Queens Officials Unite In Opposition To MTA Bus Redesign Draft

KEW GARDENS, QUEENS — "Unity" was the word of the day Friday, as elected officials gathered on the steps of Queens Borough Hall to emphasize their unified front against the MTA's proposed redesign of the borough's bus map.

"It's the first time I think the whole borough's united," City Council Member Bob Holden said.

All 15 City Council members representing Queens lambasted the transit authority's proposed bus map in a joint statement last week, which argued that the draft would "leave certain communities abandoned where transportation deserts already existed."

Since the MTA released its bus map draft on Dec. 31, Queens residents and transit advocates haven't been shy about their opposition to the plan. They've started petitions, organized protests and are showing up in full force at the agency's public workshops about the redesign.

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More than 714,000 weekday riders rely on the MTA's network of 107 bus lines to get around Queens, where subway service is sparse and is largely designed to shuttle commuters to Manhattan rather than around the borough.

MTA officials say their redesign, which was announced in April, is an effort to remedy declining bus ridership and slow bus speeds by cutting under-used bus stops and combining redundant routes.

The agency's planners are collecting feedback in a series of outreach sessions across Queens that they say will inform a new draft of the plan, due to be released by this summer.

Officials, advocates and riders have panned the MTA's current draft as reducing bus service rather than improving it by consolidating routes, calling for longer headways — a term that refers to how often a bus runs — and eliminating weekend express bus service.

"You don't fix something that's been broken for a hundred years by not investing it," City Council Member I. Daneek Miller, a former MTA bus driver, said during the rally Friday. "If those resources aren't there, what we get is a consolidation disguised as a new system."

Elected officials are protesting the MTA’s draft proposal for an entirely new Queens bus map. @DRichards13 @CMKoslowitz @AdrienneEAdams @BarryGrodenchik @daneek4council pic.twitter.com/T5SnFaa7lp
— Maya Kaufman (@mayakauf) January 31, 2020

The MTA has pushed back heavily on the narrative that its redesign represents a service cut, but sources told Patch that officials privately acknowledged to them that the draft plan was designed to be budget-neutral.

Former NYC Transit President Andy Byford told officials he would be willing to make concessions and that the final bus plan need not be budget-neutral, according to those sources, but he has since resigned.

"Andy Byford isn't here to be our cheerleader anymore," City Council Member Adrienne Adams said Friday, "but we can be our own cheerleader."