34th Street busway proposal

Some big changes could be coming to 34th Street in Manhattan

The DOT proposing turning it into a busway, meaning cars would have very limited access

Fox Ice, Kendall Green joins us live from 34th Street with a closer look at their proposal and how this is going to impact the daily commute, Kendall

Hey, good evening, Steve Natasha. This proposal is meant to make traffic smoother and more reliable for bus riders here along 34th Street

similar to the project we saw on 14th Street back in 2019. And the Department of Transportation, they say that they announced this proposal today for the 34th Street busway, looking at the results they saw just 20 blocks down the road

Now, they say this project there on 14th Street, it sped up service on buses and created shorter wait times for 28,000 daily bus riders there

And DOT, they say it increased bus speeds by 24 percent, while crashes dropped by 14 percent

So how it works on 14th Street, between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., only buses and trucks can make trips between 3rd and 9th Avenues

All other vehicles making local trips to access curves and garages are required to make the next available right turn to keep traffic clear Now as for commercial vehicles they can load and unload in short loading zones but after 10 p all vehicles go back to travel as normal

Now, top brass from the MTA, they predicted this would improve speeds for bus riders by 15%

but that projected improvement is not enough for drivers nor bus riders

There's going to be more traffic. And what does that mean for you as a cab driver

Yeah, cab, you know, there's nobody thinking about us. Of course there can be more traffic

How many buses do you see right now? No buses. There's one bus. Don't make the whole lane for a bus lane

Let them wait. Thank you. Like everybody else. It'll be beneficial for us, but what about everybody else

There's a lot of cars here. There's a lot of people. Not everybody's riding the bus

Unless, like, everybody just decides to ride the bus, but then that's going to make the buses too packed

Now, this is an initiative by the administration to make traffic a little bit more easier and

manageable within Manhattan's Central Business District. We'll have to see how their rollout

works. But that's the latest here at Murray Hill. Kendall Green, Fox 5 News

All right, Kendall, thank you