MTA Proposal To Eliminate Q103 Bus Riles Astoria Residents

ASTORIA, QUEENS — The MTA's proposal to eliminate the Q103 bus route along Vernon Boulevard has riled Astoria residents, who say the line is needed now more than ever.

Under the transportation authority's preliminary proposal to entirely redraw the Queens bus map, released Dec. 31, the Q103's north-south route along the Astoria waterfront would be cut.

As a replacement, the MTA's plan would shift those riders to a new version of the Q69 bus, which would still run along 21st Street — about 0.4 miles east of Vernon Boulevard — but continue further into Long Island City.

MTA officials working on the redesign said their proposal is only a draft and that the Q103 elimination isn't a done deal, but the mere suggestion had locals up in arms at two recent meetings on the plan.

At an MTA presentation on the redesign plan Friday in Astoria, nearly all of the 30-some attendees came to address the Q103 proposal: When one planner leading the presentation asked who had a question that wasn't about the Q103, the audience roared with laughter.

"It doesn't make sense," Audrey Dimola, an Astoria resident and the director of public programs at Socrates Sculpture Park, told Patch after the presentation. "Vernon Boulevard is that main thoroughfare there for all of us."

Dimola worries the elimination of the Q103 route would hurt Socrates Sculpture Park, a free outdoor museum on the Astoria waterfront that she said has seen a rapid increase in attendance in recent years.

Queens Chamber of Commerce president Tom Grech says attendance has doubled at Socrates, the Noguchi Museum and other cultural sites by the Astoria waterfront since the city installed a ferry landing at Hallets Cove in 2017.

At a redesign workshop the MTA hosted Tuesday in Long Island City, which drew about 80 attendees, the Q103 proposal was the talk of the town.

"It was at every table," Sheila Binesh, a transportation planner for the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, said.

MTA spokesperson Shams Tarek said the agency's draft proposal includes a bus route that would bring riders within blocks of Socrates Sculpture Park and the Noguchi Museum.

Tarek also invited locals to submit feedback on the agency's proposal, which will inform the MTA's next draft of the redesign.

"As we’ve said consistently, these are early proposals that were drafted as the result of extensive public input and careful study of changing ridership and development, and we want the public to weigh in as we continue to incorporate feedback into the next revision of the proposal," Tarek said in an emailed statement.

"In the case of destinations on Vernon Boulevard, the proposed QT63 brings riders within one block of the sculpture garden and museum, the ferry landing is as close as four blocks away from those institutions and the bus system is able to adapt to future development rather nimbly," Tarek said, referring to a new bus route proposed to run along Broadway, then turn down 11th Street for two blocks.

The Q103 is among the least-used bus routes in Queens, where large swaths of the borough are outside the subway system's reach and 714,000 people ride the bus on an average weekday.

In 2018, the route saw an average weekday ridership of 1,740, compared to riderships of 20,000-plus on the borough's most-used bus lines, according to MTA data.

The 21st Street corridor, where the MTA would shift Q103 riders under the draft proposal, has about 22,000 riders on an average weekday, agency data shows.

But those who rely on the Q103 — which includes roughly 3,000 residents living in the Astoria Houses, a NYCHA complex on the waterfront — say those numbers don't tell the full story.

The bus is packed in the mornings, riders say, and some suggest the low ridership numbers likely have to do with the Q103 only running every 20 to 30 minutes on weekdays.

At the MTA workshop Tuesday, a group of Astoria Houses residents sitting at one table said the route needs to stay: "I'm gonna fight for my 103," one woman said.

Local elected officials argue that the neighborhoods served by the Q103 are growing rapidly and will soon need more public transportation — not less.

One complex going up along the Astoria waterfront, the Durst Organization's temporarily-stalled Halletts Point mega-development, will add 2,002 rental apartments alone.

The Q103 is also among the fastest-growing bus lines in the city, with ridership more than doubling from 2013 to 2018, despite the fact that bus ridership both in Queens and citywide is trending downward.

The MTA launched the Queens bus redesign last year as an effort to remedy declining bus ridership and slow bus speeds by cutting under-used bus stops and combining redundant routes that have been around for roughly a century.

In Queens, bus ridership decreased by more than five percent from 2014 to 2019, even though at least 11 percent of Queens commuters rely solely on buses to get where they need to go, according to MTA data.

The final proposal is due to be released later this year but won't be implemented until 2021 at the earliest.

"We should add more bus service along Vernon Boulevard instead of taking the one mass transit option many residents have," City Council Member Costa Constantinides said. “This street has seen more density in the last few years, and it is a poor excuse to base future decisions on past performances when fewer people lived along Vernon."

State Sen. Michael Gianaris, who lobbied for the MTA to boost Q103 service back in 2013, said the line is essential for both residents and the cultural institutions by the waterfront. In 2015, the MTA made permanent a pilot program that increased weekend and nighttime service on the route, an annual investment of about $315,000.

"We should increase transit options to better serve these communities and so more people can access this cultural hub," Gianaris said.

To submit feedback on the plan, riders can attend the MTA's series of public presentations and workshops across Queens, fill out this online form or leave a comment on the MTA's interactive maps of the new routes.