DOT Proposing A 14th Street-Style Busway For 34th Street

It’s the sequel you’ve been waiting for.

The Department of Transportation is planning on bringing a 14th Street-style busway to 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan, according to community board members and elected officials who were briefed on the plan. Those who’ve seen it call it a true transformation of one of the most transit-accessible blocks in the Western Hemisphere.

Starting today, the DOT will start presenting to the two Midtown community boards its plan for a busway on 34th Street between Third and Ninth avenues. The busway is supposed to have similar rules to the 14th Street busway: drivers of cars can still access any block, but must make the first available right turn off the roadway to get out of the way of bus passengers.

The busway treatment won’t be a river-to-river bus-only project, but it will take care of some of the more congested pieces of the M34 route. A previous DOT presentation on 34th Street showed that despite the fact that there are curbside bus lanes, bus speeds where the busway will be installed only hit seven miles per hour for eastbound buses between Fifth and Sixth avenues, and that everywhere else buses are mired in the muck and top out at five miles per hour.

Banning through traffic from cars on 14th Street resulted in buses moving 24 percent faster, and even helped grow bus ridership by 30 percent. Results like that had the leadership of CBs 4, 5 and 6 clamoring for the 14th Street treatment earlier this year. Elected officials who represent the area have also been supportive of the plan, especially if they have experience with the 14th Street busway.

“The M14 has proven the model here,” said Council Member Keith Powers (D-Midtown), who said he rides the bus every day. “If you dedicate a big chunk of a corridor to bus service, you will see strong results. I ride the M34, I see how slow they can be, and I walk out on the M14, and I see how, how important is to move these busses quicker.”

Powers also noted that while the Long Island Rail Road and over a dozen subway lines go to 34th Street, the corridor lacks a true fast crosstown public transit mode, which the busway can fix.

“It’s got every, almost every subway line going through it, but what is kind of missing is that critical crosstown connection. If you live in Long Island City and you take the ferry over, then you can hop on a faster bus. Or if you live at Waterside Plaza and you rely on that bus because it’s the only thing right outside your house, if you can shave 10 minutes or so off coming across town, that is a game-changer for you. Leaning into a busway and fast bus service will make a big difference for a whole lot of New Yorkers,” he said.

If the DOT follows through, it will cap almost 20 years of planning to do something big for bus riders on 34th Street. The idea of putting a busway there first popped up in 2008, when then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s DOT proposed banning car traffic between Fifth and Sixth avenues. That plan went down in flames though.

But with the successful implementation of congestion pricing, the city can actually move forward on its Connecting the Core plan, which is supposed to take advantage of the space dividend opened up by the 11.25-percent reduction in traffic since the toll began in January.

Of course, the actual “following through” aspect of the busway is what activists are keeping an eye on. Mayor Adams has cut the hours on more busways than he’s actually built in office, has put the kibosh on or slowed down high-profile bus projects like Fordham Road and Flatbush Avenue.

“Busways are very big time savers for riders,” said Riders Alliance Director for Policy and Communication Danny Pearlstein. “Bloomberg tried on 34th Street, [former Mayor Bill] de Blasio actually built one on 14th. Here’s hoping Adams delivers.”