The city's comprehensive vision [will] make our streets even safer, more welcoming, and more sustainable. This time, we'll focus squarely on outcomes, not just miles.
"We chose not to stand with the mayor today as he made his Fordham announcement because we are concerned that the plan does not go far enough to deliver faster, more reliable buses riders can depend on," said Betsy Plum, the group's executive director, in an email blast on Friday. The subject of her email was: "Why we're not standing with the mayor today."
Mamdani announced the new public bathroom plan in West Harlem, where a new bathroom will be installed later this year, he said. Everyone knows the feeling of needing a bathroom and not being able to find one, Mamdani said at the Jan. 10 press conference, which was flush with bathroom puns and innuendo. With this new commitment to public toilets, we're ensuring New Yorkers can travel through our city with a little less anxiety, starting today at 12th and St. Clair.
The first mayor tasked with implementing the city's Streets Master Plan pitched himself on the campaign trail as someone who wouldn't just hit the goals of the plan but surpass them. Yet four years later, the closest Adams's Department of Transportation came to the master plan's mandatory 50 miles of bike lanes per year was 31.7 miles in 2023. Mayor Adams oversaw a DOT that installed just 15 miles of new bus lanes in three years, when the law required 80.
Ask any New Yorker who has taken a bus recently how they've felt about the experience, and many will tell you the same thing: They're too slow for their liking. The broad dissatisfaction with New York City's bus system became a big part of the mayoral campaign itself. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani wants not only to make the buses free, but also to make them faster.
When I took this job nearly a year ago, I had two priorities safety and service. As president of New York City Transit, I was going to do everything in my power to make the transit system safer, not only for our millions of daily riders, but also the tens of thousands of employees who keep this City moving. And I was going to do it while running the best possible service.
New York City's buses are in crisis, and have been for a long time. In the year 2000, MTA buses carried 699 million passengers per year. Even as New York City has grown over the last quarter-century, gaining 470,000 new residents, bus ridership has dropped by 41 percent, to 409 million. Fare evasion is rampant. Over one-third of passengers refuse to pay, costing the MTA $568 million in 2024. Nearly one-third of buses run late.
Right now, Flatbush Avenue above Prospect Park doesn't work for anyone: almost 70,000 daily bus riders are stuck waiting too long for slow buses, drivers are caught in a mess of traffic and pedestrians are left crossing intersections clogged with vehicles.
