MTA Heading To Kew Gardens To Present Queens Bus Redesign Plan

KEW GARDENS, QUEENS — The MTA is heading to Kew Gardens to brief locals on its plan to redesign the Queens bus network, redrawing routes that have gone unchanged for more than a century.

MTA representative Lucille Songhai will give a presentation on the bus redesign proposal at the Queens Community Board 6 meeting Wednesday night in the Kew Gardens Community Center, according to a meeting agenda.

The meeting starts at 7 p.m.

The presentation is part of the MTA's effort to inform Queens residents about the plan and collect feedback on its draft of a new bus map for the borough, released Dec. 31.

The redesign is meant to remedy declining bus ridership and slow bus speeds by cutting under-used bus stops and combining redundant routes that have been around for roughly a century.

Similar initiatives are underway in The Bronx and Brooklyn, and a redesign of the Staten Island express bus network went into effect in 2018.

In Queens, bus ridership decreased by more than five percent from 2014 to 2019 and the average bus speed is just 8.7 miles an hour, according to MTA data.

The MTA will release its final proposal later this year, but the new map won't go into effect until 2021 at the earliest.

Click here to learn more about the MTA's Queens bus network redesign.