14th Street Busway Should Stay Despite L Train Change: Advocates

EAST VILLAGE, NY — Safe Streets advocates have called on Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the MTA to stick with a plan to dedicate 14th Street as a busway despite the governor's recent pursuit of a plan to repair the Canarsie Tunnel without a full shutdown of L train service between Brooklyn and Manhattan.

An internal MTA memo (dated Jan. 22) recently leaked to the press revealed that many of the MTA's remediation plans for the 15-month L train shutdown will be scrapped for Cuomo's new plan for weekend and overnight work.

Chief among the nixed plans: A 14th Street busway.

The group Transportation Alternatives released a statement in wake of the memo calling on city and state officials to dedicate 14th Street entirely to buses even if the Governor's plan goes through.

"Although the plan for a bus-only 14th Street was conceived in coordination with a full 15-month L Train shutdown, the need for better transit on this corridor is not limited to periods of reduced subway service. New York City is in the midst of an ongoing transportation crisis, with chronic gridlock and buses that move at walking speeds," Interim Director Ellen McDermott said in a statement.

McDermott added that allowing "space-hogging drivers" access to 14th Street is "an attack not only on bus riders, but also on common sense."

The leaked MTA memo revealed that the transit authority will not increase 14th Street bus service during overnight construction, but will run extra service on the weekends to shave about two minutes off passenger wait times.

Two buses that currently service 14th street — the M14D and M14A — were named two of the five slowest bus routes in New York City for 2018 by the New York Public Interest Research Group's Straphangers Campaign.

Gov. Cuomo put the brakes on an MTA plan years in the making to shut down L train service between Brooklyn and Manhattan to repair the Canarsie Tunnel, which was badly damaged during Superstorm Sandy. A similar plan was used to repair the Montague Street Tunnel that connects the two boroughs on the R line.

The MTA will instead pursue a plan that utilizes a new method of repairs developed by a team of experts from Cornell University and Columbia University, which has never been used in the United States before. It has been used in Europe, Cuomo said, but never in a tunnel reconstruction.

The governor had toured the Canarsie Tunnel two weeks before the announcement to get a first-hand look at the damaged infrastructure.

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