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Select Bus Service to Launch on 125th Street in May

By Jeff Mays | April 29, 2014 7:23am
 After an almost year-long process where the Metropolitan Transit Authority and the Department of Transportation announced plans to bring  Select Bus Service  to 125th Street to speed the molasses-like M60 LaGuardia Airport bus, both agencies said Tuesday that the plan was being scrapped due to  community opposition . Now two uptown politicians want the plan to be revived. The DOT announced Friday that the plan was being revived.
MTA Cancels 125th Street Select Bus Service
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HARLEM — The harsh winter delayed the launch of Select Bus Service on 125th Street but the controversial service is slated to run from May 25, according to the Department of Transportation.

The service was supposed to launch in April but was delayed because of bad weather, according to DOT spokesman Nicholas Mosquera.

"[T]he very harsh winter had an impact on DOT scheduling, as it did on many city agencies, and we proceeded with the project as soon as resources and materials allowed," said Mosquera.

The paint used for the red bus lane and other markings can only be applied when temperatures are consistently warm. Work on the striping is now underway.

The M60 bus to LaGuardia Airport will be the only one of the four bus lines along 125th Street to make a reduced number of stops — six along 125th Street. Passengers pay at a terminal before boarding the bus to help speed the trip.

Under the setup, there will be dedicated bus lanes from Lenox Avenue to Second Avenue. The bus lanes will be camera-enforced and left turns will be restricted at Lexington Avenue and Fifth Avenue to improve traffic flow.

The DOT and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority spent a year gathering feedback from residents and riders along 125th Street, including conducting walking tours.

But when the agencies unveiled their plan, Community Boards 10 and 11 and State Sen. Bill Perkins criticized it, saying that the concerns of residents about parking and making other 125th Street bus lines part of the Select Bus Service were ignored.

Saying they couldn't come to an agreement with residents, DOT canceled the plans in July. In October, the agency announced that the proposal, largely unchanged from initial DOT and MTA concessions, would once again move forward.

The M60 is the most-used bus line on 125th Street. More than 9,600 of the 32,000 passengers who use the four bus lines on 125th Street use the M60, according to MTA data.

The majority of riders use the bus for cross-town travel, and just 10 percent use it to get to LaGuardia. The changes could reduce bus travel times on 125th Street by 18 percent, according to the MTA.