The Other Transit Crisis: How to Improve the NYC Bus System

Executive Summary

The bus system is the workhorse of New York City public transit, serving residents of all ages, ethnicities, and income levels across all five boroughs. Its size and scope is unparalleled, with 5,700 buses, 330 routes, and 16,000 stops serving well over two million passengers each day—more than the combined daily ridership of LIRR, MetroNorth, PATH, and New Jersey Transit.[i]

The bus system is also the future of New York City public transit, connecting emerging job hubs outside of lower-Manhattan that are ill-served by the subway’s hub-and-spoke network. As the New York City economy diversifies, its fastest growing industries—health, education, hospitality, food services, culture—are also its most diffuse. For these sectors, buses are essential to the livelihood of their employees, clients, and customers and to their future success.

And yet, despite its extraordinary size, reach, and importance, the bus system is too often neglected. Within the sprawling Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), it is overshadowed by subways, commuter rail, and bridges, which enjoy more attention and resources. Within the City—which oversees the roads, curbs, shelters, and traffic lights that buses depend upon—it receives abundant rhetorical support, but too little substantive assistance.

As a result, the bus system has been stifled. Its routes are often slow, unreliable, long, meandering, confusing, congested, and poorly connected. Its buses are old, its shelters deficient, and access to its stops and separated lanes are under-enforced. Its network is stagnant, changing little in recent decades despite an extraordinary transformation in residential, employment, and commuting patterns throughout the five boroughs.

This is not the result of unavoidable circumstances, but rather a product of age-old institutional failures by the City and the MTA to maximize the system’s potential. While bus riders demand fast, reliable, frequent, connective, accessible, and legible public transit, that basic level of service is too rarely on offer. As this report from New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer documents:

The MTA bus system is in decline:

• The MTA bus system lost 100 million passenger trips in the last eight years. Falling ridership has largely been concentrated in Manhattan, down 16 percent since 2011, and Brooklyn, which fell by four percent.[ii]

MTA buses are the slowest in the nation among large cities:

• The average New York City Transit bus travels a dismal 7.4 miles per hour along its local, SBS, and express routes – slowest among the 17 largest bus companies in the nation.
• The typical New York City bus spends only half its time in-motion/in-traffic. Another 21 percent is spent at red lights and 22 percent at bus stops.[iii]
• Average bus speeds vary dramatically among the boroughs, with the slowest average speeds in Manhattan (5.5mph), Brooklyn (6.3mph), and the Bronx (6.5mph). This is significantly lower than local routes in Queens (8.1mph) and Staten Island (11.4mph).[iv]

Lower-income and immigrant New Yorkers are hurt by this lack of service most of all:

• The average personal income of bus commuters is $28,455 – far lower than subway commuters ($40,000) and employed New Yorkers as a whole ($38,840).[v]
• 55 percent of bus commuters are foreign born and 75 percent are people of color—significantly higher than subway commuters and New Yorkers more generally.

This decline is happening at a time when New York City’s economy and neighborhoods are changing and the need for a responsive bus system is greater than ever, especially outside of Manhattan:

• New York City subways were largely built to bring workers to Manhattan. But residents throughout the city are now more likely to commute within their home borough than to Manhattan, making an efficient, well-planned bus system essential.
• From 2006 to 2016, the number of jobs located in Brooklyn jumped by 49 percent, in the Bronx by 35 percent, in Queens by 34 percent, and in Staten Island by 27 percent, but only 5 percent in Manhattan. As a result of this growth, the share of New York City jobs located outside of Manhattan rose from 35 percent to 42 percent over this period.
• From 2000 to 2015, the number of Bronxites commuting within their home borough jumped 48 percent, Brooklynites by 41 percent, Queens residents by 34 percent, and Staten Islanders by 30 percent.
• As new employment centers emerge outside of Manhattan, the bus system has not kept pace. Neighborhoods like Williamsburg, Morris Park, Norwood, Greenpoint, Glen Oaks, Red Hook, and the two Queens airports provide thousands of jobs, but are underserved by public transit.
• Residential patterns have also changed, with rising rents dramatically altering the racial, ethnic, income, and occupational makeup of many neighborhoods. Bus routes have not, however, been relocated to serve their dislocated clientele.
• At the same time, many workers—especially in the service sector—are now commuting to and from work in the late evening, early morning, and at other non-traditional times when MTA bus service is limited. In fact, at its morning peak, the MTA runs 12 times more buses than during its late-evening nadir.[vi]

Declining bus service is due, in part, to the MTA’s failure to follow its own standards and schedules:

• In order to keep buses moving, the MTA aims to locate bus stops at least 750 feet apart.[vii] This standard is very low compared to other major cities and it is applied very loosely by the MTA. On ten routes, for instance, bus stops are spaced more than 1,200 feet apart, or nearly double the standard, which can make access difficult for seniors and the disabled. Meanwhile, 30 percent of routes do not maintain even this minimum standard.[viii] In fact, among Manhattan bus routes, the average distance between bus stops is 757 feet, barely higher than the recommended minimum.
• According to the MTA’s twelve-year bus replacement standards, the average vehicle should be 6 years old. In fact, the average age of an MTA bus is 7.8 years, and 22 percent are still on the road after a dozen years.[ix]
• The MTA has expressly acknowledged that long and meandering bus routes are inefficient and unreliable.[x] Yet local routes remain highly circuitous, with 38 making at least 15 turns and the average Staten Island route making 13. Meanwhile, the average city bus route is 6.8 miles long and in Staten Island, 10.6 miles.[xi]
• To measure the consistency of bus service, the MTA uses a “wait assessment” measure. By this metric, buses are considered unreliable if they do not maintain regular spacing along their route. Yet across the New York City Transit system, nearly a quarter of buses do not provide steady service during the weekday. Approximately 24 percent of Brooklyn and Manhattan local buses, 23 percent of Bronx buses, 21 percent of Queens buses, and 19 percent of Staten Island buses fail to maintain scheduled spacing during the day.[xii]

The bus system is also hampered by a fractured management structure:

• The bus system’s management is divided between two agencies: New York City Transit (NYCT) Bus and the MTA Bus Company.
• The operating costs per passenger for the NYCT Bus ($3.98) and MTA Bus Company ($5.48) ranks them 7^th and 14^th among the 17 largest city bus companies in the United States.[xiii]
• The MTA Bus Company and NYCT Bus operate separate depots. This leaves some NYCT buses traveling a farther distance to and from their route rather than being stored and maintained at a more proximate MTA Bus Company depot.
• NYCT Bus ranks 13^th and MTA Bus ranks 17^th in their share of “deadhead hours”—or the time its buses spend without serving customers—among the 17 largest city bus companies in the United States. This is largely due to the volatility of bus frequencies throughout the day as well as separate and scattered depots.[xiv]

Both the MTA and City DOT have struggled to implement new technologies and core amenities that could improve the speed and reliability of bus service:

• Dedicated Bus Lanes: In total, there are only 104 miles of dedicated bus lanes along the City’s 6,000 miles of roadway.[xv] This is far lower than the share of bus lanes in other major cities like Brussels, Barcelona, Dublin, Seattle, Singapore, and Lisbon.[xvi]
• Transit Signal Priority (TSP): Transit Signal Priority is a technology that allows MTA buses to communicate with New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) traffic lights in order to extend a green light or shorten a red light at an approaching intersection, allowing for swifter travel.
  • After a decade of fitful efforts, TSP is active at a meager 260 intersections along only five of the city’s 326 bus routes.[xvii] This is far lower than London, where it has been installed at 3,200 intersections, Los Angeles, where it is active at 654, or Brussels, Dublin, Barcelona, Seattle, Montreal, Sydney, and Zurich, where a much higher percentage of traffic signals are equipped.
• Select Bus Service (SBS): SBS was supposed to herald a new day in NYC bus travel, with innovations like dedicated bus lanes and off-board fare collection. Outcomes, however, have been underwhelming, largely due to a failure to maintain SBS design standards and a lack of enforcement to keep dedicated lanes clear. In fact:
  • NYC DOT will finish the year with only 15 of the 20 SBS routes it planned to implement by the end of 2017.
  • Of the nine SBS routes introduced prior to 2016, five have experienced a ridership decline.[xviii]
  • SBS routes travel at an average speed of 8.7 miles per hour, or just slightly better than the seven miles per hour achieved by local buses.[xix]
  • City-wide, SBS routes fail to maintain steady, evenly spaced service 19 percent of the time, while local buses fail 22 percent of the time.
• Bus Shelters: Of the 15,000-plus bus stops across the five boroughs, only 3,364 have shelters, or 22 percent of the total. Staten Island has the smallest share of bus stops with shelters (12 percent), followed by Queens (20 percent), Brooklyn (21 percent), Bronx (28 percent), and Manhattan (32 percent).[xx]

The following nineteen recommendations provide a blueprint for the fast, frequent, and reliable bus system that New Yorkers deserve. Guided by this plan, the City and MTA can reduce commute times, improve access to good paying jobs, alleviate gaps in the subway system, ease subway overcrowding, and dramatically improve the lives of all New Yorkers.

Economic Growth, Commuting Patterns, and the Demographics of Bus Ridership

New York City has never been more bustling, productive, or congested. Over 8.5 million people wake up in the city each morning, 4.4 million commute to work each day, and 60 million explore its sites each year. In the last decade, the city has added 300,000 residents, 700,000 jobs, and 16 million tourists.[xxi]

This extraordinary surge in activity is enabled and sustained by public transportation. From subways to ferries, commuter rail to paratransit, tramways to bike-share, the city’s roads, bridges, tunnels, waterways, and skies offer a variety of methods for circulating the city.

None of these transit modes, however, have the reach of the bus system, which operates in every neighborhood in New York City. In 2016, the MTA’s 5,700 buses picked-up 760 million passengers at 15,400 stops along 330 routes in every corner of the five boroughs.[xxii] Collectively, its operating budget was nearly $4 billion.[xxiii]

And yet, despite its formidable size, the bus system is too often relegated to second-class status by the MTA, which manages the system, and the New York City DOT, which oversees the roads, curbs, shelters, and traffic lights where MTA buses operate.

This status is most apparent in juxtaposition to the subway system. When subway ridership took a modest 0.3 percent dip in 2016 after six years of uninterrupted growth – and a quarter century of steady increases—alarm bells were set off throughout the city and countless theories were put forth. When the bus system lost 100 million riders over the last eight years (see Chart 1), no such introspection materialized.[xxiv]

Chart 1: MTA bus ridership, 2006-2016

Metropolitan Transportation Authority, “MTA Adopted Budget: February Financial Plan,” 2007 to 2017.

Within the MTA, responsibility for the city’s underperforming bus system is divided between two companies: NYCT Bus and MTA Bus Company.[xxv]

NYCT Bus is significantly larger, providing a wide range of local and express inter-borough routes, as well as Select Bus Service (SBS)—upgraded lines with off-board fare collection, dedicated bus lanes, and other innovations to expedite service. MTA Bus Company, on the other hand, is primarily engaged in express service to Manhattan, though it does run several local routes, particularly in Queens.

While the two companies manage overlapping networks, their operations are largely divided. Thirteen years after the acquisition of MTA Bus, route planning and scheduling is still conducted with little collaboration.

The City, meanwhile, has failed to devote the energy and resources to help turn around the flagging bus system. NYC DOT will finish the year with only 15 of the 20 Select Bus Service routes it promised by the end of Mayor de Blasio’s first term in office.[xxvi] The implementation of Transit Signal Priority, which adjusts traffic lights to speed bus travel, has been slow and coordination with the MTA is increasingly constrained. Bus stops are poorly marked and sidewalk extensions—important for expediting boarding—are rare, with construction often over-schedule and over-budget. Enforcement of bus lane and bus stop obstructions, the dominion of both DOT and NYPD, is meager.

This should not be the case. The bus system is an essential (and enormous) component of the city’s public transportation network. An effective, well designed system could reduce commute times, improve access to jobs, ease subway overcrowding, alleviate gaps in the subway system, and dramatically improve the lives of all New Yorkers, particularly those with lower incomes.

Job Growth Outside of Manhattan and Changing Commuting Patterns

More than any other transit mode, the bus system should have the capacity and flexibility to accommodate the city’s residential and employment growth and changing commuting patterns.

While the subway is a fixed, hub-and-spoke system, designed to quickly transport residents from upper-Manhattan and the non-Manhattan boroughs into the downtown and midtown business districts, bus routes are (theoretically) more adaptive. They can be redesigned as commuting patterns evolve—servicing the growing number of residents whose jobs are located within their home borough or in an adjacent non-Manhattan borough.

Over the last decade, these “non-Manhattan” boroughs have experienced tremendous economic growth. From 2006 to 2016, the number of jobs located in Brooklyn jumped by 49 percent, in the Bronx by 35 percent, in Queens by 34 percent, and in Staten Island by 27 percent, but only five percent in Manhattan (see Chart 2).[xxvii] As a result of this growth, the share of New York City jobs located outside of Manhattan rose from 35 percent to 42 percent over this period.

Chart 2: Employment growth within the boroughs, 2006 to 2016

New York State Department of Labor, “Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.”

Not surprisingly, the changing geography of jobs has had a major impact on commuting patterns. From 2000 to 2015, the number of Bronxites commuting within their home borough jumped 48 percent, Brooklynites by 41 percent, Queens residents by 34 percent, and Staten Islanders by 30 percent (see Chart 3). Meanwhile, the number of residents working in another, non-Manhattan borough jumped by 34 percent in the Bronx, 14 percent in Brooklyn, and 11 percent in Queens, while dropping in Staten Island by four percent (see Chart 3).[xxviii]

Chart 3: The number of residents commuting within their home borough or to another non-Manhattan borough grew significantly between 2000 and 2015

United States Census Bureau. American Community Survey 2011-2015 5-Year Estimates.

As a result of these developments, residents of every borough are now more likely to commute within their home borough than to Manhattan. Meanwhile, a substantial portion of commuters are traveling between non-Manhattan boroughs (see Chart 4).

Chart 4: Where do borough residents commute?

United States Census Bureau. American Community Survey 2011-2015 5-Year Estimates.

The New York City bus system should be responsive to these rapidly evolving, decentralized commuting patterns. A new or modified bus route requires neither billion dollar stations nor elaborate tunneling. As employment and residential hubs disperse, the direction, frequency, and span of bus lines can conceivably be altered with only minimal capital outlay.

In practice, however, bus maps remain fairly stagnant. A route’s timetable may be modified to accommodate ridership changes, its path may be tweaked, and, in rare instances of budgetary shortfalls or windfalls, a route may be added or eliminated altogether. But these changes are atypical and executed in isolation, with little consideration for the performance and connectivity of the system as a whole.

Rare instances of comprehensive planning, meanwhile, have ultimately proven tepid and toothless. In the 1980s, the MTA pursued extensive bus route analyses within each of the five boroughs, but ultimately tabled these studies and implemented few of their recommendations.

Such an undertaking has not been conducted since—with the exception of the current, and exemplary, efforts to redesign Staten Island express bus routes. As a consequence, the city’s bus maps bare a strong resemblance to the trolley lines of yesteryear in many neighborhoods.

The Bus System and Lower-Income New Yorkers

A robust, responsive, and well-funded bus system is particularly vital for low-income New Yorkers, whose jobs are highly decentralized. While 63 percent of New York City jobs with an annual salary over $40,000 are located in lower Manhattan, only 38 percent of lower-wage jobs can be found there.[xxix] The remaining 62 percent are scattered throughout the five boroughs (see Chart 5), leaving lower-income workers with exceedingly long commutes and often dependent on private automobiles which are expensive to buy, maintain, insure, and park in New York City.

Chart 5: While higher-wage jobs are highly concentrated in lower Manhattan, lower-wage employment is scattered throughout the five boroughs

United States Census Bureau. “LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics.” 2015.

In fact, nearly 50 percent of New Yorkers with lower-wage jobs own an automobile and 24 percent commute to work using a car—far higher than the 14 percent that commute to work via bus.[xxx] Thus, while lower-income commuters are often labelled as “transit-dependent” or “captive” riders by transportation planners, their commuting behavior suggests that this is not the case. Improving bus service, then, has the ability to reduce commuters’ needs for private vehicles, allowing many lower-income New Yorkers to forego car ownership and save thousands of dollars.

Bus commuters, meanwhile, are among the most economically vulnerable living in New York—with less income and less education than both subway commuters and city residents writ-large. The average personal income of bus commuters is $28,455—far lower than subway commuters ($40,000) and employed New Yorkers as a whole ($38,840). Nearly 70 percent of bus commuters do not have a bachelor’s degree, 12 percent are over 60, 42 percent have children at home, 17 percent are single parents, 55 percent are foreign born, and 75 percent are people of color—all significantly higher than subway commuters and New Yorkers more generally (see Table 1).[xxxi]

Table 1: Profile of New Yorkers commuting to work

United States Census Bureau. American Community Survey 2011-2015 5-Year Estimates.

These riders are also disproportionately employed in industries with “non-traditional work hours,” like healthcare, hospitality, retail, food services, and culture.[xxxii] They require frequent and reliable bus service at all times of the day, not just rush hour.

From 2006 to 2016, the number of jobs in these “non-traditional” industries grew by 32 percent—far outpacing employment growth in the remainder of city industries (14 percent). Healthcare, hospitality, retail, food services, and culture now account for 40 percent of private sector jobs and employ 1,448,303 workers.

For these service-sector employees—and their millions of customers and clients—bus service is often inadequate. Just as shifts are ending or rotating, the availability of buses is plummeting throughout the city. At its AM peak, for instance, the MTA runs twelve times more buses than during its late-evening nadir (see Chart 6).

Chart 6: The number of buses beginning their route each hour

NYCT Bus and MTA Bus. “Static Data Feeds: General Transit Feed Specification,” MTA. January 2017.

The Cost of Bad Service

Building a bus system that gets New Yorkers where they want to go, when they want to go will benefit straphangers, increase ridership, and improve the bottom line.

In 2016, the MTA Bus and NYCT Bus Company collected only 31 cents in farebox revenue for every operating dollar expended—their “farebox recovery ratio.” While this placed them favorably among the nation’s 17 bus companies with over $250 million in expenses—behind only Chicago Transit Authority—this was due, in part, to the MTA’s relatively high bus fare. Adjusting for this variation in fares, New York City Transit Bus ranked 7^th among its peers in operating cost per passenger trip while the MTA Bus Company ranked 14^th (see Chart 7).[xxxiii]

Chart 7: Operating cost per passenger trip among 17 largest urban bus companies

National Transit Database. “Metrics,” 2016.  Includes “bus,” “commuter bus,” and “bus rapid transit” services.

Regardless of the preferred metric, the financial circumstances for the MTA are clear: when fare revenue does not cover operating expenses, there is an operating loss. For NYCT Bus, this loss was nearly $2.2 billion in 2016. For the much smaller MTA Bus Company, it was in excess of $475 million.[xxxiv]

And while deficits are inevitable for any major city bus system, they can be minimized by adapting to the needs of passengers. Revising routes to more directly, quickly, and reliably serve changing commuting patterns and emerging employment centers will not only improve the economic conditions and quality-of-life of New Yorkers, it will also attract increased ridership and improve the finances of the bus system.

New Geography of Jobs: Gaps in Service and Ridership Trends in New York City

Though it may lack in responsiveness and adaptiveness, the New York City bus network is thoroughly comprehensive. MTA service spans every borough and reaches every neighborhood—with the express intention that no New Yorker should walk more than a quarter-mile to the closest bus shelter or subway station.[xxxv]

In addition to this “coverage” goal, both NYCT Bus and MTA Bus Company, strive to provide service that gets people where they want to go, when they want to go, in a reasonable amount of time. Achieving this aim requires direct, frequent, and reliable service that prioritizes dense population centers and employment hubs—as well entertainment, education, and healthcare destinations.

Over the last quarter century, the geographic diffusion of business and employment in New York City has left many of these hubs underserved. Areas like Williamsburg in Brooklyn, Morris Park in the Bronx, and the two airports in Queens each support over 20,000 jobs across a broad range of skills.[xxxvi] While this is far higher than the typical New York City neighborhood, each area is served by fewer than the average number of subway lines and bus routes.

In total, there are 12 neighborhoods (and two airports) that offer significantly more jobs, but have significantly less bus (and subway) service than the average city neighborhood (see Table 2).[xxxvii] Each are compelling candidates for additional bus service:

Table 2: Ample employment opportunities, but inadequate transit service

Jobs: United States Census Bureau. “LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics.” 2015.
Bus and Subway: MTA. “Static Data Feeds: General Transit Feed Specification,” January 2017.

Importantly, these neighborhoods are not just employment centers, but also destinations for shoppers, diners, tourists, nightlife, and health services. Morris Park, Norwood, and Glen Oaks house major hospital complexes. Williamsburg, Jackson Heights, and Clinton are renowned restaurant and retail locations (see Appendix 1).

Beyond jobs and attractions, the need for additional service to these neighborhoods is evident from ridership trends. While bus ridership has fallen substantially city-wide, many of the routes that traverse these neighborhoods have grown in popularity. Ridership among the local routes in College Point, for instance, rose 13 percent, those servicing the airports jumped by four percent, and those serving Norwood saw a three percent increase. As for the neighborhoods where ridership fell, they were almost exclusively in Brooklyn and Manhattan, where the average bus moves at haltingly slow speeds and reliability is patchy.

Chart 8: Average weekday ridership on local bus routes, 2011-2016

“Average Weekday Ridership” MTA New York City Transit and MTA Bus Company.

Ridership trends in these underserved neighborhoods are consistent with larger, city-wide patterns (see Chart 8). For instance, while local bus ridership has fallen dramatically in Manhattan (down 16 percent) and Brooklyn (down four percent), it has actually grown in Staten Island (3 percent), Queens (1 percent), and the Bronx (half a percent).

Drilling down to the neighborhood level (see Map 1), the number of areas experiencing ridership growth among local routes outnumbered those that experienced a fall in the Bronx (28 to 9), Queens (29 to 28), and Staten Island (12 to 6). The reverse was true in Brooklyn (8 to 42) and Manhattan (1 to 27).

Map 1: Changes in local bus ridership by neighborhood, 2011-2016

Location: NYCT Bus and MTA Bus Company. “Static Data Feeds: General Transit Feed Specification,” January 2017. Based on ridership on the routes that traverse each neighborhood.

Falling bus ridership in many of these Brooklyn and Manhattan neighborhoods is occurring in tandem with dramatic demographic changes. As rents rise and neighborhoods become increasingly unaffordable, the racial, ethnic, income, and occupational distribution of residents has been altered. In a number of neighborhoods, populations that once relied on buses to commute to local, lower-wage service sector jobs are now being displaced by residents who rely primarily on subways to commute to higher-wage jobs in the Manhattan central business districts.

Gentrification has, in fact, been strongly correlated with falling bus ridership in cities like Portland.[xxxviii] It appears to exert a similar influence in New York City neighborhoods. While thousands of local bus riders are being displaced by rising rents, bus routes have not been relocated to serve their dislocated clientele.

Infrequent, Unreliable, and Slow

Getting New Yorkers where they want to go is important. Getting them where they want to go, when they need to be there is essential. Unfortunately, the bus system does not always deliver on this promise.

To increase ridership and better serve commuters and job-seekers, New York needs a high-performing bus system. Buses should come regularly, so that wait and transfer times are short. They should come as scheduled, so that commuters can plan around their timetables and not be late for work, meetings, school, or appointments. They should move swiftly through traffic, so that commuters aren’t grinding through congested roads, wishing they’d driven, biked, or walked instead. Frequency, reliability, and speed—all are critical to an effective, thriving bus system.

Frequency

Of these core components, frequency is perhaps the most important. A bus that comes once an hour is of limited value to someone who is changing their plans on-the-go or just missed the bus they were trying to catch. While innovations like MTA Bus Time—an app that provides real-time information on bus locations and schedules—certainly improves trip planning and helps guard against missing the bus, frequency remains essential for limiting wait and transfer times and attracting both dedicated and casual ridership.

While the regularity of New York’s bus system far outclasses its American peers, there are dozens of routes that do not maintain “frequent” service during morning rush hour in one or both directions.[xl] Among the city’s 250 local, limited, and SBS bus routes, over 25 percent provide infrequent service, forcing riders to wait over 10 minutes between buses. Another 21 percent travel frequently in only one direction during the AM peak, generally toward a transit or employment hub.

The regularity of service varies significantly by borough. Only 25 percent of bus routes in Staten Island maintain frequent service during morning rush hour in both directions. This compares to 52 percent in Queens, 57 percent in Brooklyn, 60 percent in Manhattan, and 65 percent in the Bronx (see Chart 9).

Chart 9: Share of bus routes with infrequent service during AM rush hour, by borough

NYCT Bus and MTA Bus Company. “Static Data Feeds: General Transit Feed Specification,” MTA. January 2017.

In 53 of the city’s 188 neighborhoods, less than half of the local, limited, and SBS routes that service the area provide frequent rush hour service in both directions. In ten neighborhoods, fewer than 20 percent of routes provide that level of service (see Table 2).

Table 2: Neighborhoods with a large share of infrequent bus routes

NYCT Bus and MTA Bus Company. “Static Data Feeds: General Transit Feed Specification,” MTA. January 2017.

Of course, New Yorkers rely on the bus system outside of the morning rush hour. They go to grocery stores, bodegas, restaurants, movies, clubs, and cultural events in the evening and wee hours of the night (it is, after all, “the city that never sleeps”). When traveling to and from these destinations, they demand reliable and available public transit.

Even more important, a growing number of New Yorkers are working in industries with “non-traditional hours.” Many of these workers are low-paid and are particularly dependent on MTA service to get to and from their jobs.

Among bus routes that start between 8:30pm and 10:30pm, a mere six percent run frequently in both directions and 12 percent run frequently in one direction. In Staten Island, 96 percent of bus routes are infrequent in both directions, while 85 percent are infrequent in Manhattan, 83 percent in the Bronx, 79 percent in Brooklyn, and 78 percent in Queens (see Chart 10).

Chart 10: Share of bus routes with infrequent service in the evening, by borough

NYCT Bus & MTA Bus Company. “Static Data Feeds: General Transit Feed Specification.” January 2017.

Even in those neighborhoods with a large number of health, hospitality, retail, food services, and cultural businesses, evening bus service plummets. In the 30 neighborhoods supporting over 10,000 employees in these industries, an average of 104 buses/per hour pass through between 8:30pm and 10:30pm—compared to 255 during morning rush, a 59 percent fall (see Appendix 2).[xli]

These drop-offs are particularly galling in Forest Hills, Sunset Park, Chinatown, and Glen Oaks. Though half the jobs in these neighborhoods are in 24-hour, seven-day-a-week industries like healthcare and accommodations, bus service dips by more than 60 percent between morning rush and late evening hours each weekday. Just as shifts are starting, ending, or rotating, the availability of public transportation is plummeting.

And while some variation in peak and non-peak frequencies is common and advisable, the MTA has long been recognized as an outlier in this respect.[xlii] Its irregular service is highly inefficient, requiring buses to spend much of their time traveling to and from their depots, rather than continuing along their route. This produces a lot of “deadhead hours,” or the time a bus spends without serving customers.

Chart 11: Share of the time that buses are traveling, but not in service, by agency

National Transit Database. “Service,” 2016.  Includes “bus,” “commuter bus,” and “bus rapid transit” services.

Compared to its peer bus companies in the United States, NYCT Bus ranks 13^th and MTA Bus ranks 17^th out of 17 in their share of deadhead versus revenue hours (see Chart 11). While a number of factors contribute to these inefficiencies—including the number of express routes and the location of depots—inconsistent bus frequencies certainly play a role.

Better accommodating the evolving industry landscape and travel patterns of New Yorkers, then, will not only make the system more accommodating to riders, it will also make it more efficient.

Reliability

A 7:10am bus arrives at 7:04am. Dozens of on-time commuters trickle into the stop, quickly learning that they’ve been stranded by an off-schedule bus. Fourteen minutes later, the 7:20am arrives. Carrying a double-load, it is overcrowded and cannot accommodate everyone at the stop. Riders are left to wait for the 7:30am, which arrives five minutes late.

When buses fail to adhere to their schedule and maintain steady service, riders are adversely impacted. They are late for work, for school, for appointments, caretaking, pick-ups, drop-offs, and much more. A high-frequency network is of little value when buses run ahead or behind schedule. A bus system that is unreliable will struggle to retain and attract ridership.

To measure the consistency of bus service, the MTA uses a “wait assessment” measure. By this metric, buses are considered unreliable if they do not maintain regular spacing along their route.

Across the NYCT system, nearly a quarter of buses do not provide steady service during the weekday. Approximately 24 percent of Brooklyn and Manhattan local buses, 23 percent of Bronx buses, 21 percent of Queens buses, 19 percent of Staten Island buses, and 18 percent of inter-borough express buses fail to maintain scheduled spacing during the day (see Chart 12).

Meanwhile, SBS routes fail to maintain consistent spacing 19 percent of the time, even though they enjoy a number of speed and reliability enhancements—like dedicated bus lanes and off-board fare collection—that should ensure greater dependability.[xliii]

Chart 12: Percentage of NYCT buses arriving off-schedule, 2017YTD

MTA “Transit & Bus Committee Meeting.” March 2017 to October 2017.

Speed

Traffic congestion, red lights, delivery trucks parked at bus stops, a succession of left- and right-turns along meandering routes. For bus drivers, navigating New York City streets is not easy. Little wonder that bus speeds are so slow.

The average New York City Transit bus travels a dismal 7.4 miles per hour along its local, SBS, and express routes – slowest among the seventeen largest bus companies in the nation (see Chart 13). The MTA Bus Company—which specializes in limited-stop, express service—performs little better, traveling 8.4 mph and ranking third-to-last among its peers.[xliv]

Chart 13: Seventeen largest urban bus companies, average speed

National Transit Database, “Service,” Federal Transit Administration. 2016.

While a number of variables affect bus speeds, one powerful factor is population density— which is often accompanied by a density of cars, delivery trucks, pedestrians, and traffic lights. Of the four cities where average bus speeds are lower than 10 miles per hour—San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York—all are among the densest in the country.

These dynamics are played out within New York City as well (see Chart 14). Average bus speeds vary dramatically among the boroughs, with the slowest average speeds in Manhattan (5.5mph), Brooklyn (6.3mph), and the Bronx (6.5mph). This is significantly lower than local routes in Queens (8.1mph) and Staten Island (11.4mph).

Chart 14: Average bus speed, by borough

Freeman, Neil. “NYC Bus Performance API.”

Throughout the city, there are 17 bus routes that travel slower than five miles per hour, on average. Sixteen of them are in Manhattan, including two Select Bus Service routes, the M34 and M34A (see Table 3). On the other end of the spectrum, only eleven routes have average speeds in excess of twelve miles per hour. All but three are in Staten Island.

Table 3: The slowest bus routes in NYC

Freeman, Neil. “NYC Bus Performance API.”

These sluggish speeds do little to attract or retain ridership in New York City. Taking the bus can be an infuriating experience—inching through traffic, waiting at an endless stream of red lights, watching the bus be overtaken by pedestrians and bicycles.

And while the city’s density and congestion are deeply intertwined with these outcomes, slow and unreliable bus service is far from inevitable. As the following section will demonstrate, poor performance is tightly linked to design, planning, and investment decisions, not an unavoidable and unique facet of life in New York City.

Making the Bus System Better

The typical New York City bus trip is long and complex and can be doomed by a number of factors, contributing to both slow speeds and delays.

Did the bus exit the depot on-time? Does it travel through congested streets? How many traffic lights are located on the route and how often is the bus caught at a red light? How many bus stops are along the route and how much time is spent entering, off-boarding, on-boarding, and exiting at these stops? How many turns are positioned along the route, requiring the driver to carefully rotate a multi-ton vehicle amidst cars, pedestrians, cyclists, and other encumbrances? Are cars or delivery vehicles illegally parked along its route, blocking the bus lane or individuals stops? How effectively does it connect with other, faster bus and subway lines, so that passengers can minimize their commute times?

New York City buses spend only half their time in-motion/in-traffic. Another 21 percent is spent at red lights and 22 percent at bus stops (see Chart 15).[xlv] Helping the bus move faster, then, has little to do with increasing top speeds.

Chart 15: How a bus spends its time

New York City DOT and MTA. “Introduction to Bus Rapid Transit Phase II.”

Instead, it requires less congestion, through measures like dedicated bus lanes. It requires Transit Signal Priority to reduce the time at red lights. It requires shortening the time spent at stops by upgrading fare payment systems, curbs, and shelters to speed up exit and entry. It requires the ticketing of cars and delivery trucks that obstruct stops and bus lanes. And it requires limiting the number of bus stops so that less time is spent decelerating into a stop, accelerating back into crowded traffic, and boarding and un-boarding passengers.

Fortunately, efforts to improve bus speed and reliability also save money and allow for a more efficient allocation of resources. For instance, if a bus averages 6 miles per hour over a 6 mile route, it can complete the route in both directions every two hours and cover the circuit four times over an eight hour stretch. But if the average speed is bumped up to 9 miles per hour, a circuit can be completed in an hour and twenty minutes and six times over an eight hour period. Scheduled frequencies could then be increased by a third with the same number of buses.

Transit Signal Priority

There are over 12,000 traffic signals positioned throughout the five boroughs.[xlvi] These signals are essential for governing the city’s intersections; helping millions of cars, trucks, bicycles, and pedestrians move faster and more efficiently. They do, however, require vehicles to devote a significant amount of time waiting for the light. For the typical New York City bus, for instance, over 20 percent of its trip is spent waiting for lights to turn green.[xlvii]

There is, however, a better way. Buses can be granted priority at traffic lights, with signals dynamically adjusting to extend a green or shorten a red light at the approaching intersection. This is known as “Transit Signal Priority” (TSP) and, after years of false starts, it is slowly being implemented on New York City streets.

New York City first piloted TSP on Victory Boulevard in 2006. With a high volume of bus routes traveling along Victory en route to the St. George Ferry Terminal, it was an ideal location to test the technology and speed up trips for thousands of riders. Modems and transponders were installed on several buses, allowing them to communicate with traffic lights and improve bus flow.

The pilot study, unfortunately, did not go as planned. Buses with transponders were suddenly relocated to Brooklyn or Queens depots without explanation, leaving planners scrambling to replace them. Budgeters and administrators, meanwhile, began to lose interest in the technology when it appeared TSP could speed up bus trips, but not necessarily save the agency money. Still others felt little ownership over the initiative, uninterested in implementing TSP because it had already been done in other cities or because it was first spearheaded by the City DOT.[xlviii]

Over a decade later, TSP is active at a meager 260 intersections along only five of the city’s 326 bus routes.[xlix] This is far lower than London, where it has been installed at 3,200 intersections, Los Angeles, where it is active at 654, or Brussels, Dublin, Barcelona, Seattle, Montreal, Sydney, and Zurich, were a much higher percentage of traffic signals are equipped.[l]

And while TSP has proven to be highly effective in New York City—increasing bus speeds by an impressive 18 percent along its five corridors—plans for future rollout remain tepid. According to a recent report by the City DOT, the agency is hoping to add 886 intersections and 15 routes by the end of 2020.[li] This would leave New York City three years and two-thirds behind London’s current progress.

London TSP is not just expansive, however, it is also more technologically advanced. Its Split Cycle Offset Optimization Technique balances bus priority with the movement of other vehicles, ensuring that TSP is not disruptive to general traffic. It also has the capability to identify late buses and provide them with more optimal signal priority. New York City has long considered a similar upgrade, but has yet to implement it.

Bus Stop Balancing

Bus stops should be positioned at regular intervals to ensure they are accessible to all riders. This is especially true for older riders and those with disabilities, for whom the bus is often the only accessible mode of public transportation. As such, any discussion of modifying bus stops must be undertaken with input from these affected communities, with an eye toward increasing service and efficiency for all.

Standards for spacing vary across the globe. The European HiTrans guides, for instance, recommend .4 miles (~2,100 feet) between bus stops on local city routes.[lii] By contrast, the MTA Bus Company maintains a “minimum desired spacing interval of approximately 750 feet” for its local buses.[liii]

There are several routes, however, that far exceed this “desired spacing interval,” forcing riders to travel longer than recommended to their stop and creating a burden for those with limited mobility. On ten routes, for instance, bus stops are spaced more than 1,200 feet apart, on average (see Table 4). While several of these lines travel over a bridge or through less congested areas of the city, others traverse dense neighborhoods and may not be sufficiently accessible to their riders.

Table 4: Local routes with the longest average distance between stops

NYCT Bus and MTA Bus Company. “Static Data Feeds: General Transit Feed Specification,” MTA. January 2017.

On the other side of the spectrum, 66 of the MTA’s 220 local bus routes—or 30 percent—do not maintain the minimum stop-spacing standard recommended by the Authority’s guidelines. In fact, among Manhattan bus routes, the average distance between bus stops is 757 feet, barely higher than the recommended minimum (see Chart 16).[liv] Average stop-spacing in Brooklyn (778 feet) is only slightly higher— demonstrating that slow bus speeds in these two boroughs are not simply a product of congestion, but also linked to deliberate decisions by MTA planners to bunch stops along these routes.

Chart 16: Average distance between local bus stops, by borough

NYCT Bus and MTA Bus Company. “Static Data Feeds: General Transit Feed Specification,” MTA. January 2017.

Shorter distances between stops may well be appropriate in certain sections of the city, like those with a high concentration of seniors. Yet the fact remains that bunched stops lead to slow and unreliable service that repels all bus riders, both young and old. Across the city, there are nine bus routes with stops located less than 650 feet apart. Four are in Brooklyn, three are in Manhattan, and two are in Queens (see Table 5). All but two saw ridership fall between 2011 and 2016 and collectively, they experienced a nine percent drop, more than double the city-wide average.[lv]

Table 5: Local routes with the shortest average distance between stops

NYCT Bus and MTA Bus Company. “Static Data Feeds: General Transit Feed Specification,” MTA. January 2017.