“Crushed by crowds? Have to wait for more than one bus to go by? It’s not your imagination. Transit officials have never caught up to the waves of new bus riders,” says Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign. His group is reporting that despite an increase in average weekday bus ridership of 22 percent over the past ten years (to 2.45 million), weekday service on city buses increased less than 15 percent.
In Brooklyn, the gap was more than triple, with ridership spiking 26% since 1997, but service only increasing 8%. Only in Manhattan and Staten Island did service slightly outpace the surge in ridership. NYC Transit counters that because ridership in the mid-'90s was well below capacity, service was already in place for all these new riders. But the Straphangers analysis comes as transit officials are considering raising fares and cutting service in response to an impending budget deficit that may reach $700 million.
Speaking to the Times, a spokesman for the MTA disputed the report with Putin-esque self-assurance: “The Straphangers’ assertion that our bus customers are being ‘crushed by crowds’ or that customers are ‘having to wait for more than one bus to go by’ does not systemically occur on N.Y.C. Transit bus routes.” Furthermore, global warming is a myth, the Internet is a fad, and subway platforms are freezing in the summer.
Photo of Benoit courtesy carpe icthus.
