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City Council reviews bus redesign progress as MTA and DOT point to ridership and speed gains
Summary
Council Member Selvena Brooks Powers convened an oversight hearing on the city’s bus network where MTA and DOT officials cited ridership and speed gains tied to recent redesigns and congestion pricing, while council members, advocates and union representatives pressed agencies on stop removals, enforcement and the reassignment of dispatchers to a centralized command center.
Council Member Selvena Brooks Powers opened a Nov. oversight hearing of the New York City Council Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure by framing buses as a critical part of the city’s transit network and the subject of a package of bills on enforcement, transparency and fairness.
John McCarthy, the MTA’s chief of policy and external relations, told the committee the system is recovering ridership, reporting about 1,400,000 paid bus customers per weekday, up roughly 12% year over year. “Customer satisfaction is currently the highest it's been since spring 2023,” McCarthy said.
Demetrius Critchlow, president of New York City Transit, pointed to preliminary results from recent borough-based network redesigns. “We’re seeing buses moving 7% faster on average,” Critchlow said, citing greater gains on specific routes and attributing improvements to new routing and targeted ‘rush’ routes introduced in Queens. He said the redesigns depend on complementary street changes — more dedicated bus lanes, transit signal priority and…
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