Busway Will Not Be Coming To 14th Street Monday

WEST VILLAGE/CE NY — A judge temporarily halted the city's plans to transform 14th Street into a bus priority corridor Friday.

Plans to restrict most private car traffic from Third to Ninth avenues on the crosstown corridor were thwarted from a lawsuit filed by Chelsea and West Village neighborhood groups and cooperative buildings, Streetsblog and the New York Post reported.

The de Blasio administration's planned bus priority was set to begin Monday in order to speed up buses along the notoriously snail-paced M14.

The judge issued a temporary restraining order until early August, the groups' lawyer Arthur Schwartz confirmed.

"Personally, I'm really glad there's not going to be added traffic going past the windows of my house where my kids sleep and suck up the car exhaust," Schwartz, also a West Village district leader, told Patch. "And for my community, I'm happy because it bears out what we've been saying for a year and a half, which is that [the city hasn't] done a proper environmental assessment of their plan. ... If they want to experiment, experiment on 42nd Street.”

The lawsuit argues the bus priority plan would "threaten the wellbeing of residents" in Greenwich Village, Chelsea and the Flatiron District, pushing traffic north and south of the crosstown corridor. On 12th and 13th streets bike lanes, the lawsuit argues for restoring the "12th and 13th Street streetscapes to their former condition."

"Today’s disappointing ruling will affect tens of thousands of M14 bus riders each day," DOT said.

Select bus service for the M14 is expected to go into effect Monday too — an additional step to speed up buses.

But DOT says the route will not have dedicated bus lanes like other SBS routes citywide.

"We understand from MTA that M14 Select Bus Service will be moving forward this Monday, but the ruling means that for the first time ever, SBS will operate without the trademarked dedicated lanes that have dramatically increased bus speeds and reliability on SBS routes around the City," DOT said. "We are confident in both our traffic analysis, and that the court will recognize that we followed all correct procedures — allowing this critically important safety and mobility project to proceed."

Transit advocates decried the preliminary ruling.

"Tens of thousands of New Yorkers desperate for relief along a failing bus line are going to be left in the lurch because of a frivolous lawsuit from a small group of very wealthy New Yorkers," Transportation Alternatives advocacy director Thomas DeVito said in a statement.

"That this small group of West Village residents and their lawyers have used every dirty trick in the book to delay and forestall needed improvements is shameful. That they also hide behind progressive values, calling idly for the advancement of mass transit while doing everything in their power to stop its progress, is worthy of absolute derision," DeVito said.

Riders Alliance's representative, Danny Pearlstein, said the "hypocrisy has got to stop."

"There's no way neighbors can claim they care about their fellow New Yorkers while also throwing up endless barriers to faster, more reliable commutes," Pearlstein said.

The transportation groups were expected to turn a previously planned Monday morning celebration for the busway into a protest against the decision, TransAlt activists tweeted.

The busway was proposed as a part of a mitigation plan for the L train shutdown. In April, the city proposed a pilot program instead amid the scaled back L train repairs.