Bus Rapid Transit program may roll out in nine locations in Queens

www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/queens/2009/06/07/2009-06-07_... BY John Lauinger DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER


BRT was established in New York for the first time last year as a pilot program on the BX12 line along Fordham Road in the Bronx.
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Bus Rapid Transit - a system that allows buses to function more like a subway - is key to expanding the city's mass transit, some advocates and transportation officials argue.
BRT was established in New York for the first time last year as a pilot program on the BX12 line along Fordham Road in the Bronx. By providing a separate right-of-way for buses and allowing for curbside fare payment, among other features, travel time dropped by 11 minutes - or 19% - from one end of the line to the other, city records show.
"This is the brave new frontier of public transportation in New York City," said Wiley Norvell of the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives.
The city is now pushing BRT plans in Manhattan, Brooklyn and on Staten Island, but not in Queens, where local merchants previously opposed a Merrick Blvd. pilot, fearing it would remove on-street parking and hurt business.
But the city is proposing a second wave of BRT lines over the next decade. Whether this transit frontier will run through Queens - and if so, where - will depend on various factors, including input received at two public meetings in Jackson Heights and Jamaica last week, officials said.
The city Transportation Department has identified 31 potential BRT corridors, focusing largely on areas underserved by mass transit or targeted for growth.
Nine of those are in Queens, including southeastern Queens; Utopia/Fresh Meadows; Middle Village; the Long Island Expressway; the Long Island City waterfront and the Queens-Manhattan connections, where subways are jam-packed.
Joe Barr, director of transit development for the DOT, said eight to 12 corridors across the city will be selected this summer for further study. Projects that are ultimately selected will be built over the next decade.
The Bronx pilot was built in about a year, Barr noted. "If people are looking for short-term improvements to their transit service," he said, "this is really a good way to deliver that."
Norvell said BRT projects should be prioritized when lawmakers carve out the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's five-year capital plan this fall.
BRT is a much more effective way to add mass transit capacity than building new subways, he noted. BRT costs about $10 million per mile. The Second Ave. subway, by contrast, is projected to cost $1 billion to $2 billion per mile.
Ted Orosz, director of long-range bus planning for New York City Transit, said areas that lack subways, such as southeastern Queens, should get first dibs.
"You want to expand the reach of the transit system," he said, noting that areas where the subways are overcrowded should also be high on the list.
City Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing), who chairs the Council's transportation committee, thinks BRT can provide a quicker link between the borough's major transit hubs.
"It's really ridiculous and maddening that you could travel by mass transit faster between Flushing and Manhattan as opposed to Flushing and Forest Hills," he said.
Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Sunnyside) pointed to BRT as a way to handle the growth in Long Island City.
All told, about 100 people attended last week's meetings in Queens. In Jamaica on Wednesday, it seemed as if city officials outnumbered the public.
"There should be a lot more people out here," said Bruce Pulling, a truck driver and regular bus rider from Oakland Gardens.
He wants to see a BRT line running along the Horace Harding Expressway, from the Queens-Nassau border to Jamaica.
"Anything to get more buses out there," he said.
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