Falling flat on \u2018fast and free\u2019 buses<\/a>,\u201d is right that New York\u2019s bus riders have waited too long for faster service.\u00a0However, it misses the mark by suggesting that the Mamdani administration has been standing still on buses.<\/p>\nWithin months of taking office, the Mayor and Governor launched\u00a0Next Stop: Fast Buses, Better Service, a historic city-state partnership to improve bus service on 175 routes (70% of all NYC bus routes) and launch NYC\u2019s first Bus Rapid Transit corridors. This plan will bring faster, more reliable trips for riders across all five boroughs and improve the entire bus experience from the moment someone gets to the bus stop to when they step off at their destination. City and State leaders are in close coordination on delivering promised results.<\/p>\n
And the work is well underway.\u00a0Last week, the Bronx\u2019s first-ever busway was completed on Tremont Avenue, bringing dedicated bus priority to 39,000 daily riders. Several more projects, including Fordham Road in the Bronx, 116th Street, Madison Avenue, 9th Ave, 6th Ave and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, Broadway and Rockaway Beach Blvd. in Queens and Victory Blvd in Staten Island will all be completed this year, putting the city on track to significantly surpass prior years\u2019 mileage. These projects each make up corridors where work has been stalled for years, or where bus riders face some of the slowest bus speeds in the city.<\/p>\n
The editorial board points to the Mayor\u2019s Management Report (MMR) to argue that we deserve a failing grade on our \u201cyearly report card\u201d when it comes to progress on bus lane miles, even though the MMR tracks progress by fiscal years, not calendar years. The Fiscal Year 2026 MMR covers just half of this Mayor\u2019s first year in office, much of which fell outside DOT\u2019s construction season (May-November), since DOT can\u2019t do street work in cold winter weather.<\/p>\n
Once construction season started, we immediately got to work, consistently announcing new bus projects. The task at hand is serious, and so is our commitment. Bus lane installation has increased to 12 miles this fiscal year, more than double the 5.5 miles the City added in FY 2025 \u2013 and yet is still a far cry from the level of service New Yorkers deserve.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Adams, is Senior Advisor for Fast and Free Buses at the Office of the Mayor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Bx36 Bus. Photo credit: Ray Raimundi \/ MTA amNewYork\u2019s Sept. 21 editorial, \u201cFalling flat on \u2018fast and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[13343,67971,9,56,63,65,64,299,142,82],"class_list":["post-364724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-bus-service","tag-elizabeth-adams","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-opinion","tag-transit","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364724","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=364724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/52979219250_9bdf79e8df_c.jpg\" "\\"Op-ed")
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