By Serena Solomon
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MIDTOWN — Cars would no longer be allowed on 34th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues under a plan being considered by the Department of Transportation.
The proposal is part of a plan to create dedicated lanes along 34th Street for express bus service river to river. Between the Midtown avenues, a bus station and pedestrian-friendly plaza would replace the headaches of gridlock.
Eric Beaton, a senior project manager at the DOT, said the lanes would reduce travel times by 35 percent for the more than 30,000 people who use buses on that street. Right now, he pointed out catching a bus crosstown was interminably slow.
"You sit there and you watch people walk faster then you," Beaton said.
The plan would involve two lanes running side-by-side along the southern side of 34th Street on the West Side that would then cross over to the northern side of the street on the East Side through the plaza between Fifth and Sixth avenues. A pedestrian-friendly plaza would also be created in the stretch that would be blocked off to regular traffic.
No cars would be able to cross through the plaza.
The bus lanes would be separated from Midtown traffic with islands that would allow riders to board, and even pay their fares in advance.
Parking along 34th Street would be scaled back, but the spaces that remain will be available 24-hours a day and no longer subject to the current daytime ban.
While the project is in the planning stage, the DOT is seeking community feedback, and has begun to pitch the idea to community boards and other groups. If the department gets the go-ahead, the project could be completed by 2012.
But some residents were wary of the plan.
"We are very much against this," said Marisa Bulzone from the Murray Hill Neighborhood Association at a Community Board 5 meeting Wednesday when the DOT presented the plan.
"We are already getting traffic on our streets due to the bus lanes already there."
She was concerned that the dedicated lanes and the plaza would force traffic to be rerouted through her neighborhood.
A public presentation and feedback session on the plan has been scheduled for April 21 at 5:30 p.m. at the Science, Industry, and Business Library, 188 Madison Ave. at 34th Street.
