{"id":293733,"date":"2026-07-12T11:49:44","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T11:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/293733\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T11:49:44","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T11:49:44","slug":"brooklyns-busiest-bus-route-may-finally-get-a-boost-commuters-have-waited-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/293733\/","title":{"rendered":"Brooklyn’s busiest bus route may finally get a boost. Commuters have waited decades."},"content":{"rendered":"

Riders boarding buses on Utica Avenue from Crown Heights to Kings Plaza know they\u2019re in for a slog.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Brooklyn\u2019s busiest bus corridor, carrying more than 15,000 daily riders on the B46 route. But those buses move at a sluggish pace of just 6.9 mph due to traffic-clogged streets made worse by double-parked delivery trucks, Ubers and dollar vans.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs it is now, sometimes it’s extremely slow,\u201d said Maria \u200aMisonet, 65, who lives off Utica Avenue. \u201cYou die under the storm waiting for the bus.\u201d<\/p>\n

City and state officials have for decades made failed promises to improve transit along the street. But riders were given new hope last week when Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the MTA released a citywide bus plan<\/a> that includes a pitch to turn Utica Avenue into a \u201cworld-class\u201d bus route.<\/p>\n

The street is one of five corridors identified in the report where city and MTA officials want to implement \u201cbus rapid transit,\u201d or fast routes with dedicated lanes in the middle of the street that keep buses from jockeying for curb space with other vehicles. The routes could also have longer distances between stops, like the city\u2019s existing select bus service.<\/p>\n

The plan calls for short-term and long-term improvements to the five routes and notes \u201cthe scope, duration, and timeline for each corridor project will vary.\u201d The report states the city transportation department and the MTA \u201cwill study options for rapid bus investments\u201d on Utica Avenue, but doesn\u2019t commit to a timeline for overhauling the street.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aThey’ve been trying to do that for a long time,\u201d said Wayne Townsend, a 62-year-old retired MTA bus driver, as he watched the B46 bus struggle down Utica last week. \u201cIt’s New York, it ain’t gonna never happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

He has reason to be skeptical. City and state officials have since at least the 1950s considered fixing the street\u2019s transit problems by either adding a subway extension down or building out new bus infrastructure.<\/p>\n

None of the proposals ever came to be, which makes Utica Avenue reminiscent of Charlie Brown\u2019s football \u2014 a transit promise that keeps getting yanked away at the last minute.<\/p>\n

In 1951, the city planned to sell bonds to fund a subway extension that would add a spur down Utica Avenue that connects to the Eastern Parkway lines, according to reports from the time. Nearly two decades after that failed, William Ronan, the MTA’s first chair, pitched a similar subway extension in 1968, but that fizzled with the financial crisis in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

And in early 2020, the MTA launched a study<\/a> of potential transit solutions for Utica Avenue, but the COVID-19 pandemic upended the process.<\/p>\n

The MTA in 2023 estimated a subway extension down Utica Avenue would cost nearly $16 billion.<\/p>\n

A bus rapid transit route on Utica Avenue like the one floated in last week\u2019s plan would be much cheaper at $220 million, according to the agency\u2019s estimates. The MTA projected 71,900 daily riders would use an express bus route on Utica by 2045, compared to an estimated 55,600 who would use a subway extension.<\/p>\n

Many B46 riders feared cars would continue to block the bus route, even with a new bus lane and other infrastructure.<\/p>\n

The plan published last week noted the MTA plans to expand the use of automated cameras on the front of buses that issue tickets to cars that block the bus lanes. Townsend, the former MTA bus driver, observed the technology only works if the license plates are visible. Drivers can avert the cameras by leaving their trunks open or covering their plates.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aYou got to have people out here to enforce all those rules, whether it be traffic, police department, or whatever,\u201d he said \u201cBut when they leave, then they [drivers] are going to go back to their old ways.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Riders boarding buses on Utica Avenue from Crown Heights to Kings Plaza know they\u2019re in for a slog.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-293733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}