NEW YORK—Members of the Community Board 4 transportation committee voted on a resolution to reject an offer to relocate two problem-plagued BoltBus stops to a more suitable location.
For five years the two current BoltBus stops, one at West 34th Street and Eighth Avenue and one at West 33rd Street and Seventh Avenue, have been a source of endless complaints from the community, local businesses, and bus riders.
The Department of Transportation worked with BoltBus to find a location on 39th Street near 10th Avenue. The proposed location has nearly no pedestrian traffic, no nearby retail businesses, and sufficient curb space to accommodate queued bus passengers, said Margaret Forgione, DOT Manhattan Borough commissioner, at a presentation to the community board on Sept. 18.
Both of the problematic BoltBus stops would be relocated to the new space under DOT’s plan, but the community board sent BoltBus and DOT back to the drawing board, citing that a dog run across a recessed roadway would be affected. The board recommended that the DOT examine three alternative locations between 11th and 12th avenues on 34th, 33rd, and 40th streets.
“It is a crisis,” Jay Marcus, co-chair of the Community Board 4 transportation committee said at the meeting before rejecting DOT’s offer. “We appreciate the relocation and we want it as soon as we can.”
Most of the rationale for the rejection centered on Astro’s Dog Run and a small community garden located across a 30-foot recessed roadway.
“This will be very, very awful for the dogs,” said one of the meeting attendees while clutching a white poodle.
Christine Berthet, transportation committee co-chair, said that she calculated the amount of space at the proposed location and deemed it insufficient to accommodate all of the passengers waiting to board buses at peak times.
Members of the community board complained that the street would accumulate garbage and would not be well lit. The DOT is already addressing both issues with plans for two streetlights and an existing agreement with BoltBus to clean up after service stops at midnight.
There were no pedestrians at the proposed location at 11 a.m. on Sept. 19. The two current locations had dozens of pedestrians walking by every minute.
