Transport Azumah to inaugurate New Haven-Boston service with unboxed bikes

Last month I discussed strategic problems with New Haven transit advocates' campaign to convince Greyhound to run BoltBus service to New York, and the possibility that Transport Azumah might enter the market. I also described how the infrastructure built by the New York City and State governments favors private driving over bus service.

In the comments for the SeeClickFix issue regarding BoltBus service between New York and New Haven, some argued that service to Boston was a higher priority, since there is no Metro-North service and the Greyhound/Peter Pan consortium has a monopoly on bus service. Transport Azumah apparently concurs: Joel Azumah writes that he will be starting weekend service between Boston and New Haven beginning on Thanksgiving. A tentative schedule is posted on his website.

Many New Haven residents said that they wanted BoltBus because of specific features that they couldn't get on Greyhound, like dynamic online ticket pricing, leather seats, and onboard wifi and power outlets. The dynamic ticket pricing is in place. Azumah tells me that wifi and outlets won't be available right away, but he hopes to be able to offer them soon. No word on leather seats.

The other key feature that many potential riders wanted is a convenient bicycle policy. This is a big deal because it allows true multimodal travel. Amtrak requires all bicycles on Northeast Corridor trains to be partially disassembled, boxed and checked as baggage; Greyhound has a similar policy. Peter Pan allows bicycles "in an empty cargo bin," but if all the bins have at least one bag in them, the cyclist is SOL. In contrast, BoltBus says, "We do allow them and consider them to be oversize items as long as space is available in the baggage area."

TransportAzumah's policy will be similar to Bolt's. Azumah writes, "We will be able to take unboxed bicycles as long as they are tagged with the owner's name and contact phone." That is a huge improvement over the current options for travel in this area.

Here's wishing Azumah success in this venture. He's listened to what people want, and is trying to provide it at an affordable price. Let's hope that by this time next year he's able to provide daily service between these two cities.

Does anyone know of competing road projects along these possible routes that could draw riders away and sabotage Azumah's chances of success?

New Haven bike-n-wifi bus update

Following the comments on SeeClickFix is a little difficult because of all the repetitive "Another person wants this fixed!" auto-comments. But in among those on the New Haven BoltBus issue (discussed here previously) are a few interesting news items. User Mark points to a Yale Daily News squib that reports that TransportAzumah CEO Joel Azumah has taken interest in the market. "Azumah said he is currently drafting a tentative schedule for the service to show the New Haven community, adding that if feedback is good, the line should run in time for Thanksgiving break."

Some readers will remember TransportAzumah as one of the more entrepreneurial bus operators in the New York area. It was Azumah who stepped in when Coachusa dropped the 144 route from Staten Island to Jersey City in 2007. He was rewarded for this by seeing the MTA run competing service; watch this video for Azumah's take on the events, plus a jaw-dropping quote from now-Congressman McMahon.

If the New Haven riders are looking for Boltbus comforts on the cheap, they probably won't get leather seats from Azumah. On the Staten Island run, customers complained that the buses were old and not very well-maintained - particularly regarding the bathroom plumbing. Azumah also has a relatively small fleet and contracts out with other operators for any additional buses he needs; consequently he has less control over the amenities on the ride. But it's clear that if he had had more than six months before he had to compete against subsidized service, he would probably have been able to take care of some of those issues.

Azumah is young, techno-savvy, and a regular contributor to various online transit forums around the New York area (like BusChat). I'm sure he understands the value - and potential draw - of onboard wifi. I'm guessing by his name that he has probably also been to Ghana and seen how for-profit transit operators act in a true free market. He has released a detailed proposal for express bus service from Long Island, and I think he may also be the author of this one for restoring competition to NYC buses. He might be able to set up the Boltbus-style dynamic ticketing scheme that the New Haven residents like so much. His entry into the New Haven discussion - and his potential entry into the market - could really bring a lot.

Transport Azumah begins service to unconventional city pairs

Today was the first day for Transport Azumah's new service between New Haven and Boston. Next week, Azumah will begin running buses on several underserved routes between cities in the Northeast: New York and Cambridge, and New Haven and Philadelphia/Wilmington/Baltimore/DC.

The Harvard Crimson quotes Joel Azumah as saying that there will not be wifi or power outlets until the spring, but we've got it straight from the horse's mouth that unboxed bikes will be allowed "as long as they are tagged with the owner's name and contact phone."

Azumah didn't take me up on my suggestion to stop in White Plains and connect with trains to Manhattan and the Trailways and Shortline buses to Long Island and the Hudson Valley, but hey, he's the one with the hands-on experience, and it's his money on the line. Let's all wish him success in adding to the travel options in the Northeast - especially for cyclists!

Azumah gets to the core

Photo: Taggart for the Daily News
Last night the Wall Street Journal and the Daily News reported that Joel Azumah, an occasional commenter and subject of discussion on this blog, would begin running buses on the X25 and X90 routes abandoned by the MTA. Today, the Village Voice and WCBS said that the service was up and running with "10 bootleg buses and two vans." Somehow he turned into an Italian guy named Joe Lazuma, at least according to WCBS reporter Mike Sierra Nax.

Joel was a bit disappointed with ridership today, telling the Voice, "Suffice it to say, the numbers were a lot lower than I expected." However, he's already expanded his services to include the X29 route to Coney Island and the QM22 to Jackson Heights. And these are no jitneys: he is running a schedule that is very close to the old MTA schedule.

So how is Azumah getting around the city's anti-competitive laws that essentially make it impossible for anyone to start a bus service without being Hasidic, and extremely difficult for Hasids? How does he pick up passengers from the street without having to "go through the process the right way and explain their routes, business plan, information on their bus fleet," as a city official told the Journal?

Joel has a cute solution: he's not picking up just anyone, only members of the "Apple Core Transportation Club." How do you become a member of this elite cadre? You print out a PDF like this one from his website. Apparently there's a similar system for people who don't have internet access.

DOT staff have made noises to the media that indicate they may try to go after Joel. I hope that Goldsmith and Sadik-Khan rein them in and let Joel go ahead. What kind of government fails to provide an essential service, and then prevents anyone else from doing it?

In terms of ridership, I hope that Joel is prepared for a rocky start. He has tried to provide service before, on Staten Island and in New Haven, and wound up having to pull out. A new business, even if it's a field you've been in for years, often loses money for the first six months or more. It's by sticking in there and showing people that you're dependable that you gain their trust and loyalty. If he can keep running the buses for months, I think ridership will gradually grow. Oh, and a little on-board wifi probably wouldn't hurt.

Transit planners, sprawl and "quality of life"

In my post on the Law of Transportation Inertia (people in cars tend to stay in cars), Joel Azumah captured the thinking of many transit planners when he commented, "I love park-and-rides. They aggregate commuters that want a better quality of life." Joel may not have a formal degree in transit planning, but as one of the most innovative transit providers in the country I would say he is certainly doing transit planning. I disagree with his statement here, but I can understand how he gets to it.

By saying that suburban drivers are "commuters that want a better quality of life," he is channeling another Joel - Joel Kotkin. The idea that suburban park-and-rides are anything but a necessary evil is permeated with Kotkinist ideas: the suburbs offer better quality of life than the cities, the suburbs are the dynamic future, the car brings freedom. Most of all, Americans want the suburbs, they want to drive.

Of course, I've got a lot of problems with Kotkinism, mostly because it's incompatible with my goals. Other transit advocates may have less of a problem, maybe because they have different goals, because they know something I don't, because I know something they don't, or because they haven't thought things through.

A Kotkinist transit planner believes that transit is good, but so are cars. Any government action that makes it harder to drive is social engineering and must be avoided. Thus, the Kotkinist transit planner's job is to allow the suburban driver to partake of the benefits of transit, without challenging his or her suburban lifestyle in any way.

While people like Joel Azumah actively believe that transit is compatible with sprawl, others may adopt this kind of Kotkinism as a purely practical stance. Someone who believes in transit may go along with the cars because they feel that any transit is better than no transit, and maybe that the cycle will take care of the cars eventually. A hardcore Kotkinist may go along with the transit to keep the masses quiet and to co-opt the transit advocates.

Transit versus highways in Connecticut

Last week I argued that a two-way dedicated busway on the Long Island Expressway would help make bus service between New York and points north and east faster and more reliable. That would boost ridership on these services, making the for-profit companies more reliable and the government agencies less dependent on subsidies.

Joel Azumah has been weighing the potential profits to be gained from running buses to New Haven, so I asked him what he thought. He observed, "I think CT's bus issues stem more from I-95 being erratic when it comes to congestion."

I've been thinking a bit about this corridor lately, since both Metro-North and Connecticut Transit are facing budget cuts. It got me wondering what the government might be doing to subsidize driving there. It turns out to be quite a lot.

1937: Hutchinson River Parkway
1938: Merritt Parkway
1949: Wilbur Cross Parkway
1958: New England Thruway and Connecticut Turnpike
1967: I-84
1974: I-684
1988: I-691
2001: Widen Turnpike in Stamford
2004: Widen Turnpike in Bridgeport

You could argue that the tolls on the Turnpike were "user fees," so that all the highways built or maintained with this money were not directly subsidized. That argument went out the window when the state removed the toll booths on the Turnpike in 1985. At the time politicians tried to claim that it would be paid with an increase in the gas tax. Regardless, it's clear that the State of Connecticut has been spending billions to help people drive quickly in the corridors that parallel the New Haven line.

This affects the amount of subsidy required for Metro-North and Amtrak, and thus the number of trains that can be run and the fares charged. As Azumah observed, it also affects the profitability of Greyhound, Peter Pan and any other bus lines that might want to operate in that area. It even affects the service and fares on the buses paid by CT Transit, because many people use these highways for local trips, reducing bus ridership and starving them of revenues.

What could transit advocates do to restore competitiveness to transportation in this area? First of all, oppose any new widening projects. There are currently none that I know of on the horizon, but there are lots for the Turnpike east of New Haven. Second, press for tolls to be reintroduced, not just on the Turnpike but on the Merritt and Wilbur Cross, and on I-84, I-684 and I-691. Tolls on the Turnpike should be set at rates that would return traffic to levels where it will not interfere with intercity bus operations. Other options would be to use some of the lanes added in Stamford and Bridgeport as dedicated bus lanes.

Community boards would stifle transit innovation

Recently I expressed doubt that the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority could create an innovative bus service like the Koreana van between Flushing and Fort Lee. Commenter Three Station Square gave a couple of counterexamples: the M60, introduced in 1992, connected 125th Street in Manhattan with La Guardia Airport, and the S89, introduced in 2007, connects the West Shore of Staten Island with the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail. George K pointed out that the S89 followed part of the route of Joel Azumah's 144 bus, but that in turn had taken over the route from Red and Tan in Hudson County.

Most of the innovations listed by Three Station Square are tweaks, including the extension of the Q5 and Q85 across the city limits to the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream. And they're good tweaks; we like them, right? Well, you can expect even those to go away if one of "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz's proposals is adopted.



Schwartz's "equitable transportation formula" includes this point: "No service reductions on local buses for three years without Community Board approval." Sounds great, right? We hate service cuts, and we like community. More power to the community! What could possibly go wrong?

Any transit expansion advocate who's ever been to a New York City community board meeting knows exactly what's wrong with that. Many of the people who are involved in community boards are nice people who really want to do what's best for their city and their neighborhood. But the boards themselves are undemocratic and tend to be dominated by drivers and obsessed with increasing the supply of free parking. Their proceedings are almost always reactive and usually reactionary. They tend to stifle and oppose growth and innovation.

Some of you may be familiar with London's borough councils (elected by district) or Paris's district councils (elected at large). The community boards are nothing like that. Prospective members must be nominated by either their City Council member or the Borough President, and then approved by the Borough President's office. Some councilmembers and borough presidents value inclusiveness and a diversity of opinion, and some don't. Community board members are all volunteers, and the significant time commitment makes it difficult for people with day jobs to attend.

As a result, the boards tend to be dominated by people who are older and wealthier than the average for the district. In 2012 that means that they tend to own cars and drive them, to see driving and parking as an inalienable right, and to identify more with drivers than with pedestrians, cyclists or transit riders. The top issues they care about seem to be: (1) getting developers to provide more parking, (2) preventing anyone from interfering with double parking, (3) preventing traffic changes that they fear would overwhelm the neighborhood with cars, and (4) doing something about those damn bikers that almost ran over poor Connie.

Older and wealthier people also tend to be more interested in protecting what they already have than in getting more that they might use in the future. As a result, transportation discussions at community boards tend to be about preserving existing rights and privileges. There is very little interest in innovation. When they do support innovation, it's usually ornamental initiatives that present no threat to the car-oriented status quo. Why risk what you've worked so hard to get?

I have a number of friends who put in a lot of time and energy on community boards around the city. This is not to denigrate their efforts; it's important for someone to show up and make it clear that these aren't the only people in "the community." But I think they'd all agree that giving more power to community boards is a bad idea.

Basically, if you want to kill an idea, the best way to do it is to require community board approval. Which is why I'd be fine with requiring community board approval to buy leaky headphones, or to walk up the down side of the staircase, or to split a line at the Duane Reade. But transit cuts are not like that.

So why wouldn't I want to kill transit cuts? Because you can't have transit expansion without transit cuts. As I wrote on Sunday, for an agency to try something new, it needs to be able to cut it if it isn't working out.

In the case of across-the board reductions like we saw in 2010, community boards can't prevent the State Assembly from cutting the transit budget. They can only tie the MTA's hands as they try to deal with those budget cuts. Schwartz's proposal would not make the cuts go away. It would either force the MTA to borrow more or raise fares, or it would hold back service reductions on routes that are popular with influential community members, usually the elderly. Other routes would have to be reduced even more to compensate.

As with the bogus fairness, the elevated busways and the dollar fare reductions in neighborhoods with no subways, this is an idea that may sound nice to people who don't know that much about transit. But under scrutiny, it falls apart.

Yes, we need tolls on the East River bridges, and I agree with the many people who have argued that it will happen sooner or later. It's not worth all these bad things to make it happen sooner. Almost all of the elements in Schwartz's plan would lead to a net increase in driving citywide, and that's not what we're in this for.

Shit or get off the pot

I've written before about how the MTA is unwilling to innovate to solve transit problems. In particular, they are unwilling to try bus services that cost something other than $2.25 or $5.50, and they are unwilling to run new local bus service through the tunnels that they own. The good news is that there are people who think they can provide service where the MTA has failed. The bad news is that the City of New York won't let them try.

Recent events have brought this into focus. In 2010 the MTA cut service all over the region, and cuts to the the QM22 bus here in Queens were particularly notable. This was a weird express route that made only a few runs during rush hours to Midtown from a part of Astoria and Jackson Heights that is not close to either the N/Q or the 7 train. The riders were dedicated and well-organized. Joel Azumah, a bus company owner and a regular reader of this blog, stepped in to provide replacement service.

By law, the New York City Department of Transportation has the authority to approve all bus service within the city, and I don't know the last time it approved a new permit. The old trolley companies like Queens Surface and North Shore, which had all converted to buses and ceased to function like anything but government patronage monopolies, were gradually absorbed into the MTA.

The politically-connected Satmar Hasidim have been able to accomplish superhuman transportation feats in this city. Former DOT commissioner Iris Weinshall, also the wife of a sitting U.S. Senator, couldn't get the DOT to remove a bike lane, but the Satmar could. Similarly, they have gotten a permit to run their own gender-segregated private bus service. Nobody else.

The DOT did not grant Joel a permit to run his QM22 replacement service. He tried to run the service on a technicality, claiming that it was a private transportation club, but he didn't fool anyone. The DOT took him to court and won.

The Bloomberg Administration then made an incredibly clumsy, half-assed attempt at allowing private transit operators to run on some of the routes that had been cut. They could have simply allowed bus operators to submit proposals that would have served a majority of the passengers on the abandoned routes, and dealt with those proposals on their own terms. Instead, they decided on the routes and fares and invited dollar van operators to apply for them without the possibility of modification. The van drivers did not commit fully to the pilot, ridership was terrible, and the pilot was abandoned after a very short time. The QM22 was not among the routes offered for bid, nor were any of the other express bus routes.

Now the MTA's fiscal picture has now improved, at least temporarily, and the authority has announced that it will restore service on a number of bus routes. The QM22 is not among those routes, and a number of politicians are holding rallies "demanding" that the MTA restore it. The leaders of this group, Senator Gianaris and Assemblymember Peralta, have both gone on record opposing the use of bridge tolls to increase transit funding, and then voted to cut the funding for the MTA. When a politician insists that money be spent on a particular route but doesn't provide money for it in the budget, they're implicitly saying that other routes deserve the money less, but of course Gianaris and Peralta won't say what routes should not be restored.

The solution is straightforward: if the state and city won't fund transit adequately and the MTA chooses not to serve a particular area, the city should grant private operators the right to run pilot service and see if they can do better. They have consistently refused to, and this is evidence of a massive failure on the part of Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Sadik-Khan.

Black swans over Long Island

Last week Planet Money had a great "Deep Read" with economist Nassim Taleb. Taleb's major point is that when you're vulnerable to "black swans" - rare and unpredictable, but high impact events - you need to invest in reserves and redundancy to be able to survive them.

It's an argument that all transportation providers should pay attention to, but railroads in particular are dependent on linear infrastructure. The current mess with the Long Island Railroad's switches in Jamaica show that at least one railroad isn't getting it.

The vast majority of train trips on the LIRR go through Jamaica. That's great for transfers, but it sucks for redundancy. You would think they'd have a backup plan, but apparently the MTA prefers to let the riders - and the taxpayers - bear the full brunt of any black swans that affect Jamaica.

Yup, that's the kind of perverse thinking the public authority structure encourages. If we had a sane system, Helena Williams' head would already be on a pike for giving public property to Bruce Ratner for nothing. Well, if we had a sane system, Williams would probably never have been allowed anywhere near the top post, and maybe we'd have someone competent actually running the railroad.

But now it's time to pull out a game I like to play whenever there's a major, but avoidable outage that affects millions of people: what if the people in power actually gave a shit? In this case, what if they wanted to build redundancy into the Long Island Railroad? What if the government had a giant Keynsian stimulus program, and money were no object?

Ideally, the Central Railroad of Long Island, which ran from Flushing to Floral Park along the route of what's now the Brooklyn-Queens Greenway, would never have been torn up. It could potentially be reconstructed, or a southern bypass created under Rockaway and Linden Boulevards. Even a through connection in Jamaica bypassing the main station there would prevent some events from completely disrupting service.

If we give up on a rail-based solution, then a bus-based one is the next best thing. If I were the LIRR president, on Monday I would have sat down with the heads of Long Island Bus, the MTA Bus Company and New York City Transit to get every available bus running parallel routes.

I would also have gotten on the phone with Long Island Transit, Hampton Jitney, Joel Azumah and any other licensed operators interested in providing temporary service. I would have told them to take anyone who showed them an unused LIRR ticket, and paid them by the mile. If I were the Governor, I would have ordered the State DOT to set up bus-only lanes on the LIE so that those buses wouldn't all be sitting in traffic.

A real powerful response like that would have earned back some of the LIRR's customer loyalty that's been eroded over the years, and made it more likely that Long Island's representatives will support the MTA in the future. Instead - from a Governor who grew up on Long Island - we got lame excuses, finger-pointing and stranded customers.

What I want from a mayor or city council member

After I laid out the ways that Christine Quinn has disappointed me as a transportation and livable streets advocate, I got a couple of emails from 2013 candidates asking for my support for their campaigns. I'm flattered to be asked at all, being some nameless guy who often defies political realities.

As a famous New Yorker once said: well, you know, we'd all love to see the plan. If you've reached out to me, I'll be happy to talk about your plan. But right off the bat I'll tell you and everyone else on the Web that some things are more likely to win me over than others. I've made some specific recommendations in earlier posts, but here I want to talk more in generalities, based on what's disappointed me in previous campaigns.



Now a lot of these have to do with transit, and I know that the Mayor and the City Council don't control the MTA. But they can accomplish some things. The #7 train extension to the Javits Center is a Bloomberg project. When the MTA cut bus routes, it was the City DOT that shut down Joel Azumah's replacement service, the Taxi and Limousine Commission that launched a clueless attempt at legal jitney service, and the NYPD that is keeping dollar vans out of the bus lanes.

• See transit as a system. Having a "transit plan," a "freight plan," a "livable streets plan" and a "transportation plan" - that's a recipe for chaos and cross-purposes. Transit is all about one thing: getting people and stuff from one place to another. During the next administration there will be billions of trips; the goal should be to make them all as safe, healthy and efficient as possible, without regard to mode.
• Get people out of their cars. As I've written before, my goals - that you see at the top of the page - all depend on getting people out of their cars. You can have the best transit plan in the world, but it's worth nothing if your road plan is more effective at encouraging people to drive. If you don't see that improving highways more than transit is regressive, you're not thinking clearly. If you think that you have to have "something for the drivers" in your transportation plan, but you leave no possibility for "the drivers" and their kids to accomplish their goals without driving, you've failed New York.
• Connect transit, walkability and land use. Transit works best when people can walk to it from where they are. Places work best when people can walk to them from transit. That means locating housing, jobs and shopping near transit; locating transit near housing, jobs and shopping; and making sure that the routes between them are safe and pleasant. Not like Edgewater.
• Inspire us. Who the fuck wants to ride an elevated busway over an ugly late-Bob Moses highway? Who wants to climb fifty steps to get into a station with underground platforms? Not me. What inspires me? New lines that actually go someplace I'd want to go. New or reopened stations where I want to go. Improved connections between lines.
• Give us real value. Why would people who happily fork over an extra two dollars care about saving $1.25 on an arbitrary subset of their trips? How many people really care about keeping the subway fare at $2.25, aside from it being a symbol of the government's commitment to transit riders? We'll pay more if we're getting more. That means getting where we want to go faster, more reliably and more comfortably.
• Get it passed and fund it. Yes, we want to be inspired, but we also want to know that at least some of what you promise is going to happen. How are you going to get your partners in city and state government to go along? Most importantly, where is the money going to come from? Anyone who says "the commuter tax" without a feasible plan to get the Legislature to pass a constitutionally valid commuter tax is full of shit.
• Foster innovation and adaptation. Do we really want to live in a city where it takes over a year to get a single bus route that runs every half hour? I don't. I want to live in a city that tries new things and rewards people who try new things on their own.
• Don't be afraid to say no - to unions, politicians, business owners, landowners, or even "the community." You can't give everything to everyone. If you try to, what you'll wind up doing is giving everything to the most threatening people and ignoring the weaker ones. That's no way to run a city. I'm not happy with everything Mike Bloomberg has done, but one of the things I've liked the most about him over the years is that he has a nose for bullshit. But this isn't like Andrew Cuomo or Chris Christie who cry poverty one minute and drop billions on superficial projects the next.
  
  Bloomberg can often tell the difference between someone who wants to make the world a better place and someone who wants to protect their unearned advantage. When he hears a sob story from somebody who was born on third base and thinks they hit a triple, often he'll listen politely, look them in the eye and tell them to take a hike. Having someone in City Hall who isn't constantly pandering is hugely refreshing.
• Do something about the NYPD. There are a lot of good cops out there, but the leadership sucks. As Streetsblog has documented extensively, under Ray Kelly, the department has let killer drivers off the hook, ignored dangerous driving, harassed cyclists, and hogged pedestrian and cyclist space. We need a mayor and a city council who will hold the NYPD accountable for protecting those of us who don't carry expensive multi-ton steel boxes around with us.

I'll support any proposal that fits with these principles. If you have enough proposals like that - or if your competitors are dismal enough - I may endorse you for Mayor, Public Advocate, Comptroller or City Council. I can't promise that it'll get you elected, or that you'll even get one more vote. At best, I hope you were leaning in this direction, and that this post helped to bring you clarity. It'd be even better if we had more than one candidate making proposals along these lines.

And if you go banging the "two New Yorks" drum, well don't you know that you can count me out.

Ten things Trottenberg and Bratton can do for transit

There have been a few posts about what the new administration of Mayor de Blasio can do for transit. Some have been focused on "bus rapid transit," because it's the fad of the decade and people don't want to think too hard about transit. Some rest entirely on him taking back control the MTA.

Following on my ten recommendations for pedestrians, here are ten recommendations for transit that don't require control of the MTA. Some of them can be done by the DOT, some by the NYPD, and some require cooperation between them, but none of them require action from the MTA or the State Legislature. They all have to do with buses, but unlike Select Bus Service, they don't require months of route planning to implement.

Transit entrepreneur Joel Azumah. Photo: John Taggart / Daily News.

1. Legalize private transit. The city Department of Transportation has the authority to allow private buses to operate on city streets, but for as long as I can remember they've only allowed three groups: (a) Buses like Academy that cross state lines, (b) Legacy streetcar companies that were finally taken over by the MTA in 2006, and (c) the gender-segregated Hasidic bus from Williamsburg to Borough Park. We need innovation in transit routing, and the MTA has consistently shown resistance to innovation. It's time to let private operators give it a try.


Fifth Avenue at Fourteenth Street, photographer unknown.

2. Restore two-way traffic flow. It makes no sense that I can get a downtown subway on Sixth Avenue, but not a downtown bus. A one-way pair may be a good idea on Eighth and Ninth Streets, but not on Sixth and Seventh Avenues. It would be good for pedestrians too.


Photo: Angus Grieve-Smith.

3. Reopen the Union Turnpike entrances for buses. Reader Angus Grieve-Smith commutes from Western Queens to Saint John's University, and realized that the Kew Gardens station has the facilities for a fare-free transfer from bus to subway.


Photo: Detroit Photographing Company, 1903.

4. Allow buses on the Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge was built for trains. Maybe it can't support trucks anymore. But can it really not support buses?


Photo: Jim Henderson / Wikipedia.

5. Make bus bulbs standard. Pedestrians get more sidewalk space. Bus riders aren't the ones getting out of the way. It's a win-win!


Image: Global Traffic Technologies.

6. Make signal priority for buses standard. Why should it only be for Select Bus routes? It's expensive to replace the equipment, but as equipment gets updated it should be set to favor buses.


Photo: Brad Aaron / Streetsblog.

7. No painted bus lanes that aren't 24/7. The red paint should mean something: Buses Only. It should not mean "For buses, except for turning cars and off hours and you know what? Let's just drive in it and see if they give me a ticket."



8. Establish a New Jersey to Brooklyn pilot bus. One solution to buses idling in Lower Manhattan is to send them out to Brooklyn. There are people who live in Brooklyn and work in New Jersey and vice versa. Maybe more if you make it easy to commute.


Photo: Charles Eckert / Newsday.

9. A 24/7 busway on the LIE. It would speed up the express buses and add bus capacity to and from Nassau County.


Photo: Paolo Mastrangelo / NYC The Blog.

10. Real fare inspection. The way the NYPD currently does fare inspection is fucking nuts. In Paris, fare inspectors board a bus just as it's pulling out of a stop, and check everyone's tickets as the bus is moving. In New York, fare inspectors pull up to the bus stop in an SUV and make the bus sit there while they check tickets. We shouldn't keep travelers waiting just because some NYPD people feel they're too good to be more than twenty feet from their own government vehicle.

When buses are outlawed, only outlaws will drive buses

Anti-jitney NIMBYs, including Comet and the Queens Crapper, often point to dangerous behavior on the part of van drivers, including speeding, cutting off other drivers, overcrowding, and driving buses that are badly maintained or under-insured. There's no question that these are problems. The question is what to do about them.

Comet sees no value in the buses, and therefore accepts the legal fiction that they should only pick up passengers by prior arrangement, in zones approved by the Taxi and Limousine Commissioner and the relevant community board, along routes approved by the Transportation Commissioner. They badger the TLC and the NYPD to keep ticketing the drivers, trying to harass them out of the neighborhood.

What about us - people who see that private buses can supplement existing MTA service, make up for service cuts, and provide innovation where it's been lacking? What do we do to help the private buses succeed? Take it from a private bus operator who tries to play by the rules, Joel Azumah:

Throw in the fact that both legal and illegal vans are harassed in Brooklyn and Queens. Since the legal guys get no protection, many who started legal decided to become illegal to save money.

Quite simply, the market has to be structured (told you I wasn't a libertarian) to provide incentives for bus operators to work safely. Let's imagine a driver (call him Lawful Steve) who has all the proper licenses, registrations, inspections and insurance, keeps the vehicle clean and never carries passengers over the maximum, obeys all traffic safety laws and pays extra attention at all times. Steve also follows the "commuter van" rules to a T. He has received permission to operate in a particular zone on a particular route, and he follows that scrupulously, only picking up people who have called ahead to arrange trips.

Now let's imagine another driver, Neutral Jane, who also has all the proper licensing and insurance, and is just as safety-conscious as Steve. But rather than following the commuter van regulations, Jane picks up street hails and travels on popular routes.

Finally, we've got a third driver, Chaotic Dave, who has a Class D license and drives like a maniac in an uninsured, badly maintained van. He practices the absolute minimum in safety that he can get away with while still filling up his van with passengers.

What do you think will happen? Lawful Steve will go broke sitting by the phone. Neutral Jane will make money, but she will still be fined for picking up passengers without prior arrangement, operating on an unlicensed route, and operating outside of the designated zone. Chaotic Dave will too, but at least he'll be spared the expense of getting all the proper paperwork and maintaining his vehicle, and the hassle of trying to follow all the safety rules. In fact, Dave won't get busted that often, because the TLC and the NYPD are so busy going after Jane, and maybe even stopping Steve because he's running a commuter van and must be up to no good. Eventually Steve and Jane will realize that it just doesn't pay to be safe, and either join Dave or else get out of the transportation business and open a Boston Market franchise.

If you don't want to hear it from me or Joel, how about Jay Walder?

The point to be stressed here is that an integrated transit system with commuter vans does not have to cause the city to sacrifice its concern for public safety. At the state level, an adequate regulatory structure already exists to satisfy these concerns. Alternatively, the city government could handle this function. What is required in either case is a cooperative, rather than combative, regulatory atmosphere.

In other words, if the city were to pass laws that make it easy for private operators to get permission to transport passengers, then the NYPD and the TLC wouldn't have to waste time going after Neutral Jane for operating outside her zone. They could concentrate their scarce resources on Chaotic Dave and the safety issues that really matter. Lawful Steve and Neutral Jane can get on with the business of providing quality, safe service without worrying about getting busted for picking up street hails.

More transit, safer vans, less drain on the budgets of the TLC and the NYPD. It's a win-win for everyone! Right?