Wednesday, March 22, 2017

De Blasio announces he's moving forward with SBS

From Curbed:

In his latest Vision Zero push, Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced a series of road safety and traffic improvement projects set to take place place throughout the city—all part of a $1.6 billion initiative to reduce traffic accidents and fatalities.

This particular set of Vision Zero projects involves wider sidewalks, new crosswalks, new protected bike lanes, and pedestrian refugee medians.

Queens:
Select Bus Service will be added to the Q52 and Q53 routes that run along the Woodhaven and Cross Bay Boulevards, passing through multiple neighborhoods in Queens. There are also plans for pedestrian safety improvements along this stretch, all of which is on schedule to wrap sometime this spring.

19 comments:

(sarc) said...

Ideas so great that they must be implemented by the heavy hand of government...

Anonymous said...

De Blasio to Queens "Fuck you"

Anonymous said...

Vision Zero doesn't mean squat without enforcement.

Anonymous said...

Alas, the only vision that should be in de Assio's future is long term Federal lockup. But, now that Schumer's crony weasel Preet Bharara is out of the picture, government tyranny and cover-up once again prevails with impunity——and, the public be eternally duped, bilked, scammed and damned!

The vicious cycle never ends! That's why there is a karmic return to New York City/New York State violence, vigilantism, lawlessness and anarchy in the streets, because of the 300% false, fake and failed leacership of City Hall and Albany.

IN the end, hope is a tease that is designed to prevent us from facing reality. Never trust a politician——they ALL devalue honesty itself. Say what you will about President DONALD J. TRUMP, but one fact that he stated last year that can not be disputed, regarding politicians when he exhorted: ❝They're ALL no good.❞ Naturally, he's right!

georgetheatheist said...

Did you notice that the traffic control stanchions have been removed from separating the green bike path/service roadway along Queens Boulevard? A bit easier for the motorist to navigate.

Anonymous said...

Just wait until he gets reelected. You ain't seen nothing yet.

Anonymous said...

What would be a great improvement to all bus service is the on street fare payment which could speed up boarding on all buses. This would improve service, even without adding the bus lanes.

Anonymous said...

An incompetent administration will never fix a thing.

Anonymous said...

What's with those stupid red bus lanes? Never saw them in any other city, only this one. They reduce Main Street in Flushing to ONE darn traffic lane in spots, creating horrible bottlenecks, as there is no left turn lane in many places. So tens of drivers have to wait on ONE car to make their left turn, missing the traffic light and idling away all that gasoline. Real smart.

Anonymous said...

>An incompetent administration will never fix a thing.

He's not incompetent, and he's not trying to fix anything. He's trying to break what little traffic sanity we have left in this city, and he's succeeding.

Anonymous said...

"Real smart."
If you were half as smart, you wouldn't be driving on Main St.

Anonymous said...

The new speed limit of 25 miles per hour is ridiculous. You cannot get anywhere if you can only drive 25 MPH. Nobody drives 25 MPH. The requirement should be driving carefully. Experienced drivers can drive carefully, even if they exceed 25 MPH. 25 MPH is not reasonable. I wonder if DiBlasio's drivers limit themselves to 25 MPH when they are driving him to his destinations. So many drivers drive recklessly while speeding. You can notice this every day on roads like the LIE, Grand Central, and Jackie Robinson. These drivers weave in and out of traffic constantly, creating a danger for all the other drivers. However, it seems that these drivers never get tickets. It is only the poor slob who has spent his life driving carefully who gets a ticket for exceeding the unreasonably low 25 MPH speed limit. This is a trap to make money for the city. The Vision Zero policy of DiBlasio is ridiculous. Obviously, he has promoted this to try to make himself look good by associating it with an alleged decrease in traffic accidents. Meanwhile, safe drivers are stopped by pompous, idiotic police officers who have posted themselves at speed traps to catch otherwise safe drivers for temporarily exceeding the 25 MPH speed limit. There is no discretion or common sense exercised by these officers. Living in Queens, with DiBlasio as mayor, had become unbearable.

MetroTimer said...

Actually on paper this plan looks not so bad...
On other hand the reality is a little bit different than the paper and this plan could cause big problems for the city traffic.
If the mayor wants this plan to work, he will need to change much more than what's being showed.
For example everyone could see that the bus lines are working for some other cities, but there is one big but, the cities where this is working good have nothing in common with NY...For example I have saw such in Berlin, London etc.... I mean Europe mainly where the cities are much different.

JQ LLC said...

This might be a little lengthy and conspiratorial, but I have a theory why the city is pushing select bus service on woodhaven and cross bay.

Here's something about the Q53 not many people know about. One overcast and stormy summer day last year, I was riding to the beach when the rain got heavy and took shelter under a lodge canopy in Broad Channel. It rained hard steady for 90 minutes as I witnessed about 8 empty buses speeding up Cross Bay Blvd heading for Rockaway Beach.

It was a bit odd because I have never seen this before. The next week hanging out by Riis Park, I saw Q53 buses showing up with great frequency during the day and evening hours.

This shows that the city, yet again is not being honest with the public, because this looks like SBS and it was running as early as last summer. With the warm weather arriving soon, this might be the first step at gentrifying the people's beach, beyond the already infected Fort Tilden, by providing transplanted hipshits that live in NY Times written niche areas in Queens where this SBS route goes for a faster and convenient alternative to the superlong A Train commute and S transfer.

In other words, this is just another concession favoring capital and the people that frivolously spend to produce it over long time residents, causing frustration, chaos and denial of services and unnecessary idiotic redesigns of crucial street infrastructure in it's wake. Just to remake and remodel neighborhoods and now parkland and beaches so it can enrich greedy assholes.

Anonymous said...

It's job security for DUhblazio and his kind. Create chaos, then claim that more government is the solution.

Anonymous said...

SBS needs to use RFID like in Europe. It is now just an excuse to employ dozens of old deplorables to check who paid their tickets

Anonymous said...

It won't work. Too many bottlenecks.

Anonymous said...

The guy who checked my receipt on the 44 was about 28 years old. Must be a young deplorable.

Anonymous said...

>What's with those stupid red bus lanes? Never saw them in any other city, only this one. They reduce Main Street in Flushing to ONE darn traffic lane in spots, creating horrible bottlenecks, as there is no left turn lane in many places.

That's the idea. The goal is to make driving so painful and unpleasant that people are forced to take the bus.

>If you were half as smart, you wouldn't be driving on Main St.

Kissena Blvd isn't much better. There's no other choices.

> I wonder if DiBlasio's drivers limit themselves to 25 MPH when they are driving him to his destinations.

Don't be silly. The rules never apply to the tyrants who make them.

>One overcast and stormy summer day last year, I was riding to the beach when the rain got heavy and took shelter under a lodge canopy in Broad Channel. It rained hard steady for 90 minutes as I witnessed about 8 empty buses speeding up Cross Bay Blvd heading for Rockaway Beach.

That's one of the big problems with SBS compared to ordinary express buses, like the Q44 used to be. The driver can't use their discretion, they can't pick people up at other stops, and you can't request to be let off along the route during afterhours like you can on regular and express buses.