State Senator Daniel Squadron, right, listening to a resident testify about buses at Squadron’s recent town hall.
BY YANNIC RACK | Transit-deprived Lower East Siders say timely service is so rare that they have given up on public transportation altogether.
“We want to feel equal to the rest of Manhattan,” said Heung Tam, who has lived on Canal St. for 40 years, at a town hall forum organized by state Senator Daniel Squadron last week.
“We are underserved,” Tam declared, to supportive cheers from dozens of fed-up fellow residents.
Collectively, they gave the three Metropolitan Transportation Authority representatives in attendance an earful, rattling off a busload of complaints that ranged from frequent delays and missing Select Bus Service ticket machines to difficult access for seniors and buses double-parking on Grand St.
“I think there are times when people give up on buses because they don’t come. My nickname for the M21 was ‘the phantom bus of Houston St.’ because I never saw that bus,” said Robin Schatell, who said she had lived on the street for 17 years.
The evening’s main theme was transit access and connectivity on the East Side in general, an issue that was focused on at the town hall because it had emerged as a major concern at Squadron’s most recent community convention.
“East-west service south of Houston — or south of St. Mark’s — is questionable,” the senator said at the town hall. “Because of the M21’s infrequency, no one feels like they can get across town.”
The M.T.A. officials were on hand to offer solutions (the authority has already proposed expanding the notoriously bad M5 and M6 lines, for example) but, for the most part, still stuck with more general statements.
“We are constantly working to improve bus service and we will continue to do so,” said Marcus Book, the agency’s assistant director of government and community relations.
They also urged people to report bus drivers who refuse to take them to the end of their route, or double-park and idle in the street.
“These are things that can be addressed,” Book said.
Other officials were on hand to lend their support to the fuming locals. Councilmember Margaret Chin, who was sitting in the audience, said she was concerned, not least because she likes to use the bus herself.
“We’re contributing more money to the M.T.A.’s budget, so we demand better service,” she said, referring to the city’s increased contribution to the state authority’s latest capital plan.
Residents repeatedly cited the Catch-22 at the heart of their quarrels with the M.T.A.: While the transit officials claimed that increased ridership would translate into better and more frequent service, locals countered that the abysmal access to buses was exactly the reason they didn’t use them in the first place.
“It’s predicated on ridership. The more people ride, the more buses [are available],” Book told the agitated audience. “In terms of bus frequency, my suggestion is ride more buses,” he said at another point in the discussion, eliciting confusion from the residents.
“You’re getting a tremendous amount of money and then you’re only measuring ridership once every two years and tell us certain buses don’t get ridership. It’s obsolete,” said Helen Zwyer, who lives in the Seward Park Coop on Grand St.
Buckley Yung, the M.T.A.’s manager of bus planning, had earlier mentioned that the authority’s schedule department conducts comprehensive ride checks only once every one to two years.
“We would like to have more, but our resources [are not enough],” he said.
Overall bus ridership in the city has been declining for years, with 162,385 fewer daily bus riders last year compared to 2009, according to the M.T.A.’s own figures. This contrasts with a significant hike in subway use over the same period — but locals complain that the far East Side is not well connected in that category either.
“It’s really very underserved. We only have the F train, that’s it,” said Chin.
Squadron and Chin both acknowledged the gulf between riders and the M.T.A., but said the authority has to work harder to close the gap.
“It’s a chicken-and-egg: What comes first?” said Chin. “They really have to improve the service.”
Before wrapping up the meeting, Squadron emphasized that even though there hadn’t been many concrete answers, this was by no means the end of the conversation.
“We follow up on a lot of these issues [with the M.T.A.], and we get written responses back on a lot of these things,” he told his constituents.
“It can sometimes be as slow as the M21, but it does come.”
