Thursday, November 11, 2010
More adventures in MTA bus travel
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
To continue my bus-riding in NY adventure series, let me bring you into the new Select Bus service, which is on my favorite M15 line, replacing Limited service between Houston and 125th Sts.
We had a civilized $14 tout compris lunch with friends at 34th and 3rd, and decided to take the M15 back to home country. At corner of 2nd Ave, noting a double bus stopping and people entering through all doors, we rushed to the front of the bus. The driver pointed us to two wending machines. Aha, the new system, I thought, and pulled our trusty Metro cards, and inserted. It was easy, a start button, a print button, a finish button, and I had two tickets. But the bus was gone.
Noting another bus, stopped 50 yards north, we rushed there, in time. The driver took our paper tickets and explained that we were now on a local M15, where the old Metro card system still prevails. He would accept the tickets, but in a Limited, pardon, Select bus system we should carry them. Select runs on the honor system, but the buses would be intermittently boarded by teams of inspectors, and if you have no ticket, that’s a $100 fine. Is that enough to offset the cost of inspectors? Yea, negative; you’re right, but Mayor Michel J.Bloomberg is shooting for M15 to become 20% more efficient, to take the load off the 4-5-6 Lexington Ave subway lines, stuffed to the gills. As an admirer of M15 which downtown spreads out like a tentacle, with one branch on Water Street providing the Stuyvesant Towners civilized transport to their Wall Street jobs, I am all for it, particularly because the 2nd Avenue Subway will never make it in my lifetime, budgets being shot down, and this may be the cheap alternative. So there, the bus rider takes some of it on the chin, but transportation may improve. Transfers, by the way, will be available, the Metro card recognizes Select purchases as well as ordinary ones.
Mayor Michael Bloombrg has been a transportation improvement enthusiast, first trying for “congestion pricing,” attempting to limit traffic below 86th Street to cars that pay an $8 toll (trucks $21) in his attempt to cut carbon emissions in NYC 30% by 2030. He also wanted to reinstall the trolley cars in Red Hook, and succeed in implementing the countdown traffic clocks, to limit death toll (it’s been a long time, in Europe the countdowns have been in use for years, and in Melbourne, AU a clicker of increasing beat time and sound was rushing street crossers in the 1990s, I remember. His bus priorities, bike lanes and pedestrian plazas, have been a mixed blessing, slowing down traffic, but nevertheless may be sending more people to using public transport.
In all this, the name of his Commissioner of Transportation, Janette Sadik-Khan comes up, prompting my reviewers to ask the usual questions. She is a Columbia Law graduate, until 2007 a SVP with Parsons-Buckerhoff project management engineering firm (14,000 employees, 150 offices world wide), so she knows a lot.
Not all changes are producing happiness. Discussing the changes with a neighbor, some of the negatives in Mayor Bloomberg’s bus schemes surfaced. For one, West-to-East bus travel has been curtailed.. Until recently we took the M104 line from Lincoln Center down Broadway and it turned and proceeded East on 42nd street, connecting people to Eastside transfers and getting people home to Tudor City. Hill, or to the UN. East on 42nd, goodbye.
More important to the Gramercy Park area, the M1 on Fifth Avenue no longer turns onto Park Avenue at 40th Street to run down PAS. This means all buses (the M1, 2, 3, 5) proceed down 5th Avenue, making a very long walk home for people who live on the Eastside. In addition, bus service all the way downtown has also been cut back or rerouted, a blow for those who like to try to avoid subways because of congestion, bad knees. etc.--and very hard on the truly handicapped. .Our area has been particularly hard hit with changes: The M7 (which went down Broadway from the Westside to Union Square, has changed to 7th Avenue--no more Eastside connection. And then there is the M6 with route changes away from Park Avenue. as well.
On a different topic, the 13th Precinct, we thank Arlene Harrison, sometimes called the Mayor of Gramercy Park, for reminding me that we have a new Commanding Officer at the 13th Precinct, Deputy Inspector Ted Berntsen.
This twenty-year veteran Police Officer made his first patrols in Greenwich Village for the 6th Precinct, earned his stripes serving the East Village-based 9th Precinct and went on to hold commands in Midtown South Precinct and most recently, the 17th Precinct. We offer the new CO and his predecessor, Deputy Inspector Timothy Beaudette, who was recently promoted and reassigned to Midtown North, our best wishes.
Wally Dobelis thanks Mary Orovan and other local bus enthusiasts for information and suggestions..
To continue my bus-riding in NY adventure series, let me bring you into the new Select Bus service, which is on my favorite M15 line, replacing Limited service between Houston and 125th Sts.
We had a civilized $14 tout compris lunch with friends at 34th and 3rd, and decided to take the M15 back to home country. At corner of 2nd Ave, noting a double bus stopping and people entering through all doors, we rushed to the front of the bus. The driver pointed us to two wending machines. Aha, the new system, I thought, and pulled our trusty Metro cards, and inserted. It was easy, a start button, a print button, a finish button, and I had two tickets. But the bus was gone.
Noting another bus, stopped 50 yards north, we rushed there, in time. The driver took our paper tickets and explained that we were now on a local M15, where the old Metro card system still prevails. He would accept the tickets, but in a Limited, pardon, Select bus system we should carry them. Select runs on the honor system, but the buses would be intermittently boarded by teams of inspectors, and if you have no ticket, that’s a $100 fine. Is that enough to offset the cost of inspectors? Yea, negative; you’re right, but Mayor Michel J.Bloomberg is shooting for M15 to become 20% more efficient, to take the load off the 4-5-6 Lexington Ave subway lines, stuffed to the gills. As an admirer of M15 which downtown spreads out like a tentacle, with one branch on Water Street providing the Stuyvesant Towners civilized transport to their Wall Street jobs, I am all for it, particularly because the 2nd Avenue Subway will never make it in my lifetime, budgets being shot down, and this may be the cheap alternative. So there, the bus rider takes some of it on the chin, but transportation may improve. Transfers, by the way, will be available, the Metro card recognizes Select purchases as well as ordinary ones.
Mayor Michael Bloombrg has been a transportation improvement enthusiast, first trying for “congestion pricing,” attempting to limit traffic below 86th Street to cars that pay an $8 toll (trucks $21) in his attempt to cut carbon emissions in NYC 30% by 2030. He also wanted to reinstall the trolley cars in Red Hook, and succeed in implementing the countdown traffic clocks, to limit death toll (it’s been a long time, in Europe the countdowns have been in use for years, and in Melbourne, AU a clicker of increasing beat time and sound was rushing street crossers in the 1990s, I remember. His bus priorities, bike lanes and pedestrian plazas, have been a mixed blessing, slowing down traffic, but nevertheless may be sending more people to using public transport.
In all this, the name of his Commissioner of Transportation, Janette Sadik-Khan comes up, prompting my reviewers to ask the usual questions. She is a Columbia Law graduate, until 2007 a SVP with Parsons-Buckerhoff project management engineering firm (14,000 employees, 150 offices world wide), so she knows a lot.
Not all changes are producing happiness. Discussing the changes with a neighbor, some of the negatives in Mayor Bloomberg’s bus schemes surfaced. For one, West-to-East bus travel has been curtailed.. Until recently we took the M104 line from Lincoln Center down Broadway and it turned and proceeded East on 42nd street, connecting people to Eastside transfers and getting people home to Tudor City. Hill, or to the UN. East on 42nd, goodbye.
More important to the Gramercy Park area, the M1 on Fifth Avenue no longer turns onto Park Avenue at 40th Street to run down PAS. This means all buses (the M1, 2, 3, 5) proceed down 5th Avenue, making a very long walk home for people who live on the Eastside. In addition, bus service all the way downtown has also been cut back or rerouted, a blow for those who like to try to avoid subways because of congestion, bad knees. etc.--and very hard on the truly handicapped. .Our area has been particularly hard hit with changes: The M7 (which went down Broadway from the Westside to Union Square, has changed to 7th Avenue--no more Eastside connection. And then there is the M6 with route changes away from Park Avenue. as well.
On a different topic, the 13th Precinct, we thank Arlene Harrison, sometimes called the Mayor of Gramercy Park, for reminding me that we have a new Commanding Officer at the 13th Precinct, Deputy Inspector Ted Berntsen.
This twenty-year veteran Police Officer made his first patrols in Greenwich Village for the 6th Precinct, earned his stripes serving the East Village-based 9th Precinct and went on to hold commands in Midtown South Precinct and most recently, the 17th Precinct. We offer the new CO and his predecessor, Deputy Inspector Timothy Beaudette, who was recently promoted and reassigned to Midtown North, our best wishes.
Wally Dobelis thanks Mary Orovan and other local bus enthusiasts for information and suggestions..
Labels: Mary Orovan
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 2:59 PM 
