rule: A bus carrying dozens people should go to the front of the line at traffic lights. That, as TransitCenter explains in a new video, is a "queue jump" - and NYC needs more of them.

Eight years in the making, the project was undone by suburban opposition. Now, transit advocates in Michigan's capital are figuring out what can be done to improve transit while their opponents take a victory lap.