Thursday, May 20, 2010

Limited stop service coming to Q58

This is to advise you of MTA New York City Transit’s proposal to implement limited-stop service during weekdays along its Q58 bus route.

The Q58 provides local bus service from the Ridgewood Intermodal Terminal at the Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenue subway station to Main Street and 41st Road in Downtown Flushing. It uses a number of streets between those two points, including Palmetto Street, Fresh Pond Road, Grand Avenue, Broadway, Corona Avenue, 108th Street, the Long Island Expressway Service Road, and College Point Boulevard. The Q58 provides access to subway stations on the Canarsie, Myrtle Avenue, Queens Boulevard, and Flushing lines, commercial districts in Ridgewood, Elmhurst, Corona, and Flushing, public and private schools, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, the New York Hall of Science, the Queens Zoo, the Queens Museum of Art, Kissena Corridor Park, and the Queens Botanical Gardens. Numerous connections to other bus lines are provided along the length of the Q58.

Q58 ridership has significantly increased due to the introduction of the MetroCard and the transfer policies and fare discounts that have come with it. The Q58 has approximately 28,000 weekday customers, making it the second-busiest bus route in the Borough of Queens.

The Q58 has the key characteristics needed to implement limited-stop service:

· The current headway of the Q58 is between three to six minutes during morning and evening peak hour periods.

· A high percentage of customers are concentrated at major stops along the route.

· Traffic congestion along the route leads to delays, slowing travel time and reducing reliability. The implementation of limited-stop service can mitigate these delays by reducing the cumulative delays due to frequent stops on a long bus route.

NYC Transit proposes to operate limited-stop service on alternating trips of the Q58 during the following time periods:



A list of the locations that limited-stop trips on the Q58 will stop and a diagram showing the route of the bus at are attached. The stops were selected based on a relatively high volume of boarding and alighting customers. These stops include transfer points to another bus or subway route or high volume traffic generators.

The implementation of limited-stop Q58 service is scheduled for Fall 2010. This proposal will be presented to the NYC Transit Committee of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board for information purposes at a meeting scheduled for 10:30 a.m. on Monday, May 24, 2010. The meeting will take place in the fifth floor board room of the MTA Headquarters, 347 Madison Avenue in Manhattan. Interested parties are invited to comment on this proposal during the public session at the start of the meeting. Those wishing to speak must register between 10:15 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.



Please contact me at 646-252-2653 if you have any questions concerning this proposal.

Joseph B. Raskin
Assistant Director
Government and Community Relations
MTA New York City Transit
joseph.raskin@nyct.com

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why limit this line in Queens, why not limit cross-town bus service in Manhattan - make folks walk to the subway instead of taking the bus 2 city blocks.

Queens Crapper said...

They aren't eliminating any stops. They are adding limited service buses that will skip stops in order to speed up service. This is already happening on the B38 to downtown Brooklyn and works well.

Anonymous said...

so where are they skipping? it's not going to help us here on grand avenue! and especially after the h.s. gets done.

PizzaBagel said...

The Q58 is the second-busiest bus route in the Borough of Queens. I'm not surprised, especially considering the long and overall direct path it takes between Flushing and Ridgewood, allowing commuters to avoid what would be a subway ride from hell. So it's a victim of its success, so to speak.

Just curious: Does anybody know what the busiest one is?

Anonymous said...

Im surprised this one isn't #1. when i pass thru forest ave by the m train on my way home, im not exaggerating when i say that you'll see 3 or 4 buses at times in a row if there late and they're all packed. and normally when running smoothly you'll see a bus once every 5-10 minutes. AS opposed to the Q54 or Q39 which at times can be two of the most unreliable buses in NYC. Ive waited over an hour for those buses on many different occasions. Wish my bus route followed that of the Q58.

Anonymous said...

Can we be allowed to kick able-bodied people in the face when they take a bus for only two blocks?

These are the people who slow the system down, seeing as how ADA and AARP would never allow the city to actually space the stops out further than two blocks.

PizzaBagel said...

Anonymous said...

Wish my bus route followed that of the Q58.


If your bus route followed that of the Q58 you'd be home by now -- or something along those lines. But seriously, would it help if it followed just part of the Q58 route, making it less circuitous,
or the whole thing? If the whole thing, then it brings us back to the fact that your lament means that you should be living along the Q58 route and riding that bus -- or I'm missing something.

Queens Crapper said...

No, he/she wishes it followed a similar schedule as the Q58.

Cap'n Transit said...

PizzaBagel, according to MTA data from last year, the Q58 had the highest ridership in Queens, an average of 29,010 boardings per weekday and 40,140 on Saturdays and Sundays. Incidentally, Q58 passengers pay 98% of operating costs, which means that tax dollars are pretty much only needed to buy the buses and maintain them.

The Q58 was followed by the Q27 (Springfield Boulevard, 27,770 daily boardings), the Q44 (Main Street, 27,430) and the Q111/113 (Guy R. Brewer Boulevard, 26,215). I'm guessing it's one of these three that's leapfrogged ahead of the Q58.

If the other three don't already have limited-stop service, I imagine they're planning it for them. I know that the next most popular bus, the Q46 (Union Turnpike, 24,170) already has limited service in the peak direction.

PizzaBagel said...

Thanks, Cap'n Transit (love your handle), for the ridership stats. I have never had occasion to take either the Q27 or the Q111/113 and rarely ride the Q44. Although I'm a big bus rider, it's admittedly limited to just a handful of routes, among which is the Q58. I was going to say the Q60 was the most heavily used Queens route, but with the above caveat that my first-hand knowledge about most routes is nil.

QC, thanks for clarifying the statement of Anonymous, re "Wish my bus route followed that of the Q58." Me get it now.

Last thing: When riding the Q18 a few days ago, I thought I saw "Q18 Ltd" on one of the bus stop signs we passed. Was that a relic from the past, a sign of things to come, or just my poor eyesight?

Anonymous said...

wow @ pizzabagel it really wasnt that serious. I was just saying how I wished that I lived along the Q58 route like queenscrapper said because they run almost all the time. My route which would be Q54 and Q39 are hit or miss depending on the time of day...

Anonymous said...

Q58 LTD 7 days & B38 LTD weekdays & Saturdays plus no Sunday Limited-Stop service.

Anonymous said...

1. East New York Depot has one limited it's the B82
2. Fresh Pond Depot has two limiteds it's the B38 & the Q58
3. Flatbush Depot has three limiteds the B41, the B44 & the B46
4.Grand Avenue Depot will have one limited coming soon the B60
5. Jackie Gleason Depot has one limited it's the B35
6. Ulmer Park Depot has one limited it's the B6

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