Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on Wednesday that New York City would move forward with a project to improve bus speeds on a busy thoroughfare in the Bronx, reviving an initiative that was put on hold after objections to similar plans from the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
The project will bring a dedicated \u201cbusway\u201d \u2014 which is reserved for buses, emergency vehicles and trucks during peak travel times \u2014 to a stretch of Tremont Avenue, a change that city officials said would shorten commutes for 39,000 bus riders each day.<\/p>\n
The mayor\u2019s office also said that it would gather input in Brooklyn for plans to improve bus service there, on 13 routes that carry roughly 150,000 daily riders on Flatbush, Utica and Church Avenues.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want New Yorkers to have faith in our outreach, and that starts with actually delivering on projects promised years ago, like on Tremont Avenue, where riders deal with unreliable, overpacked buses every day,\u201d Mike Flynn, the city\u2019s transportation commissioner, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The announcements are the latest step in the mayor\u2019s push to fulfill a campaign promise to improve bus service. New York has one of the slowest bus fleets in the nation, with an average speed of eight miles per hour. The announcement comes one week after Mr. Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a plan<\/a> to make buses up to six minutes faster on routes across the city through street redesigns, expanded traffic enforcement and other changes.<\/p>\n In a statement, Mr. Mamdani said his administration was \u201cbuilding streets that move people instead of sticking them in gridlock.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese projects will make commutes faster, make our streets safer and return precious time to nearly 200,000 New Yorkers every single day,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what public transit should do.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Hochul, who joined Mr. Mamdani at the unveiling of a citywide bus plan last week, said in a statement that she supports the new proposals.<\/p>\n \u201cToday, we are moving full speed ahead, decisively advancing projects that will help hundreds of thousands of riders move faster and laying the groundwork for even more service improvements across the five boroughs to come,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Last month, Mr. Mamdani announced a similar busway project on 34th Street<\/a> in Manhattan. That project had been suspended last year by his predecessor, Eric Adams, after the Trump administration objected to it<\/a>, citing concerns about how it might affect road access for trucks and emergency vehicles. The administration had threatened to withhold funding and approvals for other unspecified transit plans if the project did not address its concerns.<\/p>\n