Harlem

Last night at a candidate debate hosted by block associations in Harlem, incumbent Council Member Inez Dickens, first elected to the District 9 seat in 2005, faced off against challenger Vince Morgan, a community development banker and former chair of the 125th Street Business Improvement District. While transportation didn't come up much in the debate itself, some important differences between the candidates were discernible -- particularly on the issue of Select Bus Service on 125th Street and the city's plans for a waste transfer station on East 91st Street.

Throughout the development of the 125th Street Select Bus Service project, local elected officials and community boards never came out in support of actual bus improvements. Instead, they cloaked their opposition in concerns about "process." Following yesterday's announcement from the MTA and NYC DOT that they will no longer pursue Select Bus Service on 125th Street, now is a good time to review that process.

Well, this takes a lot of chutzpah. After blocking measures that would have sped bus trips for tens of thousands of people on 125th Street every day, State Senator Bill Perkins now claims he supports Select Bus Service.

Harlem's Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, connecting Macombs Dam Bridge to Central Park, has long been a dangerous speedway. DOT clocked drivers traveling as fast as 52 mph on the six-lane divided road, with up to two-thirds of evening drivers going above the 30 mph speed limit. Between 2006 and 2012, twelve pedestrians were killed on the boulevard, which sees more serious injuries and fatalities than 88 percent of Manhattan streets.

Reactions have been rolling in since DOT and the MTA announced this morning that they are canceling plans for Select Bus Service on 125th Street.

Facing opposition led by State Senator Bill Perkins, NYC DOT and the MTA have cancelled the plan to bring Select Bus Service to 125th Street in Harlem. The plan, which was trimmed in half in May, cutting bus lanes out of West Harlem, has now been shelved. As a result, tens of thousands of daily bus riders in Harlem are still condemned to travel at speeds that are often slower than walking.

State Senator Bill Perkins successfully pressured DOT into shrinking its plan for Select Bus Service on 125th Street in Harlem. Now that the city is moving ahead with a shorter bus lane, it looks like Perkins still might not pay any political price for sticking more than 32,000 daily bus riders with a slow ride.

Yesterday we reported that State Senator Bill Perkins' office has finally expressed satisfaction with the 125th Street bus improvement project, now that DOT has watered it down by shortening the dedicated bus lanes. Previously,  Perkins had called on the city to "slow down" the plan to bring Select Bus Service to 125th Street due to what he claimed was insufficient community input, even though DOT and the MTA had been holding public workshops since last September. Streetsblog hit the streets yesterday afternoon to see what bus riders on 125th Street had to say about the situation.

Congratulations are in order for State Senator Bill Perkins, who has successfully condemned more than 32,000 crosstown bus riders to travel on 125th Street at speeds that are often slower than walking. His pressure to revise a plan for dedicated bus lanes and other measures to prioritize surface transit -- culminating in an "emergency" town hall meeting last Thursday -- resulted in DOT watering down its proposal.