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Why Does the Metropolitan Region Only Get Dedicated Bus Lanes for Disasters and Special Events?

There’s talk of bringing the 2016 Democratic National Convention to Brooklyn, and to make sure delegates can get between Manhattan hotels and the Barclay’s Center, City officials are planning for an exclusive bus lane on the Manhattan Bridge.

This wouldn’t be the first time exclusive lanes for buses were used during a special event. Back in February, to accommodate Super Bowl ticket holders traveling from hotels in Manhattan to MetLife Stadium, officials arranged for a westbound Exclusive Bus Lane (XBL) in the Lincoln Tunnel — something Tri-State has said should be made permanent for the benefit of 225,000 daily trans-Hudson bus commuters (it wasn’t).

Before that, the only other time in recent memory when buses got exclusive access to a New York City river crossing was when dedicated bus lanes were established on the Manhattan Bridge in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

While these interventions were both necessary and useful, it’s not as if people only take buses across the Hudson and East Rivers during disasters and major events; it happens every day. About 1.5 million people commute into Manhattan each day, 55 percent of whom take transit. Hundreds of thousands arrive on buses, many via the Lincoln Tunnel XBL, the only dedicated bus lane connecting to Manhattan. But it only operates during the a.m. rush — even though just about as many people leave Manhattan to head back to New Jersey in the evenings.

So the question for the region’s leaders? When will tri-state residents get the same transit priority treatment as the visitors to our region?

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[…] Dedicated bus lanes on the East River bridges. When you add up all the dedicated bus lanes on the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, Williamsburg Bridge and 59th Street Bridge, you get […]

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