A coalition to move de Blasio along on bus rapid transit

Dana Rubinstein

As a candidate, Bill de Blasio promised to create a “world-class” bus rapid transit system of at least 20 routes in New York City. Now there’s a coalition of advocates intent on making sure that as mayor, he follows through.

“We came together mainly to support the administration and hold them to that,” said Joan Byron, director of policy at the Pratt Center for Community Development, which has joined with the Rockefeller Foundation, the Working Families Party, the Transport Workers Union, the Association for a Better New York and others to form a coalition called BRT for NYC.

The bus rapid transit coalition frames better bus service as a social equity issue. More than 875,000 New Yorkers commute more than an hour each way to work, and most of them earn less than $35,000 a year, according to the group.

On top of that, thanks to the growth in the outer-borough health care and education sectors, a lot more commuters now avoid Manhattan entirely. That’s a problem. Thanks to the hub-and-spoke structure of the subway system, New Yorkers who move within the outer boroughs often do so by relying on multiple, ponderously slow buses.

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