CIVITAS' Select Bus Survey Results and Recommendations

March 21, 2011

Jay Walder
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Metropolitan Transit Authority
347 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10017-3739

Dear Mr. Walder,

CIVITAS has been a strong supporter of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) plans on First and Second Avenue and has been an active member of the Community Advisory Committee (CAC) since 2009. We saw as a sign of progress the October 2010 launch of the Select Bus Service (SBS) line and its promise to improve travel times along the corridor from 125th Street to South Ferry, a route that is underserved by efficient transit.

Throughout the planning process, led by the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) and partner New York City Department of Transportation (DOT), CIVITAS has been impressed by the efficient implementation of the new bus line, and opportunities for community input at CAC meetings, and public open houses. Since its October 2010 launch, the highly anticipated SBS has been met with a mix of enthusiasm and skepticism charged by new procedures such as off-board ticketing, proof of payment receipts, three bus entrances, and a designated bus lane with camera enforcement.

In order to gauge the success and shortfalls of SBS’ first few months, CIVITAS conducted a survey from November 1, 2010 to January 3, 2011 focusing on rider experience in the areas of ticketing, boarding, traffic flow, and overall efficiency. We received 262 responses from riders throughout the First and Second Avenue corridor.

Although CIVITAS’ Select Bus Rider Survey revealed an overall—62%—positive response to SBS, particularly due to the noticeable decrease in travel time, the public response includes a list of complaints and concerns that must be addressed. These fall into the following seven categories:

• MTA Outreach/Education
• Off-Board Ticket Machines
• Bus Stops
• Bus Ride/Design
• Bus Lanes
• Paper Receipts
• Customer Service

While some of these items may pertain to larger issues such as infrastructure and technology, there are short-term and manageable concerns that would significantly improve the public impression of SBS if properly addressed. The Raw Data attachment includes survey statistics from over 250 responders and the Summary attachment highlights comments most frequently addressed within the survey. For immediate improvement we would like to make three recommendations.

1. Consistent Publication of SBS Stop Locations

CIVITAS commends the MTA and DOT for the public outreach that took place prior to the implementation of the new system and especially staff orientations at bus stops within the early months proved to be beneficial. There is a lack of consistency, however, regarding the exact stop locations along the SBS route. This can be found in publications such as the M15 bus schedule pamphlet, (“MTA/New York City Transit Manhattan Bus Schedules." Mta.info. Web. 17 Mar. 2011. http://www.mta.info/nyct/service/bus/mhtnsch.htm), the Bus Rapid Transit webpage, (“Bus Rapid Transit - First and Second Avenues." NYC.gov. Web. 17 Mar. 2011. http://www.nyc.gov/html/brt/html/current/first_ave.shtml), and the Select Bus Service Newsletter (+selectbusservice First Avenue/Second Avenue. Newsletter 2/Fall 2010. Print). It is crucial for riders, local to NYC or visiting tourists, to have these maps readily available at each stop, online, and on buses in order to plan ahead and anticipate the connections to other transit lines. Similarly, updates to the Second Avenue bus route due to subway construction should be prominently featured.

2. Improved Maintenance and Additional Machines

The MetroCard machines are frequently inoperable, whether due to technical problems or lack of paper receipts. This creates a backup at congested bus stops and increases the risk of passenger fines. We recommend that MTA increase inspection frequency, and set up a direct and efficient method for customers to report locations of broken machines. The current method for reporting broken machines by calling MTA’s customer service number, 718-330-1234, is time-consuming and confusing. Furthermore, installing additional machines at congested stops such as 14^th, 34^th, and 79^th Streets would speed the boarding process and reduce crowding around working machines.

3. Better Cross-Town Bus Connections

CIVITAS has been a strong supporter of the limited nature of the SBS stop locations and has advocated for roughly 10-blocks separating each express stop. There are stops, however, where the distance between an SBS and local bus, or a cross-town bus should be reexamined. This is apparent throughout the corridor where riders must cross a major cross-town intersection to transfer buses, a situation that is unsafe for riders of all ages, and especially those who are less mobile. This is evident at the 25^th, 88^th, 97^th and 100^th Street stops, which are two or more blocks from the 23^rd, 86^th, and 96^th Street cross-town buses respectively.

We urge MTA and DOT to reevaluate the stop locations that are placed blocks away from the cross-town connection.

Although a significant number of survey comments addressed the lack of a stop at the 72^nd Street cross-town bus connection, CIVITAS feels strongly that an additional stop would deter from the efficient and established route. This discussion should be reconsidered, however, with the future completion of the 72^nd Street Second Avenue subway stop.

The Select Bus Rider Survey revealed complaints about the SBS experience that have longer-term solutions relating to the established SBS infrastructure. We recognize that paper receipts are central to the off-board payment and three-door boarding opportunities of the SBS model, but they create excessive litter and are easily misplaced. CIVITAS supports the implementation of a universal MetroCard that will electronically store off-board purchases and transfer information. We hope MTA will continue to utilize technology to streamline payments and boarding procedures.

We thank you for your continuing efforts to engage the community in order to better serve riders and East Side transit. Our objective is for this information to be useful as MTA moves forward in improving the Select Bus Service on First and Second Avenue and implementing new SBS routes throughout New York City.

Sincerely,

Hunter F. Armstrong
Executive Director

Tali Cantor
Associate Director

Hon. Carolyn Maloney, US Congresswoman
Hon. Christine C. Quinn, NYC Council Speaker
Hon. Scott M. Stringer, Manhattan Borough President
Hon. Liz Krueger, NYS Senator
Hon. Jose M. Serrano, NYS Senator
Hon. Jonathan L. Bing, NYS Assembly Member
Hon. Micah Z. Kellner, NYS Assembly Member
Hon. Daniel R. Garodnick, NYC Council Member
Hon. Jessica S. Lappin, NYC Council Member
Hon. Melissa Mark-Viverito, NYC Council Member
Robert Marino, Director, MTA NYCT Government & Community Relations
Ted Orosz, Director, MTA NYCT Long Range Bus Planning
Kate Mikuliak, NYCDOT BRT Outreach Coordinator
Manhattan Community Board 8
Manhattan Community Board 11

Summary of Comments & Raw Data

Upcoming Upper Green Side Events: Electronic Recycling and It's My Park Day

Saturday, April 30th: Recycle-O-Rama – Spring Edition
82nd Street Greenmarket (between First and York), 9 am – 3 pm. Electronics recycling. Paper shredding. All usual recyclables.

Saturday, May 21st: It’s My Park Day
From 10 am – 4 pm Join Upper Green Side in cleaning the segment of the East River Esplanade south of 96th Street: Scraping and painting railing, cleaning plantings, getting rid of graffiti. Come for an hour. Be there the whole day.

Sunday, June 26th: Recycle-O-Rama – Summer Edition
92nd Street Greenmarket (on First between 92nd-93rd), 9 am – 3 pm More electronics recycling. Paper shredding. All usual recyclables.

For more information on these events, visit www.uppergreenside.org

Community Engagement Study Closed March 18

Thank you for participating in our Community Engagement Survey!

CIVITAS, working with NYU’s Capstone program at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, administered a Community Engagement Survey to take stock of community needs and priorities for the present and future of East Harlem and the Upper East Side.

The purpose of the project is to evaluate what community stakeholders view as the future needs of the neighborhood in the key areas that CIVITAS addresses through our work: land use and zoning, transportation, environmental quality and streetscapes.

The survey closed on March 18, 2011. For updates on the project, visit:
www.civitasnyc.org/live/publicneedssurvey

Free Screening of GASLAND Film

CIVITAS is co-sponsoring a FREE screening of GASLAND, the critically acclaimed documentary film about hydrofracking, a controversial process to extract natural gas.

Filmmaker Josh Fox will be the guest speaker.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

6:30-9pm

Dalton School, 108 East 89th Street.

Seating is on a “first-come first-serve” basis, so please arrive early.

The evening’s co-sponsors include: The Dalton School, Grass-Roots, ,the Sierra Club

Learn more about the film at www.gaslandthemovie.com.

Check out the event description in Our Town East Side : http://ourtownny.com/2011/01/26/gasland-at-dalton-school/

Recycle-O-Rama at the 92nd Street Greenmarket

Join Upper Green Side and GrowNYC for a Waste Reduction Celebration!

Sunday, December 5th, 9am-3pm, at the 92nd St. Greenmarket (at 1st Ave.)

RECYCLE: (no electronics)

• clothes (including hats, belts, & shoes)
• textiles (like linens and towels)
• batteries
• eye glasses
• #5 plastics
• wine corks
• ink cartridges

PLUS: Free paper shredding (10am-2pm)
AND: Learn how to compost!

For more information, visit: http://uppergreenside.org/blog/2010/11/27/dec-5th-recycle-o-rama-at-the-92nd-street-greenmarket/

Park Avenue: Historic, Iconic, and Only Partly Protected

By Lucienne S. Bloch

Prepared for the CIVITAS Fall 2010 Newsletter

CIVITAS has joined our neighborhood partners Carnegie Hill Neighbors and Historic Park Avenue in supporting an application to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission for historic designation for Park Avenue from 79th Street to 96th Street. Park Avenue between 63rd Street and 79th received local historic designation in 1981. At present, only a few blocks of the avenue between 86th Street and 96th Street fall within the boundaries of the Carnegie Hill Historic District. In June 2010, the New York State Historic Preservation Office determined Park Avenue between 79th Street and 96th Street to be eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places, and that application is under way. A listing on the State and National Registers is more of an honorific title than a locally protective measure for historical structures, but it does add a layer of review for proposed alterations that receive state or federal funding.

Historic Designation: For and Against

Local historic designation for Park Avenue to 96th Street is long overdue, and a matter of some urgency to many people who see the all-too-obvious outcome of non-designation, as demonstrated on both eastern corners of 87th Street. One is the site of a new entirely glass-fronted building that is glaringly insensitive to the look and feel of the avenue. The other is a tower in a plaza that was completed in 1974 and is hugely out of scale with its surroundings. The publicized and unstoppable plans for that tower spurred the better-late-than-never establishment of the Park Improvement Special District in 1973. The district set standards for building height and adherence to the avenue’s predominant streetwall, although it doesn’t protect low-rise 19th and early 20th century buildings from demolition or radical face-lifting.

Some of the arguments that have been used against landmark status include: the time and expense of additional bureaucratic paperwork for building permits, and of committee review of exterior alterations that must be historically appropriate; the stringent contextual regulations for new buildings that may preclude opportunities for innovative architecture; stricter city building codes that may mandate and enforce sustainable design in construction and building maintenance, as well as eco-friendly retrofits of older buildings. These are cogent issues, but they don’t address another reasonable bottom line: the past matters, especially in a city that has only patches of its irreplaceable historic fabric still standing.

It is Time to Get the Job Done

The grounds for Park Avenue’s historic designation are visible and compelling. Apart from 19th century mansions and row houses, small flats buildings, religious and educational institutions, Lenox Hill Hospital, and the Seventh Regiment Armory, residential Park Avenue from 63rd to 96th Streets is pretty much all of a piece. Most of the apartment houses were constructed between 1913 and World War II. Different noted architects designed buildings with entrances, cornices and ornamentation in different idioms, Georgian, Italian Renaissance Revival, and Art Deco among them, but the similarity of height, 12 to 17 stories, and of building materials, stone and brick, on both sides of the broad boulevard gives Park Avenue an overall and palpable coherence. There is a sense of harmonious scale on residential Park Avenue, and a sense of place that has both historic and architectural significance. Several of the 19th century structures belong to the wide avenue’s past as a busy open rail corridor with at-grade tracks in the middle of it. Between 1871 and 1877, a tunnel was constructed for the lowered tracks from 97th Street to Grand Central Depot, bridges were built over the sunken tunnel for pedestrians and vehicles, and row houses and tenements sprang up along the still-gritty avenue. The tunnel wasn’t covered over until 1913, when the new and present Grand Central Station was completed. At that time, the median malls were landscaped with grass, trees, paths and benches, transforming the newly parklike avenue into a prime area for luxury apartment houses, and soon making it the world-famous iconic boulevard we know today.

Park Avenue between 63rd and 79th Streets has been landmarked for over a quarter of a century. It is time to finish the job by designating the entire stretch of residential Park Avenue to 96th Street. This will make it possible for future generations to enjoy its architectural quality and balance, its historic allure that evokes the early and still important connection between transportation and urban development, and its continuing presence in a constantly changing city.

Complete a Short Survey: Select Bus Service on First and Second Avenue

CIVITAS supports the October 2010 implementation of Select Bus Service (SBS) on First and Second Avenue (South Ferry to 125th Street), which replaces the M15 Limited. The East Side was chosen for the Manhattan bus rapid transit (BRT) pilot project after the successful BRT line was implemented in the Bronx. If successful, SBS represents an inexpensive and innovative transportation approach to New York City. Since 2009, CIVITAS has participated in the Community Advisory Committee, a coalition comprised of the MTA, NYC DOT, elected officials and community stakeholders, to help plan and provide feedback to implement SBS. If the M15 Select Bus Service line proves to be a success, we hope to see additional bus rapid transit lines built throughout New York City.

If you use the SBS line on First and Second Avenue, we want to know about your SBS experience. Please complete this 5-10 minute survey with your feedback. If you don’t have an answer to every question, please make your best guess. Your anonymous feedback will be provided to the MTA New York City Transit and NYC Department of Transportation (NYC DOT) to help them work out the kinks.

Visit http://bit.ly/SurveySBS to fill out an electronic survey

Please forward this survey to your neighbors who use the M15 SBS line.