​Dear Queens Local, State, and Federal Elected Officials,

We are a coalition of everyday transit riders who elevate the voices of underserved and disadvantaged community members in our pursuit of true equity, accessibility, safety, and sustainability in New York’s public transit.
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As you may know, the Queens Bus Network Redesign is an historic undertaking envisioned by former New York City Transit President Andy Byford to address a bus system that has become outdated. Thus far, three versions of the Queens Bus Network Redesign have been released. Every Queens City Council member objected to Version 1. The MTA delayed the release of Version 2 (the New Draft Plan), saying they wanted to “get it right this time.” After Version 3 (the Proposed Final Plan), the MTA promised that the thousands of public comments received would be incorporated into a new Final Plan that would be released in the future. Instead, the MTA has done a sudden 360, now proposing a public hearing on the Proposed Final Plan for July 24th, 2024. This hearing must be postponed until at least January 2025 for the following reasons:

1. Many Queens residents are on vacation for the summer and/or are unable to attend this public hearing for other reasons.
2. None of the thousands of comments from the public received since the release of the Proposed Final Plan in December 2023 have been incorporated into a new plan.
3. The MTA has provided no evidence that its goals of “meeting customers” priorities of more reliable service, faster travel, better connections, and ease of use” have been met. Although improved interborough connectivity was one of the goals, no new routes are being offered (e.g. between Sheepshead Bay, Astoria, Bayside and the Rockaways). Furthermore, under the latest plan, one of currently three Queens routes that serve Manhattan (the Q101) will no longer do so. Also, there has been a lack of coordination with Nassau Inter County Express bus routes.
4. The plan does not properly address communities in transit deserts (areas that lack adequate access to public transit). Many of these areas, including parts of Southeast and Northeast Queens, have historically been underserved and will continue to be. Some of them will even see reductions in bus service and coverage.
5. The plan does not accommodate the influx of riders into the transit system that congestion pricing is guaranteed to have, if implemented. 
6. The plan ignores the fact that there are shortages of both buses and bus drivers. This means that many bus runs will not be filled if bus drivers call in sick, compromising service.
7. The MTA has not announced where additional free transfers will be provided due to route revisions. When the Bronx Bus Redesign was implemented, many riders continued to pay double fares and complained that additional transfers were needed. Furthermore, the additional transfers that were provided were never publicized meaning that future residents will not be aware of them and may use other routes unnecessarily requiring double fares.
8. The MTA has ignored the nearly 3,300 passengers who have signed a petition against the elimination of over 1,400 bus stops (a third of the stops in the whole borough). In cases where bus stops were returned, other stops were taken away. Bus stop spacing will increase from an average of 818 feet apart to an average of 1,151 feet apart, increasing walk distances for some to ¾ mile to the closest bus route. The MTA’s 2010 guidelines call for a bus stop every 750 feet, which is already exceeded in Queens. Instead, the MTA has chosen to follow European standards instead of the domestic standard or the MTA’s 2010 guidelines. This is being done only to save operating costs, not to help bus passengers. It will also disproportionately harm seniors and people with disabilities who are unable to or have difficulty walking farther to catch the bus (more on that in reason #10).
9. Despite promises to do so, the MTA has refused to publicize the existing and proposed revenue miles and hours to prove that the plan is an overall service addition instead of a reduction. The MTA has stated that the Proposed Final Plan will cost $30 million more to operate. However, those funds do not necessarily mean additional passenger service, but rather could mean more inefficient service with more buses running “Not in Service.”
10. Despite the MTA’s claims that the plan will result in “greater transit equity,” as MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said when the Proposed Final Plan was released, equity was not properly incorporated. The MTA did not use adequate quantitative or qualitative data to determine changes to bus routes, bus stops, etc., nor were any studies conducted to determine how disadvantaged and vulnerable populations (not only lower income residents/people of color, but also seniors and people with disabilities) would be affected by these changes. Furthermore, a proper equity analysis was never done for the Queens Bus Network Redesign, nor were any metrics to evaluate equity established at all.
11. No quantitative data were provided regarding ridership on a stop-by-stop, route segment-by-route segment, or even full route-by-full route basis, to back up the MTA’s decisions for the plan. The MTA included some of this data for the Bus Network Redesigns in the Bronx and Brooklyn, publishing statistics for all of its routes regarding ridership per revenue hour, ridership per revenue mile, farebox recovery ratio, speed, etc. However, for the Queens plan, only data for route corridors were provided, which provide a very limited understanding. The MTA typically provides detailed statistics for routine service changes regarding cost, the number of riders who have to make an extra transfer, walk further to a new route (or conversely, riders who have fewer transfers, shorter walks, etc). However, these statistics on a proposal-by-proposal basis were not presented as part of the Queens Bus Network Redesign process.
12. Public outreach for the plan has been insufficient. Only in recent months have the digital displays linked a website for further information, and no printed materials were posted on the buses. Attendance at meetings, open houses and pop-up events were very low, reaching under 1% of Queens 500,000 weekday bus riders. Also, the booklet for the plan was not provided at senior centers and hospitals, excluding those without access to computers and mobile devices from the process. In the Southeast Queens route profiles, the bus stop eliminations were not provided to the elected officials in the presentation given to them.

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As an elected official, we are depending on you to advocate for the needs of your constituents who deserve better transportation options and proper representation by insisting that this public hearing be delayed. Holding the hearing on July 24th would be no different than giving the MTA a blank check to make whatever changes it desires. Rushing the Queens Bus Network Redesign without properly incorporating public input nor performing due diligence would be catastrophic for the riding public, and we must not let that happen.

Thank you very much for listening.


Sincerely yours,
Charlton D’souza, President
Jack Nierenberg, Vice President
Allan Rosen, Board Member
on behalf of the Passengers United team

Good Evening. I have been retired from the MTA for nearly 19 years and do not represent the MTA and am not speaking on their behalf. It is imperative we have a bus system that is both efficient and effective in transporting people. Unfortunately, that is not the case today. There are many service gaps, also known as transportation deserts, and bus routes that are outdated or indirect requiring unnecessary transfers and extra fares.

​Service reliability is also a big problem and sometimes you feel like you are playing Russian Roulette. Some days the system works fine; other days you seem to wait forever. The MTA recognizes all this. So after years of mostly incremental changes they have undertaken a necessary redesign of the entire bus network throughout the city, by borough. They are now finalizing Queens and produced the first draft for Brooklyn which has received very negative criticism, as did the first draft for Queens. They claim they are trying to make the system better. Unfortunately, they are very misguided which I will explain.

Their goals are not our goals as passengers. They are mainly concerned with what the system costs to operate and care less about how passengers are served. Rather than caring about how long your trip takes, they are instead obsessed with bus speeds. Also, the redesigns are not filling service gaps.

I know something about buses because I spent my entire career, over three decades, fighting for better bus service after getting my Masters from Columbia in Urban Planning and the last ten years writing about it. In 1981 and 1982, I briefly directed the MTA’s first attempt at updating the Brooklyn bus network to reflect the needs of its passengers. 

I was also Director of Bus Planning for the MTA. Previously, I was responsible for changing almost a dozen bus routes in Southern Brooklyn in 1978, including the B1 which is now one of the most successful routes in the borough. I worked for the Department of City Planning at that time, and in fact the MTA had to be sued to make those changes because the MTA never had interest on their own to improve the bus system for their passengers.

The MTA’s only interest is to ensure public safety and to keep costs manageable, probably by reducing them. That doesn’t mean no one at the MTA doesn’t want to do the right thing. They just are not in positions where they have the power to improve the bus system.

The MTA’s supposed outreach for the redesign is merely a charade to give the appearance of public involvement. The purpose of this involvement is to remove the most objectionable parts of their plan to make it politically palatable for the plan to come to fruition, and giving the illusion they are making the system more passenger friendly. You should still make comments on their website regarding what you think of their plan.

How do we know public involvement is a charade?

For one thing, although the initial Brooklyn plan was released over 15 months ago, there have not been any notices on the buses before or after the release of this plan to alert passengers. The exception was one week when handouts were placed in the take one containers on the buses notifying passengers of a website to go to for further information. Who would even know to look there?

When, after three years, the MTA finally decided to announce the Queens Network Redesign on the digital displays on Brooklyn buses, they just as easily could have mentioned the ongoing Brooklyn study, but decided not to. The result is that anyone without computer access has been completely left out of the process and that is mostly seniors who use buses a lot and are affected the most.

Their Zoom meetings attracted only 20 to 50 people at each session which were broken into groups of ten to limit the discussion that everyone could hear. Their so called pop-up sessions consisted of two employees wearing buttons saying “Ask me about the Bus Redesign” hiding in subway stations away from heavily trafficked areas.

The MTA and most elected officials refuse to hold open forums such as this one where one can freely discuss the proposals. I called each one multiple times, asking them to hold such a forum. The MTA outreach has reached less than one hundredth of one percent of the bus riders. When they do publicize the study a week before the public hearing probably in 2026, it will be too late to make any changes. The time to act is now.

The worst feature of the plan is the removal of one third of the bus stops, over 1,000 of them in Brooklyn alone, which is why I started a petition on Change.org, which now has nearly 3,200 signatures. In order to obfuscate the changes, the MTA doesn’t mention the number of stops to be eliminated. You have to count them up individually. Nor do they tell you the walk to the closest bus could be as far as 3/4 of a mile. They don’t even call it bus stop elimination or removal, but bus stop balancing, just to confuse you. Are bus stops unbalanced today?

• Rerouting the B52 off Greene and the B26 off Putnam also mean longer walks. 
• B41 Flatbush Avenue service north of Empire Blvd will be cut in half despite Downtown Brooklyn being the neighborhood growing the fastest.
• Overnight B25 service between Water Street and Franklin Ave would be eliminated being replaced by a B26 extension. Who wants to change buses at 2 in the morning when they don’t have to do that now? No one. 
• With the opening of Wegmans, the decision to move the B57 from Flushing to Park Avenue is also questionable.
• Flipping the northern termini of the B48 and B69 also means reduced service in Williamsburg and Greenpoint since the B69 generally runs less frequently than the B48.
• The B57 will no longer serve Smith and Court Street so it can be further extended into Queens without showing that any demand exists for such an extension. Smith and Court Streets will be served by the new B27 which is being set up to fail with infrequent service and few destinations. 
• The B67 will no longer serve the Navy Yard.

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To get all this information from the MTA website, you would have to sift through 400 pages. There are no summaries of the proposals by neighborhood to make the plan more understandable. Although some parts of the borough will receive increases in service, this area  isn’t one of them. I don’t see a single improvement here as well as for the area I live in, only longer walks and longer trips.

The MTA document, available only on the internet, is intentionally misleading and doesn’t explain the reasons for any of the proposed changes or why alternative plans were eliminated.  Nowhere do they talk about disadvantages. Everything that is written is disguised as an improvement.

The plan implies the MTA knows what’s best for you because they are the experts. Nowhere do they even show how trips will be quicker or if you will need fewer connections. The opposite is usually true. They need to show how their plan helps more than it hurts, which they fail to do. If the MTA really knows what is best, why are they undoing many of their changes of the last 25 years? They are keeping the bulk of the changes I had made nearly 50 years ago. 

The first misconception the MTA perpetuates is that buses are slow and eliminating bus stops and adding bus lanes will make them faster. The truth is buses are not slow when compared to cars which average 9 mph on city streets. Brooklyn buses average about 7.2 mph on city streets. It stands to reason that buses have to go a little slower than cars because they must make more stops. So the entire premise for eliminating bus stops is incorrect. Bus lanes are only necessary where bus service is very frequent, not on every street with bus service.

The second misconception is the MTA assumes each eliminated bus stop saves 20 seconds on the average. That number is inflated because they fail to consider increased dwell time at the remaining stops and that buses skip infrequently used stops most of the time if no one is getting on or off, and virtually no time is saved by eliminating those bus stops. The MTA only considers acceleration and deceleration in their time savings calculations which are not the only factors.

The MTA pretends bus speeds are a problem when the biggest problem is reliability which the redesigns do nothing about. Reliability is improved by increasing supervision, having more buses make shorter trips and reducing double parking mostly by trucks. A handful of supervisors for the entire city cannot guarantee reliability for the MTA’s over 6,000 buses.

A state law I proposed to the MTA requiring non-emergency vehicles to give the right-of-way to buses leaving bus stops would save buses more time than eliminating thousands of bus stops which causes unnecessary inconvenience to bus riders. They like the idea, but still want to eliminate bus stops.

The accepted domestic walking guideline to a local bus is 1/4 mile. Increasing the distance between bus stops to 1/4 mile, as proposed, flagrantly violates this standard since we know most people do not live at a bus stop or only 1/8 of a mile from one. They usually live up to 1/4 mile from a bus stop. Increasing bus stop spacing increases the present 1/4 mile walk to 1/2 or 3/4 mile at each end of your trip. That is unacceptable, especially for those with mobility problems.

​The average local bus trip is 2.3 miles. So who would want to walk up to a mile and a half just to ride a bus a little over 2 miles? Few if any. They will make the trip another way or not at all. We shouldn’t be using European bus stop spacing standards as the MTA proposes instead of the US standards we are currently using.

The Redesign will result in less ridership causing greater service reductions in the future. After years of research I developed my own plan for Brooklyn that fills service gaps, reduces needed connections, improves reliability and will increase patronage. The MTA refuses to even discuss my plan with me, although I have a successful track record. It is also available on the Passengers United website which I invite you to peruse. If you like it better than the MTA Plan, please let everyone know, especially your elected officials. 

If eliminating bus stops saves the bus three minutes, but you now have to walk five minutes more, you still have a longer trip, and if the extra walk results in you missing your bus, your trip is now much longer. Nowhere does the MTA even mention passenger trip time. They are only obsessed with bus speeds.

So why is the MTA so insistent on eliminating so many bus stops? It’s to reduce the pay hours of its bus drivers, not to help the passengers. The MTA has refused to divulge if the Redesign results in an increase or decrease to revenue hours and miles so we could determine if the redesign results in overall service increases or decreases.

In Queens, they claim to be spending an additional $30 million per year in operating costs. They want you to assume this means added service. However using data available through open source, it has been determined that revenue hours are being decreased in Queens. So what the extra $30 million really means is that service will now be more inefficient with more buses traveling to and from depots without passengers. Is this what we want for Brooklyn? Or do we want better service?

It is imperative that we let our elected officials know we will not be fooled by the MTA’s charade to improve bus service. We cannot let the MTA destroy our bus system by believing buses operate more efficiently without passengers than with them because without passengers, they can make the trip quicker, and I have that in writing from the MTA.

I also suggest you join Passengers United, the only organization representing bus riders fighting for improved mass transit. Riders Alliance, Transportation Alternatives, the PCAC, and others, are all in bed with the MTA and support the MTA’s proposed changes. 

Also, check out my Brooklyn Bus Redesign Facebook Group and sign the petition. We have strength in numbers and need to fight for what’s right.

​By Allan Rosen

The MTA completed its five open houses and 13 pop-up sessions (including four MetroCard Mobile Sales events) for the Brooklyn Bus Network Redesign on June 9. That was in addition to its 18 virtual meetings earlier this year.

These events were poorly publicized, only mentioned on the MTA website and in an occasional news article, TV news story, or an e-mail from an elected official. There were no signs on the buses or digital displays specifically referring to these meetings. There were a few handouts available on buses only with a link to the MTA website, and occasional mention of the Redesign on buses with digital displays, but no mention of any outreach. 

There have been no real discussions with communities where the MTA justifies its decisions with data and adequately answers questions. At its Pop-Up events, the MTA stationed three personnel in or near subway stations wearing buttons where riders were supposed to approach them with questions about the Redesign. The staff were accompanied by two signs hanging on the wall.

However, there were no signs at MetroCard Bus Mobile Events, only three people with buttons saying “Ask Me About the Brooklyn Bus Network Redesign.”

At the Open Houses, there also was a table, Network Local and Express Bus Maps posted, and signage summarizing general advantages of the plan.  Five or more MTA personnel were available to answer questions at those events. They each had a 500-page book with them which was a printout of the information available on their website which was used to answer questions. 

Attendance was so light, that personnel were able to spend as much as 20 or 30 minutes with each person explaining the plan. The MTA spoke to only about two dozen passengers at each of these events. When I questioned MTA personnel about this, the response was that having meaningful discussions with two dozen people at each event was their goal which they accomplished. 

Many seniors, who comprise a significant amount of ridership, are not computer literate and were totally left out of the process. Even if a senior without a computer finds out about the Redesign events by word of mouth or an-mail and attends a Pop-Up or an Open House session, there is no way such a complex plan could be understood by anyone just by someone explaining the plan from a book without a handout other than a multi-lingual link to a website. 

How is a senior without computer access supposed to learn which bus stops are being eliminated when the posted sign only states that bus stop balancing will speed buses?  How could someone even know what the euphemism of “bus stop balancing” even means without asking? Are bus stops today off-balance?

How is a senior supposed to learn that his or her express bus service will not be operating on Saturdays when that information is not volunteered by the staff and the posted bus map of express bus service available only at the five open houses, mentions nothing about Saturday service being discontinued? 

How is someone able to understand a complex local Brooklyn Bus Map that is mainly in green, unlike the ones currently in use using multiple colors to distinguish routes?

I attended the Sheepshead Bay Pop-Up, the Coney Island Open House and the Mobile Sales MetroCard  Pop-Up Event in Sheepshead Bay. Two staff members from Government Relations and one planner were available to answer questions at the first event. There were two large signs only in English announcing the Redesign. They were placed in the corner of the entrance areas by the employee restrooms, away from the foot traffic entering and exiting the station.

I insisted that the signs be moved to an area where they would be noticed. They were moved to just outside the station. One sign was placed on an el pillar. That was an improvement, but people entering or exiting on Sheepshead Bay Road still could not see them without first turning their head sideways.

As a result, of the 1,000 or 2,000 using the station during the 3 hours of the event, only about 100 saw the signs. About 12 people engaged in conversations with the team. Much of the time, the team was idle. At one point, the planner made a meager attempt to attract riders by asking if anyone uses the bus. Without a megaphone, she could not be heard and was ineffective so she gave up after about a minute; the rest of the time the team just waited to be approached and was virtually ignored.

At the conclusion, I was informed that one person from Government Relations spoke to a dozen more people at one of the bus stops when she realized people at the subway station were uninterested in bus changes.

The Coney Island Open House was no more effective. For some unknown reason, the subway station was nearly deserted at rush hour. Perhaps it would have been more effective if the event were held instead at the neighboring bus terminal, which is the terminal for three affected bus routes, the B68, B74 and B82. At the bus terminal, there was a small unclear sign directing people to the location where it was being held. The shortest route to the location was to pay your fare and then exit the paid area to reach it. Otherwise, you had to walk at least 600 feet depending on where you entered the station. There was also signage at Surf Avenue saying “Ask us about the Brooklyn Bus Network Redesign” and a small arrow once you walked inside directing you to walk further. One person posted on my Brooklyn Bus Network Redesign Facebook site, that she thought the site was unmanned and left, having not walked inside the terminal to see the arrow.

If at these 15 events, the goal of speaking to 2 dozen riders at each event is achieved, the MTA would have engaged with 400 people. Add that to the 600 different individuals who attended the virtual workshops, for a total of 1,000 people. There are 625,000 daily weekday passengers in Brooklyn. How can reaching less than 0.1% of them be considered “effective” public participation? Yet, the MTA insists that it is. Perhaps, it would be if the .01% were a statistically valid representative sample which it was not.

Distributing handouts summarizing key changes in the specific area targeted, with an understandable map on the reverse, distributed to everyone passing through the station or a neighboring bus stop would have reached a hundred times as many riders, but still would only reach 1% of affected riders. Still better than 0.1%. If these outreach sessions had been advertised on the buses or mentioned more in the newsletters, on TV and e-mails from all elected officials, that percentage of passengers reached would have greatly increased.

A flyer for the Sheepshead Bay Station could have looked something like this with the addition of the MTA logo: What would have been so difficult for the MTA to print and distribute this?

​However, the MTA chose not to explain its plan in terms that could be easily understood. They do not want you to realize they are truncating and discontinuing bus routes and shortening service spans or eliminating 2,300 bus stops in Brooklyn and Queens. They would rather use terms such as “bus stop balancing” to speed service to obfuscate what they are really doing. They only tell you where service is discontinued or which bus stops will be removed if you specifically ask them about it.

They are refusing to provide any support or back-up materials showing how they arrived at their decisions, even after being asked repeatedly for this. They will only answer questions if the answer is already contained on their website, offering no additional information. They are not being accountable or transparent.

I already raised all these issues with a high-level MTA official through ongoing correspondence in the past few months after he approached me following my testimony in January at the MTA Board Meeting.

Here are some quotes from his responses:

​“Our outreach has evolved in the pandemic era to best suit our customers’ needs and provide a welcoming environment…I appreciate your feedback on our process but will ask you to understand it’ll be different than what you’re asking for yet effective…The unfortunate reality is we will not see eye to eye on what is effective, or practicable, when it comes to outreach. We fundamentally believe our process is working. We have established a track record of success in prior redesigns and we look forward to continuing it in Brooklyn and Queens…No one suggested .01% is the goal, you did. I have responded to the vast majority of what you have asked of me…We are transparent and accountable to our riders and stakeholders. We are not however required to do as you personally suggest at every turn. Have a nice rest of your day.”

However, on the bright side, I was successful in getting the MTA to investigate and support a state law requiring non-emergency vehicles to give the right-of-way to buses leaving bus stops as a way for buses to move faster as I have been suggesting for about five years. They will try to get the legislation introduced, but even if passed, they do not view it as a substitute for not eliminating massive numbers of bus stops which they still intend to do. It is unfortunate they are ignoring the 3,060 people who have signed thus far signed the petition against massive bus stop removal giving at least a thousand reasons.

​Bus passengers who have read the plan must tell the MTA what they like and dislike. They should suggest better ideas for the MTA to consider in a setting where everyone in attendance can hear them, rather than only submitting their ideas privately.  Our state and local elected officials must insist on well-publicized public town halls in their districts to accomplish this.  The MTA must provide reasons why alternate ideas are unacceptable. A single public hearing ten days before changes take effect as required by law is grossly insufficient.

My sources tell me that the Brooklyn Borough President has no interest in holding a borough-wide town hall or Borough Board Community Meeting where the MTA can be put on the spot and be required to provide the back-up data requested. Data such as (1) how many daily B15 bus riders will now require a transfer to reach JFK Airport who currently have a direct trip after the B15 is truncated? (2) How removing lightly utilized bus stops increasing walking distances to some routes up to ¾ of a mile violating all accepted domestic standards, helps passengers by reducing their trip times? (3) How truncating routes such as the B69 increasing waiting times by 15 minutes or more by requiring extra transfers, helps passengers? (4) How many will be negatively affected by truncations such as with the B69 and B103 as compared to the numbers who are expected to be better served with new routes such as the B55?

Twenty years ago, the MTA insisted they had a computer model that could simulate the numbers being helped and hurt by testing different sets of new bus route proposals and comparing the results. What happened to it? Surely in twenty years it has improved or has it never worked the way it was intended and is unusable? As a public agency, why should the MTA be immune from answering such questions?

The MTA’s line now is “Don’t worry, it’s only a draft” so you shouldn’t take the proposals seriously. After the most objectionable parts are removed and the final plan goes into effect, the new line will be “Don’t worry, we will continue to adjust routes and service levels on an ongoing basis as ridership and usage warrants.”  Realistically, the chances of restoring a truncated or eliminated route are slim.

Two from the MTA told me they were upset with me for being too critical about the MTA. I do give the MTA credit when I feel they deserve it which is not often. One claimed to have read my 100-page bus route and service plan, which is more comprehensive than theirs and solves more problems such as filling service gaps in transit deserts and straightens more routes such as the B16. 

However, she told me, “Your problem is that you don’t want to see any changes.” That type of statement undermines any credibility the MTA might have. The MTA also has refused to have any discussions with me regarding my plan which took me years to develop, although I was responsible for the current B1 route, one of the most successful and well-utilized routes in the borough. Is this how the MTA is listening?

We cannot allow the MTA to trim our bus service without adequate justification to save operating expenses while calling the redesign an improvement and labeling it a success, as they most certainly will do.  Anyone who has read my plan must let the MTA know which features from it should be included in their plan.

The future of the Brooklyn Bus Network is now in the hands of our state and local elected officials.
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Allan Rosen is a former director of MTA NYCT Bus Planning with three decades of experience in transportation and a Master's Degree in Urban Planning. On Twitter @BrooklynBus.

​ATTENTION BROOKLYN AND QUEENS LIRR COMMUTERS: Atlantic Ticket is slated to be eliminated! This not only includes the $5 one-way ticket between Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn and stations in Queens, but also the $60 weekly ticket which includes a 7-Day Unlimited MetroCard for easy and affordable subway and bus connections!

Instead, there would be a CityTicket that costs $5 during off-peak hours and $7 during peak hours (a $2 increase from Atlantic Ticket's flat rate). However, this ticket does not include any free subway or bus transfers!

This also comes after the MTA chose to significantly reduce through-service to/from Atlantic Terminal, which has resulted in a reduction in ridership on the line. To then eliminate Atlantic Ticket and strip away all its benefits from riders who now get third-class service on the line would be despicable and discriminatory against Brooklyn and Queens community members, many of whom are unable to afford the $7 CityTicket and would be adversely affected.
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These important discounts must not only be saved, but expanded so that all of us can afford easier and more accessible public transit options. For example, they should be included at Grand Central, which would be another incentive to take public transportation and fill up the empty trains that run to/from this new Manhattan terminal. New York City's affordability crisis shows that discounts for public transit, especially for those who need it the most, are critical now.

After testing the demo turnstiles and speaking with officials from the manufacturers, I can report that I am impressed with what I saw. New fare gate technology is long overdue for the MTA, and it was great to get a sense of what transit riders could be using in the near future. Whichever option is ultimately settled on, it will be a game changer for the MTA, the city, and the region.

Our discussions covered many facets of the new technology, and my findings are promising. First, these turnstiles will feature design elements and computerized systems (such as cameras and sensors) that would help deter fare evasion, improve accessibility, and allow for quick and easy maintenance. Inevitable defects and/or vandalism are addressed by redundancy in the computerized systems and the durability of the design. For example, the arms, which are made of shatterproof plexiglass, can be easily replaced.

We also addressed the issue of accessibility, on which the width of the gates has a bearing. If a gate is too narrow, it is less accessible, and it is crucial that everyone is able to easily pass through them. There will, of course, be wider gates for those with strollers or mobility devices. Cameras and/or sensors would also be able to effectively determine how long to keep the gate open based on factors such as their position, articles, etc.

I am also hopeful that, by their design intended to prevent fare evasion by incentive, these new turnstiles would help improve safety in the subway system. The issue of safety is a very complex one, and while this won’t solve it 100%, it is one smaller (but still substantial) piece of the puzzle.

Additionally, the versatility of these new turnstiles could enable OMNY to be rolled out on the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North, and I am glad that the MTA seems open to exploring that possibility. This could transform fare collection on the railroads into a tap-in/tap-out system similar to that in the Netherlands (which I was very impressed with when I used it). Such a system would allow for easier, more flexible commuting by train (especially since conductors would not need to check tickets anymore), as well as streamlined transferring between transit modes. Of course, this would be at the MTA’s discretion, but I encourage them to consider such a course of action.

With that said, the questions that remain are: 1) How much will this cost, and 2) where will the funds come from? While the answer is unclear at the moment, we implore the MTA to make sure that the cost is not borne by everyday New Yorkers and especially those in marginalized and/or vulnerable demographic groups. As long as that is fulfilled, we are all for the new turnstiles!