Third time’s a charm?: MTA unveils final redesigned Queens bus map – again
/
The MTA, DOT and Queens Borough President Donovan Richards rolled out another iteration of a draft to redesign the Queens bus map. Photo via Borough President Donovan Richards/X
By Ryan Schwach
For the third time in five years, the MTA said Tuesday that it has a final draft for a new Queens bus map.
But while the agency touted its finished product from Queens Borough Hall, there may still be room for changes before the plan reaches the last stop.
Working as slow as some of the buses run in Queens, the MTA has been redesigning the Queens bus map over half a decade. On Tuesday, the agency rolled out another shot at a final plan, the third since the endeavor began. However, the MTA plans to hold another public town hall on the map, potentially further delaying the agency from setting the map in stone.
Last December, just down the block from Borough Hall, the MTA announced what they called a “proposed final draft plan.” That plan then went up for public input and received widespread criticism from riders and elected officials alike. That plan was the MTA’s second shot after a pre-pandemic plan was shot down all together following a similarly negative response.
The new draft, unveiled at Queens Borough Hall on Tuesday, is an addendum to the final draft plan brought forward just over a year ago, and is the result of the public input from the last 12 months.
Officials hoped that this will be the final look at the plan, but do expect to hear feedback before the MTA board votes on the redesign early next year.
“We're comfortable now that we have listened to every different community and every different stakeholder,” said MTA CEO and President Janno Lieber. “That doesn't mean that every single thing is going to be greeted with joy…We've made the hard choices, but we've also listened and added a lot of services and route changes specifically to address what we heard from people in Queens, and that's what makes us comfortable at this point, that we're ready move forward.”
Changes from the last draft
The addendum builds on input from several long – and, at times, contentious – public hearings throughout the year.
Overall, the plan includes 11 new routes and several specific route changes intended to increase service quality, speed and bus frequency boroughwide.
“This borough is home to the largest bus network, 800,000 daily riders, they deserve a system that gets them where they want to go,” Lieber said. “Queen's bus network redesign is going to be a tremendous step in that direction – more frequent, more service, more direct and better connections, especially to the rail system.”
Among the major changes cited by the MTA are more options to and from Queens’ airports, more subway connections in South Ozone Park and Far Rockaway, more direct routes in Astoria and Long Island City and extended service into Rosedale.
A new Q80 limited route will improve service to John F. Kennedy International Airport, and the new Q90 will add service to LaGuardia Airport, Leiber said.
“These additional lines are going to be key and critical, not only for tourists, but for the very people who run the airport,” Borough President Donovan Richards said.
The new plan includes faster connections to the subway on the Q10 route in South Ozone Park, which Richards indicated was among his favorite changes.
Residents of the far-flung Far Rockaway neighborhood will get more Q22 trips from Bayswater to the A train, and the Q52 will extend further into the Edgemere neighborhood.
In Western Queens, the Q102 will have a more direct route to Queens Plaza, and the new map restored the existing Q100, which locals complained about losing in other iterations of the redesigned map.
The entire menu of changes is available on the MTA’s website.
For real this time?
MTA brass and Richards said that they believe that this is the final time they will be announcing a new draft. New York City Transit President Demetrious Crichlow called this map a “sweet spot,” on Tuesday.
The MTA has been working on redrawing the Queens bus map since before the COVID pandemic and is hoping this will be the final iteration of the plan. eagle file photo by Ryan Schwach
“We're confident that we got it nailed down,” he said.
However, this is not the first time they have made similar statements, and while they stress this time is the last, previous attempts prove that nothing can be truly set in stone.
Pushback to the MTA’s first and second attempts at redesigning the borough’s bus routes have been significant.
The first shot at redesigning Queens’ bus map came before the pandemic, and was considered so bad and poorly designed that the MTA would rather forget it ever happened.
“It wasn't so friendly, because people were not thrilled with that earlier version of the redesign,” Lieber said.
The most recent draft, proposed last December, received criticism for the MTA’s plan to eliminate stops on some routes in an effort to increase service. Locals called the draft inefficient and counterproductive.
Before a major hearing this summer, Richards called it a “perfectly imperfect plan.”
“We still have a lot of work to build on,” he said Tuesday, adding that many of his issues with the previous iteration were addressed in the latest map.
“This plan needed to be community centered, I believe it is,” he said. “I've spoken to colleagues from all parts of Queens, and I feel relatively good about where we're headed.”
Some early indication to how their plan may fare in the coming weeks may come from some of those colleagues, including Queens Councilmember and transportation committee chair Selvena Brooks-Powers.
Brooks-Powers’ office told the Eagle that she was closely involved with the plan, and she declined giving a specific comment until the plan is final.
The Far Rockaway councilmember had numerous complaints with the draft proposed last December.
“I have serious concerns about the proposal at hand,” she said at the time. “The changes proposed to help streamline and speed of service could also leave many people in my district at a severe disadvantage.”
The hope is that the MTA board will vote to approve it in the first two months of 2025. There will be a virtual town hall on the plan sometime between now and then, the MTA said.
While that town hall in particular leaves the door open for feedback that could affect that plan, MTA officials strongly believe that no matter what feedback or input they get between now and a board vote, the plan will be implemented as is.
“We're going to obviously, in the spirit of this process, give another opportunity for the public to hear and give some more feedback, but we look at this as a finished product, and I know our elected partners understand that as well,” Lieber said.
Officials also made it clear that they intend to monitor the new routes once they are implemented in order to make adjustments should any issues pop up once the new map is in place.
If this is indeed the home stretch for the bus map redesign, and the MTA board approves the plan – which is likely to happen – then riders will see changes to stops and routes beginning next summer.
