Soho Bottleneck Will Be Worsened By Bus Replacing L Train: Pols

SOHO, NY — The MTA and the city's Department of Transportation must revise the select bus route taking a tight turn on Kenmare Street during the 15-month L train shutdown, elected officials and residents demanded at a Wednesday rally outside of Lt. Petrosino Square.

Elected leaders railed against transit officials' plans to direct select bus service from Kenmare street — a two-way, two-lane continuation of the Delancey Street corridor — onto Cleveland Place and called on the transit agencies to break their two-month silence on an alternative route designed by locals.

"[Kenmare] Street is the bottleneck in the neighborhood, how this could possibly be a smart idea is beyond me," said Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, whose district includes a portion of Kenmare Street.

"The local residents have an alternative that makes sense and I will say, since I represent the area from 14th street all the way down here, that 14th Street has been the focus of attention," Glick continued. "But what they’re planning on doing is changing the usage of the L train into buses — buses everywhere — and this does not make a great deal of sense."

Four bus routes linking Manhattan to Brooklyn will carry a portion of displaced L train riders as the MTA makes repairs to the Hurricane Sandy-damaged Canarsie Tunnel. Two routes will travel along the Soho-Little Italy loop — Delancey and Kenmare streets, to Cleveland Place and Lafayette Street, to East Houston and back around on Allen Street — but residents have flagged the narrow turn from Kenmare Street, a 40-foot-wide road that the 90-foot-wide Delancey Street feeds into, onto the Cleveland Place side street running along Lt. Petrosino Square.

Community advocates fear the turn, and an additional change restricting turning onto a portion of Kenmare, will create a disastrous bottleneck — and transit officials have taken few steps to address locals concerns, said another elected at the Wednesday rally.

"We have cited concern after concern on the bus routes and have yet to receive any formal responses to our proposals," said Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, whose district includes the pair of bus routes. "The process for the L train shutdown has not been transparent, our communities feel disengaged, our voices continue to be left out of major discussions by the DOT and MTA."

Locals with the Kenmare Little Italy Loop Coalition, which formed in response to community concerns over the mitigation plan, presented an alternative bus route to transit officials that would bypass the Kenmare Street turn and the Soho-Little Italy loop altogether by directing bus service on Delancey Street north to Allen Street, then west along East Houston and ultimately making a loop in the East Village before traveling back to the Lower East Side.

The MTA and Department of Transportation have yet to pass judgement on the proposed route, which Niou called "logical and seamless."

Some frustrated residents have threatened to take the transit agencies to court if their concerns continued to go unheeded. The Department of Transportation maintains that is it working collaboratively with locals to develop the routes, according to an agency spokesman.

The MTA did not immediately return a request for comment.

"[The route] might work on a computer but in real life it’s going to be crazy," said Councilwoman MargaretChin at the Kenmare Street rally. "We are sounding the alarm. There’s got to be a better solution."

Traffic on Kenmare Street (Photo courtesy of Caroline Spivack/Patch)