City to Spend $4.3M Strengthening Streets for Bus Use

STATEN ISLAND — The city will spend $4.3 million installing or strengthening roads along the S79 bus route in Staten Island and Brooklyn, officials said.

The Department of Design and Construction put out a bid on Tuesday to add or repair concrete pads to stops along the S79 Select Bus Service route, which will reinforce the streets from the weight of city buses, a spokesman for the agency said.

The city will fix the pads on the surface of the road at 14 bus stops on Hylan Boulevard and two in Brooklyn, a spokesman for the DDC said.

The city turned the S79 — which runs from the Staten Island Mall to Bay Ridge through Richmond Avenue and Hylan Boulevard — into the borough's first SBS route in 2012 with nearly $5 million in federal grant money.

The MTA dropped 55 local stops from the existing service and added dedicated bus lanes along Richmond Avenue and Hylan Boulevard. The changes were designed to shave 20 percent off the average time of a morning commute.

Work on the new pads is expected to start in the fall and take about a year to complete, the DDC said.