By Julie Shapiro
Of all the cuts the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is planning to plug its $750 million operating budget shortfall, Community Board 1 is most concerned about the M22 bus.
The M22 takes thousands of riders every week between the Lower East Side and Battery Park City, via Chambers St. The M.T.A. plans to shorten the route so it no longer runs to Battery Park City, and will end weekend and overnight service on the M22 altogether.
“They’re doing a terrible disservice to a lot of people,” said Linda Belfer, chairperson of C.B. 1’s B.P.C. Committee. Belfer, who uses a wheelchair, said she often takes the M22 from north Battery Park City to attend community board meetings near City Hall.
The M22 cuts will save just over $1 million, and even officials with New York City Transit admitted that changes would not be easy for riders to bear when they presented the plans to C.B. 1’s Quality of Life Committee last month. At the meeting, Ruth Ohman, a board member, asked how people would get from north Battery Park City to City Hall without the M22.
“That is going to be tricky,” replied Buckley Yung, manager of short-range bus service planning for N.Y.C.T.
Yung said riders from B.P.C. will have to take the M20 down to South Ferry, where they will be able to switch to the M5 running north to City Hall. Both the M20 and M5 are being extended to make up to cuts to other buses, including the M22, the M9 and the M6.
“We’re very reluctant to come up with this package,” Yung told C.B. 1. While the M.T.A. might be able to avert a few of the cuts, many will definitely have to happen, he said.
Belfer later said the M.T.A.’s detour plan is “utterly ridiculous,” because it makes a simple five-minute trip into a half-hour trek. “It’s senseless to me,” she said.
Riders waiting for the M22 on North End Ave. this week agreed.
“It would be horrible,” said Erika Stone, an 85-year-old resident at Hallmark, which houses senior citizens. “I wouldn’t like it at all because it’s the only way I can get over to the East Side.”
Stone, an amputee who walks with a cane, said she cannot take the subway. She usually takes the M22 over to City Hall to catch a bus that goes Uptown, and she said the cuts would require her to take three buses instead of two.
Bonita Bryant, 54, who works in Battery Park City, was also alarmed to hear that the M22 would be axed.
“My God, I mean, they already take their time coming and going,” she said. “So no, I do not think they should cut it at all. How will people get to where they need to go?”
Bryant and others said they sometimes use the Downtown Alliance’s free shuttle bus service, which runs from City Hall down through Battery Park City and up to Fulton St. in the Seaport. But that bus only runs from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., and it is too small to handle an influx of new riders.
About 1,900 people take the M22 between Battery Park City and City Hall on weekdays, and 1,500 people make the trip on weekends, according to the M.T.A. Only 15 people use the M22 from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. when it runs every 45 minutes, but it carries 3,250 people between north B.P.C. and Corlears Hook Park on weekends.
Community Board 1 unanimously passed a resolution last week urging the M.T.A. to preserve the M22 bus, saying the cut would cause “untenable hardship.”
Pat Moore, chairperson of the Quality of Life Committee, said she was unhappy with many of the M.T.A.’s other cuts, especially the M6, but at least in that case there is a relatively easy alternative, the M5.
“We’re realistic, and we know we can’t ask for everything,” Moore said. “So we decided [to fight for] the M22 because out of all the services being eliminated, it is the only one that is not duplicated in some direct way.”
If the M22 is restored, its route would still have to be modified because of the upcoming water main construction on Chambers St. Starting this spring, Chambers St. will be narrowed to one lane running westbound for three years. The M22 now runs both eastbound and westbound on Chambers.
In addition to the M.T.A.’s proposed bus cuts, the M.T.A. also plans to end free rides for students; reduce service to elderly and handicapped Access-a-Ride patrons; and decrease the frequency of subways during both rush hour and off-peak times. The M.T.A. also plans to eliminate the W and M trains, using the N, Q and V to fill some of the resulting gaps.
As Yung described the many service reductions to C.B. 1 last month, board members began to laugh incredulously and shake their heads.
“I’m gonna start a rickshaw business,” joked Diane Lapson, a board member.
The only public hearing on the cuts in Manhattan is scheduled for Thurs., March 4 at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Haft Auditorium, Seventh Ave. at 27th St., at 6 p.m. People can also submit comments online at mta.info.
With reporting by Kristin Shiller
