By Joseph Morales

              Downtown Flushing is one of Queens and New York City’s most important commercial districts outside of Manhattan. It is a hub for numerous businesses including retail shops and restaurants.  It is one of the largest central business districts in all of New York City outside of Manhattan.

             In addition to being an area of high activity, Downtown Flushing is also one of the most critical transit hubs in all of Queens. The Flushing-Main St station was the 10th busiest subway station in all of New York City in 2020 and the 2nd busiest in all of Queens only behind the Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Avenue/74th St-Broadway station complex. 20 bus routes, the LIRR and the Flushing-Main St subway station all converge in the area.  As for the buses, 20 routes converge in Downtown Flushing, with 11 of them operating on the Main St/Kissena Blvd Busway that travel to destinations throughout Queens. They carried between about 173,000 people daily pre-pandemic. When the Queens bus system was first designed, routes were proposed to get as many people as possible to subway stations in the borough’s core business districts (particularly those from transit deserts in Eastern Queens), and is still one of the primary uses of these buses today. Pre-pandemic, about 28,000 riders took a bus to subway transfer at the Flushing-Main St station on the 7 train, providing access to Western Queens, Midtown Manhattan and the broader NYC Subway System.

                  Given the amount of riders who need to get in, out and around Downtown Flushing daily, fast and reliable service is imperative to get riders where they need to go. Even for riders who take buses outside of Downtown Flushing, traffic in Downtown Flushing and on the Main St corridor can still delay the buses they ride from getting to them, leading to delays for riders who do not even travel in the vicinity of the corridor. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly due to the high density of the neighborhood, buses in  Downtown Flushing on the Main  St/Kissena Blvd were known for being slow and unreliable with bus speeds of below 4 mph on weekday morning rush hours, below 3 mph midday and PM hours on buses that only operated on Main St, for buses that operated on both Main St and Kissena Blvd, bus speeds were 4.8 mph during the AM peak and below 4 mph during the midday and PM peak periods.

    This is why the NYCDOT and MTA implemented the Main St/Kissena Blvd Busway a part of the citywide Better buses initiative in order to get buses moving faster, ease congestion and help hundreds of thousands of riders to get to their destinations reliably.  Even though bus speeds may still not be very high, they have greatly improved and helped the cause to ease the load on one of the central arteries in the Queens Bus Network. The busway is also active 7 days a week, which is reflective of the need for faster buses during off-peak periods.  According to the NYCDOT, as of April 2021, bus speeds are faster at all times of the day in the northbound direction. Bus speeds from Kissena Blvd/Sanford Ave to Main St/Northern Blvd by 22% in the midday and 29% during the PM Peak period. From Main St/Sanford Ave to Main St/Northern Blvd bus speeds have increased by 13% in the midday and 12% in the PM Peak period.

 

 

                      The only caveat is that the AM Peak period did not receive much of the speed increases as the other periods, with bus speeds only increasing by 1.2% on Main St between Sanford Ave to Northern Blvd and 6.6% on the corridor between Kissena Blvd/Sanford Ave to Main St/Northern Blvd during the AM Peak.

                       This may in part because of cars violating the busway as the busway does not have red paint and busways are generally hard to enforce since it is difficult for law enforcement to determine if a car enters a busway and makes the first right turn.*(might be open to loose interpretation). In addition, a lack of signage and indicators of the busway’s existence  could be in part to blame for many drivers not even knowing about the busway regulations. Recently, City Councilwoman Sandra Ung(D-20) has written to NYCDOT commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez to discuss the issue and used the intersection of Main Street and 37th Avenue as an example. “Currently there are two signs alerting motorists they are required to turn right at 37th Avenue. The first is a few hundred feet from the intersection, while the second is at the intersection itself. Both signs are white and do not stand out in the streetscape. There is also a “Do Not Enter” sign on the southwest corner of the intersection but it is relatively small. She also stated that the congested nature of the busy neighborhood makes it even harder to recognize the signs and, that many drivers caught by traffic cameras receive multiple summonses as a result, since they consistently violate the busway unknowingly as summonses from a single violation can take two to three weeks to arrive to an individual by mail. She also said that given Downtown Flushing’s location off of Northern Blvd, many people drive through the area who are totally unaware of the busway’s existence. She has proposed placing red busway paint in the busway similar to the red paint at the Archer/Jamaica Av busway in Downtown Jamaica.

Sign at Main St/39 Av telling drivers rules of Main St Busway

Small Do Not Enter sign for Main St Busway at Main St/37th Ave, where City Councilwoman Sandra Ung(D-20) said signage must be improved to inform drivers of busway rules

One might believe that taking space away from cars increased congestion of vehicles. However, this is not the case as car speeds have been virtually unchanged in Downtown Flushing between October 2020 and February 2021, with all corridors being within 12 seconds of October 2020 speeds before the busway was implemented.

On top of that, pedestrians have seen much safer pedestrian conditions in the area of the busway. The NYCDOT has stated that pedestrians are reporting safety improvements, reduced noise and an overall more pleasant walking experience. A more pleasant walking experience is critical considering all the pedestrian activity and commercial density in the neighborhood. The Main St/Roosevelt Ave intersection on the Main St portion of the busway is the 3rd busiest in the entire city.  If that is any indicator of just how many pedestrians traverse the neighborhood daily, these busway conditions benefit many.

Traffic near Main St/Rossevelt Ave is a lot calmer than before the busway

 

 

                    Even as this project has been such a success, the NYCDOT will continue to participate in CAB(Community Advisory Board Meetings) and continue traffic monitoring through Intrix and Transcom data to determine the effectiveness of the busway going forward. This project truly has been one of NYC’s most impactful bus improvement projects given the number of riders as well as number of routes affected. It will even be more impactful if certain parts of the Queens Bus Network Redesign Draft Proposal are implemented where many routes would run through Downtown Flushing instead of terminating there such as the Q50-LTD extension to LaGuardia Airport. It may seem astonishing to some how much faster buses in Downtown Flushing became compared to just under two years ago and how many riders’ commutes got faster in the same timeframe.

Works Cited

NYCDOT/MTA. “Better Buses Restart: Downtown Flushing Main St. Busway – Community Advisory Board.” NYC.gov, 13 April 2021, https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/main-st-flushing-busway-cab4-apr2021.pdf. Accessed 3 May 2022.

Mohamed, Carlotta. “Queens lawmaker urges DOT to install better signage along Main Street Busway alerting motorists of changes – QNS.com.” QNS, 11 March 2022, https://qns.com/2022/03/queens-lawmaker-dot-signage-main-street-busway/. Accessed 3 May 2022

NYCDOT/MTA. “Better Buses Restart: Downtown Flushing Main St. Busway.” NYC.gov, 14 September 2020, https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/main-st-busway-pilot-information-session-sept-14-2020.pdf. Accessed 3 May 2022.

“Better Buses Restart: Downtown Flushing Main St Busway.” NYC.gov, 3 May 2022, https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/main-st-flushing-busway-cab6-jun2020.pdf. Accessed 3 May 2022