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| (350980) | |
Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Stephen Bauman on Thu Jun 25 08:28:14 2026 The MTA published new GTFS bus schedules on June 23rd. These schedules permit evaluating scheduled parameters, including average bus speeds and the average distance between stops.The Queens Bus Redesign was implemented in 2 phases. The first phase was implemented on 29 June 2025; the second on 31 Aug 2025. The release of the GTFS schedules permits comparing operations a year before, the inauguration and one year after. Here are the results: July 15 to July 21 (1 week - 7 days) Data for Before Queens Bus Redesign 2024 VRM: 628,831.18 VRH: 67,106.28 Stops: 3,434,423 Trips: 53,157 Avg MPH: 9.37 Avg Stop Dist (ft): 966.8 Data for After Queens Bus Redesign 2025 VRM: 673,686.18 VRH: 72,519.83 Stops: 2,683,251 Trips: 55,840 Avg MPH: 9.29 Avg Stop Dist (ft): 1325.7 Data for After Queens Bus Redesign 2026 VRM: 674,849.71 VRH: 73,217.07 Stops: 2,429,801 Trips: 56,650 Avg MPH: 9.22 Avg Stop Dist (ft): 1466.5 N.B. VRM is Vehicle-Revenue-Miles and VRH is Vehicle-Revenue-Hours. These figures differ from the National Transportation Database (NTD) definitions. The NTD definitions include recovery time. The definitions derived from the GTFS schedules cover only the miles and hours from the departure from the first stop to the arrival at the last stop for each trip. This difference results in slightly higher average speeds than the data published in the NTD. |
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| (350981) | |
Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Bill from Maspeth on Thu Jun 25 13:34:36 2026, in response to Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Stephen Bauman on Thu Jun 25 08:28:14 2026. From another angle of the redesign. I have seen reliability down on the Q29, Q38 and Q39 routes.I still don't like the Q58 (/98) being assigned to Casey Stengel when the route passes directly in front of FP Depot for driver relief/pull out/pull in purposes. In addition. buses are actually deadheading between Ridgewood and Casey Stengel depot. That is a lot of unnecessary mileage. |
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| (350982) | |
Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by BusMgr on Thu Jun 25 14:19:47 2026, in response to Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Stephen Bauman on Thu Jun 25 08:28:14 2026. Interesting to see that after so many bus stops were pulled, for the purpose of increasing average speeds, the average speed has decreased. |
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| (350983) | |
Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Stephen Bauman on Thu Jun 25 15:50:31 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by BusMgr on Thu Jun 25 14:19:47 2026. after so many bus stops were pulled, for the purpose of increasing average speeds, the average speed has decreased.Average bus speed is not a very good measure of a bus system's usefulness. It was seized by advocacy groups because it corroborates the assertion that MTA bus service is the slowest in the country. The average speed measure has also been adopted by MTA management, so we're stuck with it. A more useful measure would be the average trip duration. That's the quotient of the average trip length (miles) divided by the speed. The average NYC bus trip distance is among the shortest in the country. The average trip duration measure places MTA bus operation in the top third among US operations. That doesn't rate headlines, so advocacy groups haven't adopted it. The relation between bus stop spacing and average bus speed, among bus operators, is tenuous at best. Operators in several large cities have a shorter average distance between stops but show higher average bus speeds. I gave a talk about this disconnect at the 2022 NYC Transportation Camp. I also suggested a much better bus speed prediction parameter. Unfortunately, this parameter implied that MTA bus service is less frequent than other operators, when weighted by demand. The solution would be to increase service. That's not the type of solution that a cash strapped management wants to hear. |
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| (350984) | |
Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Stephen Bauman on Thu Jun 25 16:09:54 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Bill from Maspeth on Thu Jun 25 13:34:36 2026. I have a rather narrow focus for my bus studies. I believe they are more related to passenger service than to operational efficiency.buses are actually deadheading between Ridgewood and Casey Stengel depot. That is a lot of unnecessary mileage. I did note that MTA bus operations are the most expensive in the US. The $/VRH figure is in the neighborhood of $300/hr. That's nearly 50% higher than the $200/VRH national average for other large US operators. This comes to around $1.2B per year in higher operating costs for MTA bus operations. This figure has been pretty constant for 25 years. This means there's enough room to implement Mamdani's free bus fare plan. I don't favor the plan because it would provide an economic incentive to use the most expensive transit mode. The MTA released a new database that includes many non-revenue moves, as opposed to the GTFS. I have not used it. I've got a backlog of studies so that I'm not likely to use it in the near future. I did compare the ratio the MTA's VRH to total vehicle hours. The latter figure includes total time between departure and arrival back at the depot. That ratio is lower for MTA bus operations than most large operators in the US. |
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| (350987) | |
Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Allen45 on Fri Jun 26 06:57:39 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by BusMgr on Thu Jun 25 14:19:47 2026. That shows the problem is vision zero. Let's see the data from 2013 before NYC became a vision zero city? Let's see similar data from the Queens private bus companies when we didn't have know it all urbanists and "livable streets advocates" telling us how people should live. |
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| (350988) | |
Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Allen45 on Fri Jun 26 06:58:27 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Stephen Bauman on Thu Jun 25 15:50:31 2026. The door to door trip time is much longer, not everyone wants to bike as a "last mile solution". Bikes have done much more to take from buses or trains than to get people off cars. |
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| (350990) | |
Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Catfish 44 on Fri Jun 26 08:10:56 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Stephen Bauman on Thu Jun 25 16:09:54 2026. The buses are practically free already. Since April I’ve ridden a bus about a dozen times and note very very few people paying fares. This is in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. |
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| (350991) | |
Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Stephen Bauman on Fri Jun 26 09:16:58 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Catfish 44 on Fri Jun 26 08:10:56 2026. The buses are practically free alreadyThat's not the point I was making. First, approximately 15% of recorded passengers are free transfers. Another 15% are transferring to a subway. That's an additional free fare ride. Next, there's the budgetary question as to whether free fares are affordable. A more germane question is whether the money should be spent on passenger benefits or bloated MTA operations. Regardless of the financial question, I believe it's bad policy to encourage the use of inefficient operations through subsidies, when more efficient alternatives exist. It's the same reason I believe the 100+ year practice of subsidizing private automobile transportation at the expense of mass transit has been an unwise policy. |
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| (350992) | |
Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Stephen Bauman on Fri Jun 26 11:38:38 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Allen45 on Fri Jun 26 06:57:39 2026. That shows the problem is...I'm looking for a more statistically rigorous method to prove causation than guilt by association. There are timeline problems that cast doubt on guilt by association. The first publication I read that suggesting increasing bus stop distance as a cure for slow NYC bus speeds was written in 2016. It was published by the NYC Transit Center. https://transitcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Turnaround_Fixing-NYCs-Buses-20July2016.pdf It used the Nation Transportation Database (NTD) as its data source. It divided Vehicle-Revenue-Miles by Vehicle-Revenue-Hours to determine average speed. https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd/ntd-data The monthly data goes back to 2002. Annual data tables go back to 1997. The NTD's shortcoming is that it does not contain bus stop spacing. There's no way to correlate bus speed with stop spacing by using only the NTD data. That's one of the Transit Center's 2016 report's shortcomings. To my knowledge, the first study that did provide bus stop spacing by city was published in 2019. https://findingspress.org/article/27373-distributions-of-bus-stop-spacings-in-the-united-states It showed that NYC bus stop spacing was not particularly shorter than many large cities and that cities with shorter bus stop spacing enjoyed faster average bus speeds. This study made use of GTFS data, which permitted calculating the number of stops and distance of individual scheduled trips. The MTA started publishing GTFS data on 30 Oct 2013. It's not possible to make comparisons between bus stop spacing and bus speed before the GTFS data became available. The private bus companies were absorbed into the MTA in 2005-2006. There is no similar data for their operation, other than what's in the NTD. Unfortunately, the private company NTD entries make no distinction between express and local service. One would expect their average speed to be higher because they operated a greater percentage of express buses. The private companies are still reported as a separate entity in the NTD. However, the entry consolidates all the private companies. A before/after comparison for Triboro, Green, lines etc. is not possible. Very few Vision Zero/Livable Streets changes were made in Queens until the 2020's. Several were emergency Covid changes that were made permanent. Slow bus speeds were noticed in Queens, well before any Vision Zero changes. |
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| (350993) | |
Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Stephen Bauman on Fri Jun 26 11:57:08 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Allen45 on Fri Jun 26 06:58:27 2026. not everyone wants to bike as a "last mile solution" Bikes have done much more to take from buses or trains than to get people off cars.Not everyone wants a bus, otherwise there would be no problem with people using cars. :=) Personal bikes have a parking problem for the last mile application. Secure bike parking is limited near subway stations. Bike share shifts the parking problem away from the user. However, bike share has not made it beyond the Unisphere. That's where the severe last mile problem exists. |
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| (350994) | |
Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Spider-Pig on Fri Jun 26 13:52:00 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Stephen Bauman on Fri Jun 26 09:16:58 2026. Excellent post! |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Allen45 on Fri Jun 26 13:54:10 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Stephen Bauman on Fri Jun 26 11:38:38 2026. The speed limit being reduced to 25 mph in 2014, the reduction of speed limits in numerous roads with higher speed limits such as 35 or 40 mph down to 25 mph and the proliferation of speed cameras made a lot of bus operators afraid as the MTA suspends bus operators for speed camera violations. |
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| (350996) | |
Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Allen45 on Fri Jun 26 13:56:55 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Stephen Bauman on Fri Jun 26 09:16:58 2026. How many trips are made on unlimited ride passes or fare caps? We aren't "subsidizing private automobile transportation". These roads have vans, trucks, yes buses and are multi purpose. We had roads before cars and even if you ban cars we will still have roads. Horse carriages were a bigger negative than cars ever were (they even had a higher traffic death and injury rate). A useful public transportation system is very important, but you cannot make everyone happy and cannot adequately serve everyone. People want speed and convenience and to not make transfers. |
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| (350997) | |
Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Allen45 on Fri Jun 26 13:59:37 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Allen45 on Fri Jun 26 13:56:55 2026. Today an "inefficient" transportation system is cars (when you can make a direct one seat trip to where you want when you want), tomorrow it is express buses, or commuter rail. The urbanists all know public transit has its limits and that is why 15 minute cities is a thing with them. They know they can't deliver and people in a capitalist society want choices and want free movement. |
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| (350998) | |
Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Allen45 on Fri Jun 26 14:03:26 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Stephen Bauman on Fri Jun 26 11:57:08 2026. Not everyone wants a bike, not everyone has the stamina for a bike, not everyone wants to bike in the heat or the cold or the ice or snow. Even among those that want a bike, you cannot tell people to get off cars and onto transit when bike riders are unwilling to do the same or dread doing the same. Groups like Transportation Alternatives treat transit as a side dish to bikes. Citibike has done a lot to take away from bus ridership. "fast" and free buses will not help. Now the bike activists want to subsidize Citibike. I am pretty sure Lyft will get rolled a red carpet that Green Bus Lines, New York Bus Service or Liberty Lines NEVER got! |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Italianstallion on Fri Jun 26 15:32:28 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Allen45 on Fri Jun 26 13:54:10 2026. Buses rarely exceeded 25 before. |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by BrooklynBus on Fri Jun 26 18:14:03 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Italianstallion on Fri Jun 26 15:32:28 2026. On Woodhaven Blvd,the speed limit used to be 35 mph which buses always operated at when they were limited stop before the bus lanes. I was once driving on Woodhaven at that time and it took me a half mile to catch up and pass that bus.Now with the bus lanes and the 25 mph speed limit, buses are much slower and operate less frequently with trips taking much longer, not to mention average car speeds have been cut more than 50% from about 30 mph to about 15. The excuse for lowering the speed limit was the street is one of the most dangerous in the city, although there was only one fatality in the previous 4 years, so they used statistics over 10 years without addressing the cause of those fatalities. How many were due to jaywalking, not speeding? I wish there were a way of getting those old bus schedules to compare running times to today’s schedules. |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Stephen Bauman on Fri Jun 26 19:38:09 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by BrooklynBus on Fri Jun 26 18:14:03 2026. I wish there were a way of getting those old bus schedules to compare running times to today’s schedules.I did see a schedule, when the buses were operated by Triboro. Running time was 20 minutes faster than at present. However, there was one big difference. The buses ran non-stop on Woodhaven because that franchise was held by Green Bus Lines. Triboro service on Woodhaven was designed as a substitute for the LIRR, after the trestle burned down. |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Catfish 44 on Fri Jun 26 21:22:24 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Stephen Bauman on Fri Jun 26 09:16:58 2026. Of course not.And 100% of that 15% are not tapping their omny |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by gbs on Sat Jun 27 01:47:30 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Stephen Bauman on Fri Jun 26 19:38:09 2026. The buses ran non-stop on Woodhaven I remember that Triboro Q53 in the '60s. It started at 61 St in Woodside, then stopped on 63 Dr at Queens Blvd, then non-stop to Rockaway, ending at B116 St. When the regular subway and bus fare was $.15, the Q53 was $.55 one way, $.85 round trip. One summer weekend my friend and I took the subway from Rego Park where we lived to Rockaway Beach because the Q53 was so expensive. The ride took so long, especially because the A train was local in Brooklyn, and ultimately cost $.30, because of the $.15 extra fare required to exit in Rockaway (the turnstiles required tokens in both directions). We decided to take the Q53 home because of the slow ride by subway, so the $.55 fare home plus the $.30 fare going came to the same $.85 after all, and we could have had a faster ride going there as well. |
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| (351006) | |
Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by New Flyer #857 on Sat Jun 27 10:39:23 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Allen45 on Fri Jun 26 13:56:55 2026. Until I see no more "passenger cars only" signs, no more free street storage that isn't also offered to non-drivers alike, and no more traffic signals that wouldn't have been there if the intersection was only being used for the other purposes you mention, then private automobile transportation is being subsidized. |
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| (351007) | |
Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by BrooklynBus on Sat Jun 27 11:17:42 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Italianstallion on Fri Jun 26 15:32:28 2026. On Woodhaven Blvd,the speed limit used to be 35 mph which buses always operated at when they were limited stop before the bus lanes. I was once driving on Woodhaven at that time and it took me a half mile to catch up and pass that bus.Now with the bus lanes and the 25 mph speed limit, buses are much slower and operate less frequently with trips taking much longer, not to mention average car speeds have been cut more than 50% from about 30 mph to about 15. The excuse for lowering the speed limit was the street is one of the most dangerous in the city, although there was only one fatality in the previous 4 years, so they used statistics over 10 years without addressing the cause of those fatalities. How many were due to jaywalking, not speeding? I wish there were a way of getting those old bus schedules to compare running times to today’s schedules. |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Allen45 on Sat Jun 27 11:44:31 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by BrooklynBus on Fri Jun 26 18:14:03 2026. The speed limit on parts of Cross Bay were 40 and lowered to 25. The part of Broad Channel was lowered to 20. |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Allen45 on Sat Jun 27 11:50:33 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by New Flyer #857 on Sat Jun 27 10:39:23 2026. If we had horse carriages, they would still be there and we'd have even more dangerous streets. Now with e-bikes we need traffic signals dedicated to bikes. You can't move all people and goods on rail and bike! There's also a reason why streetcars were ripped up, buses are more flexible and GM made a really good product. Even if you believe it is a subsidy, it is a public good to allow the movement of people and goods without micromanaging everyone. |
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| (351010) | |
Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Snilcher on Sat Jun 27 13:35:36 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by gbs on Sat Jun 27 01:47:30 2026. I remember that Q53, and the 15¢ fare as well. (In fact, I also remember keyboards with cent signs, back in the IBM mainframe and 3270 terminal days.)We decided to take the Q53 home because of the slow ride by subway, so the $.55 fare home plus the $.30 fare going came to the same $.85 after all, and we could have had a faster ride going there as well. If you had taken the (slow) subway route both ways it would have cost you $.60 rather than $.85. |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Catfish 44 on Sat Jun 27 14:18:46 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Stephen Bauman on Fri Jun 26 19:38:09 2026. The Q53 was great back in the Triboro days. I don’t know when they began making all those stops on Woodhaven and altering the route but before then it was a great bus line. |
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| (351012) | |
Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Stephen Bauman on Sat Jun 27 14:35:41 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Catfish 44 on Sat Jun 27 14:18:46 2026. The Q53 was great back in the Triboro days.That depends on one's perspective. If you were waiting for a Q11 or Q21 on Woodhaven Blv, you would not think it was great watching all the Q53's passing and not picking up passengers. :=) |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Catfish 44 on Sat Jun 27 15:57:00 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Stephen Bauman on Sat Jun 27 14:35:41 2026. In all honesty that was those folks problem. Rockaway is a torturous place to travel to let alone when the one semi express bus becomes local and adds as I believe you said earlier 20 minutes to the trip. |
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| (351015) | |
Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Snilcher on Sat Jun 27 22:01:47 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Stephen Bauman on Sat Jun 27 14:35:41 2026. In any case, making the Q53 a 24-hour route was a fine idea. Before that, there was no overnight bus service to Broad Channel. |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Bill from Maspeth on Sat Jun 27 23:05:37 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Bill from Maspeth on Thu Jun 25 13:34:36 2026. To continue on this theme, around 9:40 PM on a Saturday night, the Q59 is on a 20 minute headway. At that time as I turned onto Grand Ave. from the LIE service road, 3 consecutive Q59's were observed, one hours worth of buses back to back to back toward Rego Park. Just now at 11PM, they were all returning to the Plaza.How the hell can that be? Obviously the Bus Dispatchers who are supposed to be monitoring bus schedules and frequency are not getting the job done. There is no excuse for this. If there was a blockage on the line, service should have been adjusted. Now there is another gap in service toward Rego Park. |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Stephen Bauman on Sun Jun 28 09:32:56 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Bill from Maspeth on Sat Jun 27 23:05:37 2026. There is a real time GTFS (GTFS-RT) publicly available feed that broadcasts every bus location every 30 seconds. It also indicates the number of passengers on the bus (undocumented feature).There are some relatively minor integration problems to turn it into an automatic dispatcher or an on-time indicator for the bus operator. |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by New Flyer #857 on Mon Jun 29 09:03:04 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Bill from Maspeth on Sat Jun 27 23:05:37 2026. In London dispatchers remotely hold the buses just the same way trains are held. An automated announcement goes through the bus, something like: "We are waiting here to even out the gaps in the service." |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Bill from Maspeth on Mon Jun 29 13:34:07 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by New Flyer #857 on Mon Jun 29 09:03:04 2026. Good that they are remotely monitoring the service.......unlike here! |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by BrooklynBus on Fri Jul 3 12:19:46 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Allen45 on Sat Jun 27 11:44:31 2026. It was 40 south of Linden Blvd. |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by BrooklynBus on Fri Jul 3 12:22:26 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Bill from Maspeth on Sat Jun 27 23:05:37 2026. There aren’t nearly as many as are needed to monitor all the routes. |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by BrooklynBus on Fri Jul 3 12:23:26 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Catfish 44 on Sat Jun 27 14:18:46 2026. When the MTA took over in 2004, they added the stops. |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by BrooklynBus on Fri Jul 3 12:24:45 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Stephen Bauman on Fri Jun 26 19:38:09 2026. I am more interested in MTA limited schedules. |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Bill from Maspeth on Fri Jul 3 13:28:24 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by BrooklynBus on Fri Jul 3 12:22:26 2026. Yup, too many Chiefs and not enough Indians. |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by BusMgr on Fri Jul 3 15:15:11 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Stephen Bauman on Sat Jun 27 14:35:41 2026. The "correct" solution would have been to add one additional stop to route Q53, on Cross Bay Boulevard at Liberty Avenue (and possibly one other stop, on Cross Bay Boulevard at 164th Avenue). Doing so would allow the Q11 to accumulate local passengers between Rego Park and Ozone Park (and possibly Q41 between Ozone Park and Howard Beach), and then transfer at a single Q53 bus stop, without destroying the express nature of route Q53. It may be that a limited-stop variant of route Q11 had been warranted during rush hours, but there was no need to downgrade route Q53 to serve that Q11 purpose. |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by New Flyer #857 on Sat Jul 4 22:59:20 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by BusMgr on Fri Jul 3 15:15:11 2026. I agree in general. There is enough volume and variety to the types of passengers along Cross Bay / Woodhaven to warrant a three-tiered service of local, express, and super-express (whatever the labels used). |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Stephen Bauman on Sun Jul 5 07:10:57 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by New Flyer #857 on Sat Jul 4 22:59:20 2026. There is enough volume and variety to the types of passengers along Cross Bay / Woodhaven to warrant a three-tiered service of local, express, and super-express (whatever the labels used).You're really guessing until bus trip origin/destination data is available. The real time GTFS feed provides the number of passengers on the bus. It's only half the story. The numbers on the bus might not change after a stop. It could be that nobody entered or left the bus or it could mean 10 left and were replaced by 10 new passengers. The impact on scheduling should be different for both scenarios. The MTA does publish origin/destination figures for subway trips. They promised to release a similar dataset for buses during 2026 Q3. However, there is a notice that the release may be delayed. |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Allen45 on Sun Jul 5 07:14:42 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by New Flyer #857 on Sat Jul 4 22:59:20 2026. Yes it is warranted especially given there’s a Q52 that can function as the Q11 limited. But for faster service to the Rockaways to work, we need to raise the speed limit on Woodhaven and Cross Bay back to 30 in Broad Channel, back to 40 on the Joe Addabbo Bridge, back to 35 on Woodhaven and at least to 35 if not back to 40 on Cross Bay Boulevard in Howard Beach. 25 on Woodhaven and 20 on Broad Channel is ridiculous. |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by BusMgr on Sun Jul 5 12:32:36 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by Stephen Bauman on Sun Jul 5 07:10:57 2026. For the suggested operation, i.e., a single Q53 stop between Rego Park and Broad Channel at Liberty Avenue, it would be "guessing" at its effectiveness until after it was done, after which a point check could be conducted at Liberty Avenue, counting offs and ons. Or it could be that stop at Liberty Avenue was made boarding-only southbound and alighting-only northbound, in which case the number of people on the bus would provide those data. But it is really having the historic understanding of the Q53 route and its passenger travel patterns, and of the demographics of the surrounding demographics of the communities served, that provides the insight into developing a working plan. That's something which the private companies understood well, notwithstanding the absence of them having sophisticated planning tools; and which MTABC is lacking, despite it having sophisticated planning tools. |
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Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year |
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Posted by Allen45 on Sun Jul 5 13:41:11 2026, in response to Re: Queens Bus Redesign After 1 Year, posted by BusMgr on Sun Jul 5 12:32:36 2026. Because the private companies had their hearts in bus service whereas the MTA doesn’t. Their job is to make hard decisions no one else wants to make. NYCDOT cares more about bikes than either cars or buses. |
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