By Gus Saltonstall
The city broke ground earlier this week on a major redesign of 116th Street in Manhattan, which will affect buses on the Upper West Side.
The redesign will create two-and-a-half miles of new bus lanes and street upgrades along portions of the 116th Street corridor, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn announced on Monday.
“When your bus is moving slower than you can walk, something isn’t working,” Mamdani said in reference to slow bus speeds along 116th Street. “New Yorkers should spend less time in traffic and more time with their families and enjoying the city.”
Specifically, the redesign will add offset and curbside bus lanes, dedicated traffic signals that give buses a green light before other vehicles, protected bike lanes, and 35,000 square feet of new unspecified pedestrian space.
Where exactly are these changes taking place along 116th Street, though?
The redesign will take place east of the Upper West Side, but it will affect buses that travel through the Upper West Side.
“The redesign will benefit riders of the M116, one of Manhattan’s slowest bus routes, as well as the M3, M7, M102, BxM1, BxM6, BxM7, BxM8, BxM9 and BxM11,” reads the news release from the city.
The M116 stops on the Upper West Side along West 106th Street at Broadway, Amsterdam, and Columbus, while the M7 travels throughout the entirety of the Upper West Side before cutting east at 106th Street, and eventually making it way down the 116th Street corridor for five avenues.
Construction on the 116th Street corridor is expected to continue through the fall, so drivers should be aware of possible delays in the area during this period.
You can read more about the project — HERE.
Subscribe to West Side Rag’s FREE email newsletter here. And you can Support the Rag here.
Good! The M116 is a good route to LaGuardia if you can board early, but it’s always been very slow.
Maybe because you are on the wrong bus.
Now you know why you keep missing your flight!
That is the M60 that goes to LaGuardia (on 125th street)
I would vote the M60 as the slowest bus. It’s a horrible route. They should eliminate all but 3 stops on 125th Street.
The M60 didn’t even serve the UWS until later on.
Now that I think about it, didn’t it use to cut down to W. 116th before ending on W. 106? It looks like it goes down Broadway now, but I don’t think it used to. Or else my memory is mush.
The M60 goes up Broadway from 106th to 120th, then to Amsterdam (I think), to 125th, and east on 125th. Thence to LaGuardia.
The M116 goes east-west on 116th, but turns south on Columbus (I think – maybe Manhattan? some of each) and then west on 106th.
iirc when the m-60 first started it began at LGA and went across 125th, ending at (I think) Powell. Then it got extended to 116th and Broadway. Later it was changed to 106th.
Thanks. So I’m not totally nuts!
Oops! Guess it’s been a little while since I took the bus to the airport! Thanks for the correction.
The M60 bus goes to LaGuardia
More excellent work from the mayor and his DOT!
Your unwavering admiration for the mayor’s street redesign policies is truly touching.
Bus lanes, protected bike lanes, AND 35k sq feet of new pedestrian space?! What’s not to love? For a pedestrian, this like watching Patrick Ewing in his prime.
As someone who walks and enjoys being outside, this sounds pretty exciting!
I doubt most people have the axe to grind against motor vehicles UWS Dad has.
Ruining the city. Soon all we will have left is hundreds of plastic traffic pins with thousands of miles of painted, and confusing, traffic lanes.
what on earth are you talking about? You want no public transportation here? Slower public transportation?
Getting rid of vision zero would do more to speed up buses
And it affects you on Long Island how?
People who live on the UWS drive cars. People who live in outer boroughs drive cars. It is a privilege to live a lifestyle where you can own no car and afford Uber or Lyft when you need one to go only to other parts of gentrified NYC.
Structurally dependency on Manhattan is a bigger problem than car dependency.
Not sure what structural dependency is supposed to mean here.
That Manhattan is a cultural and economic juggernaut? That people move from all over the world to live here? These are good things.
Not sure how you got to that? (I’ve lived on the UWS continuously since 1980).
Nonetheless, your comment misses the point entirely. The DOT is unchained and should be brought under control.
as long as we get rid of as many cars as possible
And also those pesky bicycles and e-bikes.
Please remember this comment the next time you can’t get a cab, and and Uber wants $50 to take you a half-mile.
Are we getting rid of cars? I’m all for buses being faster but I wasn’t going to choose driving my own car cross town over taking a bus.
Now all we need is ENFORCEMENT of dedicated bus lanes. No more “one warning ticket.” Automatic camera ticket, first time, every time. Plus transit cop enforcement, so commercial vehicles can’t just have the company pay the fine as a cost of doing business.
Food does not drop from the sky, yet Food has to be delivered by trucks to NYC.
or so cars cannot just pop the trunk and avoid the cameras
Haha ! I hadn’t noticed that!! There are so many cars/ and bus lanes? Fergedabouit! The whole situation is a joke! Traffic using public transportation lanes is constant in NYC !
How does getting a ticket from a transit cop, as opposed to the auto camera, change anything? Either way doesn’t UPS still pay the fine as a cost of doing business?
I’ve been to traffic court and watched the “negotiations “ between a large company’s attorney and the judge. I watched both agree to 10 cents on the dollar. So a thousand dollars worth of tickets got knocked down to just a hundred.
I had no idea how it worked with companies, thank you!
As a practical matter, how can residents of buildings on a street with a bus lane trasnact with the outside world if commercial vehicles (delivery vehicles, service vehiles, moving vans etc) cannot park in the bus lane?
That’s easy, they just double park in the bus lane. Take a look at 96th St.
That’s exactly my point. There is no other way, and I don’t know why DOT pretends otherwise.
Do the M79 route next please!
I actually find the M79 the most reliable cross-town bus in the city. My vote for a fix would be the M72.
M79 bus transits pretty well IMO.
On the West Side it is chiefly slowed by the turns and constant red lights.
Implementing an “advance” bus green light would be useful.
As anyone who has ever taken the M79 on the West side can tell you, the lack of a contiguous 2-way thoroughfare between Amsterdam and CPW limits options. Heading east, 79th ends at Columbus, which only has downtown traffic thus no way to access the one block of 81st, between Columbus & CPW, that is also 2-way traffic.
Well, I don’t think they should run the bus through the museum.
The bigger problem to me is the extremely narrow sidewalks on 80th and 81st streets. Pedestrians are forced to walk single file while there cars get two full time free parking lanes, one moving lane, and one double parking lane. The sidewalk is actually illegally narrow under the ADA but the city has no plans to address it.
102 inch wide buses used to be illegal but they are standard, maybe the only way buses can move faster is a wider street. People on 80th and 81st walk on the side of the street if they are able to and it works out.
Terrible, This will snarl traffic to a standstill.
How would anyone know the difference?
This is NYC. Public transportation must be prioritized.
Public transportation doesn’t get you everywhere and the MTA probably doesn’t want to deal with everyone. I think you are content forcing everyone onto public transit while you have bikes, uber and lyft for yourself.
What a strange assertion, of course the MTA wants to serve the public.
I don’t like spending money on rideshares/taxis & much prefer to take the train/bus
It is not a strange assertion, people have very different needs, transit serves the lowest common denominator. They see the public, not as people, but as numbers on a spreadsheet. Literally their job is to make decisions no elected official wants to be directly accountable for. But urbanists don’t care about cities for people either way, they care more about what looks good in a chart or spreadsheet or a mockup, but not people.
Yes MTA bus and subway are essential and must be prioritized.
However, bicycles are not and DOT should not be spending to expand.
If Citibike is to exist and have public subsidies, it must be MTA operated.
Citibike should not be subsidized.
Transportation funds should go only to bus and subway.
Citibike shouldn’t be subsidized. If it is, the MTA should run it. Urbanists who deride public transit and cars for bikes should suffer with the same MTA everyone else does. Lyft is already looking to dump Citibike as it is losing money on it.
And bike lanes don’t reducee the number of buses needed because when the westher is bad the cyclists need tonuse buses and subways
exactly.
cyclists especially Citibike siphon from bus and subway use anayway.
cyclists are not former drivers/don’t reduce vehicles on the streets
Bus improvements like dedicated green lights would be great.
Wondering – what is an “offset” bus lane?
But adding a bike lane does not help bus riders – actually a bike lane may end up worsening bus transit.
So seems kind of disingenuous for DOT to frame this project as “for buses”
Also if DOT really cared about bus riders, DOT would not allow Open Streets on bus routes which force bus detours (like M7, M11 on West Side)
The project is clearly designed to help many forms of low-energy, less polluting transport – buses, bikes, etc. They are all better than private cars.
Private cars are more than fine. You just don’t want others to enjoy the benefit of them.
Speaking of bus to the airport: We need an EXPRESS M60 bus. For example, the Express could stop in Manhattan at the intersections with subway stations, then the first stop over the bridge in Queens and then directly to the 3 LGA terminals.
DOT, Brad H-S Borough President, and City Council members – do it! Thank you.
Oh fantastic let’s have all the Fare beaters (ever been on the 116,? you’re likely the only person that paid) get to their destination quickly!
“The redesign will take place east of the Upper West Side”
This statement is inaccurate on two levels. First, the UWS ends at 110th where Morningside Heights and, east of Manhattan Avenue, Central Harlem begin. Second, the changes affect parts of 116th that are west of 5th Avenue, so they are on the West Side, east of Morningside Heights in Central Harlem.
East Elmhurst is actually north of Elmhurst so what gives?
Now do 72nd Street.
So will this change be useful for the M60 to LaGuardia from Bdway &106th?
No.
Are “protected bike lanes” leaving enough room for emergency vehicles to get through traffic? I highly doubt it unless they use said lanes, which would be their only legitimacy.
The “protected bike lanes” act as highways for bikes!
It continues to amaze me that the NYC DOT seems not to be required to hire qualified design engineers for this work. They must be hiring shoemakers for the job. How else to explain the poorly designed results?