By Gus Saltonstall
Change is coming to the 79th Street thoroughfare.
Last week, a representative from New York City’s Department of Transportation presented to Upper West Side Community Board 7’s Transportation Committee its plan to revamp the 79th Street corridor, from Riverside Drive to East End Avenue, in order to improve M79 select bus service and also make the stretch safer.
The proposed changes include:
- Upgrades to 15 already existing bus stops, including adding shelters and seating, as well as improving ADA conditions.
- Upgrades to 14 bus pads along the route, which are the flat concrete surfaces located in front of bus stops that help roads withstand the weight of stopping and starting buses.
- Upgrades to nine median tips/pedestrian refuges.
Along with planned upgrades to existing features, the proposed capital plan along 79th Street will also add the following elements.
- Four bus bulbs, which is where the curb line near a stop gets bumped out to create a wider sidewalk.
- 13 sidewalk extensions along 79th Street.
- Plant more than 20 new trees along 79th Street, along with installing storm water basins, which appear as expanded tree beds that help with periods of excessive rain.
The exact details and locations of all of these proposed upgrades and additions are still in the planning phase, and the DOT doesn’t have added information as of this point.
The total cost of the project is expected at $60 million, with $25 million for the DOT work — $10 million on the West Side and $15 million on the East Side. And then, $35 million for the needed New York City Department of Environmental work.
In terms of timeline, the DOT expects the design work to be completed in the fall of 2025, construction to start in the summer of 2026, and the project to be completed in the winter of 2030.
The new proposed capital project work comes less than a decade after a major street improvement project from the city in 2017 for the 79th Street thoroughfare that launched the M79 select bus service, added bus lanes, and improved bus stop amenities along the corridor.
Since that project was completed, bus speeds on 79th Street have improved by an average of 8 percent, the number of late buses decreased by 45 percent, and total injury incidents for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists are down 57 percent, when comparing averages from 2012-2016 to 2017 to 2024, according to the DOT.
With that being said, the M79 select bus is still one of the busiest in the city with 13,500 daily riders, and there were 26 people killed or severely injured along the 79th Street corridor from 2020 to 2024. That puts it among the top third of most dangerous bus routes in the five boroughs.
The spokesperson from the DOT also provided diagrams for proposed changes to each of the M79 bus stops on the west side.
You can watch the full meeting for yourself below. The presentation begins around the 21:30 mark.
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Insane amount of money and five years.
Pure corruption
Agree. Put the money in cleaning up the UWS. Garbage and dog poop everywhere.
Homeless and mentally ill roaming our streets. Urinating and defacating on our trees,sidewalks.
Use that money to clean up our neighborhoods.
“Our” streets? Dog poop and homelessness in one sentence. What happened to our humanity?
Dog poop and homeslessness were listed in 2 disctinct sentences.
How did we ever take the bus, ride the subway, walk, ride bikes, drive, live and work before Mark Gorter, Ydanis’ DOT and the TA mafia came to save us?
$60 MILLION and that deosn’t even include all the study and work they’ve done so far. Meanwhile CB7 sits there like the plants they are.
Reminds me of San Francisco’s $1.5 million dollar toilet stand because of all the red tape. after the news hit the paper, it became $1 million, in the end a company donated a prefab toilet stand and saved the city zillions of dollars.
The city has millions to spend on a capital project where millions have already been spent while bus riders in Queens are seeing their service to Manhattan that the city fully pays for being cut by the end of June even after congestion pricing is implemented.
Nice to see all the sidewalk extensions and more trees
Can you please explain the pros of sidewalk extensions? When I wait for a bus in an average sidewalk the bus pulls over, iut of traffic, while people get on and off. The ramp for wheelchairs can come down to the curb. Sometimes, due to double parked vehicles, the bus cannot get over to the curb and the riders have to walk into the street. Whith the new extended sidewalks what will change?
It calms traffic, eliminates people trying to beat the red light in the parking lane and makes it a shorter distance to cross the street.
“Traffic calming” is a myth, it actually makes drivers hysterical.
Where is the line between calming traffic and causing congestion?
I grew up taking the M79.
My family takes the M79 all the time.
The M79 is fine as is – what is needed and the only thing that is needed is more frequency, more buses.
Also of note:
Amsterdam is a busy uptown corridor – including commercial vehicles, school buses.
Amsterdam gets backed up when lanes are used/unavailable due to construction or delivery truck double parking.
The drawing here looks like a lane will go for sidewalk extension-yes?
I lived on 72nd and took the crosstown 72 to work for several years but there were so many issues that I started walking the 7 blocks to 79th and it made life so much easier. I agree that there should be more buses on that route, but I’d be a happy camper if the city would spend even fraction of that money and get the 72nd street line up to speed!
The upgraded stops are the worst I have ever seen. They put the bus stopping in traffic and blocking the road safety creating congestion and safety issues. I drove a school bus for many years and the idea of pulling parallelt to the curb getting out of the lane traffic where your bus would not be hit was a safety factor for the passengers and people boarding. If the bus gets rear ended, and the passenger bording gets knocked off the platform they go onto the sidewalk directly onto area behind the door “the front wheel”!
DOT and MTA is fixated on destroying our roadways and not for our safety.
Why are these community board members still meeting on Zoom is the better question. We live in New York City. Walk the five blocks to a meeting and actually sit together and get something accomplished, please.
What about 96th Street or 110th Street?
96th Street is a nightmare. Few buses. Stops unclear. Traffic is forever tied up because not enough room for vehicles. So you sit and wait until there is a space for you to get xtown to the East Side. A total waste.
And a mess on the East Side due to a number of things including Mt. Sinai (vehicles on 96th need to turn on to Madison) and entrance to FDR.
A waste of money. Especially after Trump cancelled billions that we were supposed to get for environmental upgrades.
I was expecting to see negative comments. And yep, that’s what almost all of them are. All that’s missing in the complaints is the name of a certain city Council member, which I shall not type.
Seriously, some of the projected improvements sound worthwhile. Trees, for one.
Are trees worthwhile of the busses are stopping in a travel lane leading to more cars idling?
The biggest problem on the route is that when the M79 turns onto 81st St you often get caught behind double parked cars. 81st St from Amsterdam to Columbus should really lose at least one lane of parking to keep traffic moving. It’s a huge choke point for 13,500 people every day. We should trade one block of parking to speed up the commute of 10,000+ bus riders.
Where are all those 10,000+ bus riders going? Where are all the car drivers going? Sure double parking is an issue, but it is not as bad as some of the other streets, not only that 81st is a wide street where a bus can go around a double parked car. There are other bus routes with longer stretches of narrower one way streets outside Manhattan and no one is clamoring for removal of parking spaces, and in fact don’t hate cars as much as much as urbanists do. There’s routes in Queens that have higher ridership than the M79 with streets that are two way streets the same width as 81st between Columbus and Amsterdam and no one is clamoring for removal of parking. The M8 has one side of parking removed throughout its route and it hasn’t made the M8 more faster or more desirable to use. We already gave up parking on 81st between Columbus and CPW, this shows urbanists will never be happy.
First we could try ticketing the double parked cars. That could be done today.
Just a minute. We need a study to determine feasibility of ticketing.
Towing would be more effective. When the impound lot was on the West Side Highway, there was a lot more towing.
You’re never going to be able to ticket every single person. Esepcially given the other demands on our police time and resources. Removing a few parking spots is the easiest solution and could also be done today with $0 of infrastructure spending!
We’ve already made 81st Street a bus corridor with automated enforcement. Watch if parking is to be removed and now you have two traffic lanes, the urbanists will be complaining about speeding. Or they will complain about cars and other vehicles blocking the bus lane.
I have come to the exclusion that the DOT should be cancelled. They seem to exist, only to exist and act as if they are doing any good. Most of what they foist on us is absolutely unnecessary. The best plan for 79th Street Crosstown is to eliminate parking on 81st street so the bus always gets through. The rest is just window dressing that will once again cost too much and take too much time. The Zoom meetings are ridiculous. This is now they prevent citizens very actually commenting. Mark Levine etal. shame on you.
In Manhattan there are numerous streets that get flooded when there is a hard rain – and City DOT has not fixed.
Residents in parts of Queens keep getting flooded and although a serious problem for years, City DOT has failed to remedy.
The FDR is full of potholes (as I learned when accompanying a friend in a taxi as he was discharged from the hospital) and City DOT has not fixed.
So many other serious infrastructure problems that City DOT has not resolved.
But somehow this non-necessary project gets funded and prioritized.
Unbelievable.
Is this project really necessary? If so – why?
And if it is necessary – I get the $25M for the DOT work. But $35M for the “needed” NYC Dept of Environmental work? What exactly is that?
Extending sidewalks requires a lot of underground utility relocation as well as moving all the stuff along the curb like catch basins and fire hydrants.
Green new scam
So many of the city bus problems could be solved if there was enforcement of existing rules.
Vehicles know there’s no consequence to blocking bus lanes or stops, so they do. If it’s a commercial vehicle, the company just pays the ticket. The driver doesn’t care. If it’s a private vehicle, there’s rarely an enforcement officer around to ticket anyway.
The revamped 96th Street crosstown bus lanes are a joke. Every time I take it, there’s at least one vehicle blocking it, so the bus has to pull out into traffic.
There should be a traffic enforcement vehicle patrolling these lanes continually. And the fines must be high enough that it’s not a write-off to the companies that disregard the rules. And aren’t there supposed to be cameras on the front of the buses by now?
So it’s nice that the DOT plans to do all this nifty work to improve the 79th St bus route. But if no one keeps the lanes and stops clear, it will be another $65 million in wasted taxpayer money.
Write-offs, as you refer to them, are actually expenses. Any expense is an offset against income resulting in a lower income tax liability. But they still cost the company money depending on that company’s tax bracket…it’s not a dollar-for-dollar tax deduction.
Many illegally parked cars are ignored by enforcement officers if the cars belong to construction workers who put safety vests on the dashboard. Ironically, many of those workers are with the DOT. I don’t understand how this favoritism is allowed to continue unabated.
There should be tow trucks patrolling the major streets that have bus routes. And the impound lot shouldn’t be so far away that they spend so much time taking the car and then returning. All it takes is one double-parked vehicle to mess things up.
I take the 79th crosstown all the time. I have no problem – it’s quick and pleasant. If I could control the 60 million, I would take it away from the DOT and give it to the 20th precinct to hire more police officers. I would use some of the new hires to police the roads and sidewalks on foot to protect pedestrians from all the bikes, e-bikes, mopeds and scooters that threaten our safety on a daily basis.
We need a better alternative for people who must travel on buses with baby strollers. Can the driver limit the number permitted at one time? Yesterday I took a bus which had three strollers and a big shopping cart, all jammed in front part of bus. Lots of empty seats in the back but new boarders and those seated up front couldn’t get to them . Two people with canes were afraid to navigate the back door’s steep exit, but were assisted by kind passengers. Welcome some creative thinking on this one!
Yes it’s called get an umbrella stroller and fold it up. I managed perfectly well. But now it’s me, myself, I
While these all seem very nice and I’m guessing will add to safety, the price tag seems WAY out of line with the work being done. Feels like this amount could be better spent on the city’s woes.
HOW ABOUT MORE BUSES UP AND DOWN BROADWAY, INSTEAD OF MINIMUM 15 MINUTE WAIT FOR A BUS IF YOU MISS ONE?
The MTA is horribly corrupt and mismanaged. Maybe Elon will take a hard look at the agency.
Elon would likely eliminate MTA buses for starters.
Perhaps replace with driverless taxis?
Why does it have to take so much money and so much time to complete something so pedestrian? This is not complicated work.
Insane amount of money. $35 million “for the needed New York City Department of Environmental work”!!! How does it make any sense that more than half of the expenditure is on utter BS that helps no one other than consultants. Manhattan is not some wild life refuge. Are we worried about disturbing the natural habitat of rats and pigeons?!?
Buses and Subway Trains are part of the MTA right? So, they have kajillions of dollars for this advancement but they have still done next nothing to protect people from being pushed or accidentally falling or jumping infront of subway trains. I know I used to write comments about this all the time. Safety first. The US Patent that was awarded to the fellow who came up with invention that would address this subway platform problem was granted in 1918. Please. Whoever is in charge just use the Niki approach and Just Do It.
My first year living in the city, in 2002, I used to take the 79th street bus in the evenings to get to my gym in Hells Kitchen and back to Upper East Side and many a night around 11PM I would wait on the corner of 79th Amsterdam for the bus and would freez my a** off so more protection from the cold would be helpful. I think that 79th street cross town is an underrated cross way for the city. I see that many people have commented that this is not needed but I think they should look to the future and not focus on the past.
MTA also reduces service when articulated buses are introduced onto a route.
The best thing the MTA could do for uws bus service would be to get longer buses for M7, M11, and M104 routes. Those buses are currently insanely crowded.
The M104 needs to go back along 42nd Street. The UWS could also benefit from an express bus direct downtown like the X90 on the UES.
Someone please audit the MTA waste and corruption.
MTA promised to install protective walls along subway platforms to protect people from falling or being pushed or jumping in front of trains. What’s the status on that?
Bus bulbs sound like a terrible idea, as cars must be using the lane for turning when buses aren’t there, right?