Efforts to kill the outrageous plan to shove the SBS B82 down our throats is starting to boil over

List of Constituencies affected by the SBS B82 Bus Plans

Local Residents - They are number one and make up by far the largest number of users of Kings Highway. The local residents depend on their cars to to the kind of errands that a typical family has to make, especially o a family with children and multi-generational households. Nearly all the housing in the area around the Kings Highway business district include garages, driveways and parking.

The Trucking and Transport industry - This includes all the trucks that are lead through the district by city maps, commercial GPS's and have to use Kings Highway for local routes as a matter of law. Included in this is USP, the US Mail Service, and Fedex, all of which have to go through the area from JFK and the terminals on Avenue D and in East New York in order to supply and deliver the whole of south west Brooklyn.

The Cab and Limousine Businesses -Kings Highway is a huge transport hub for multiple communities. There are no less than 4 local taxi services and 2 taxi pickup lanes.

Subway Commuters - This overlaps with local residents, but also includes the residents of the feeder communities from Bergen Beach to the Bensonhust boarder. All these commuters need feed into the train station through the 5 bus lines and "kiss and bye" drop offs points around the train station. People need to drive into and out of the immediate area for pickups and drop offs of children, parents, lost relatives, or whoever might need to not drag themselves and their packages onto a bus from the train.

Retail Business - Retail businesses have been very vocal about the loss of street parking. And they are right to be angry. South Brooklyn and the area around the Kings Highway district is dependent on automobiles. These communities are not like downtown Brooklyn, or even Flatbush. They are spread out and most families have multiple cars. No business in the area invests without considering the parking problem. They must have adequate parking and parking has been taken away from the neighborhood for 20 years. First the Parking lot around the Fire House, which was heavily used, was eliminated with the building to the super structure on East 15^th Street that now has TJ Max. The private garage that was substituted was then removed, and the price of parking in the garage at TJ Max increased and the lot closes early. The surrounding communities are at the bursting point when it comes to parking. UPS will no longer deliver properly in the community. They quickly come through and drop off pick up notices to pick up at the JFK terminal. From Avenue O, to Avenue R, double parking is all along the side streets, radiating outward from Kings Highway.

But parking isn't even the local retailers biggest trouble. Truck delivery and the tandem buses is. Thousands of pounds of fresh produce, fish, dairy and meat is sold daily on Kings Highways shops. These products need morning delivery and it takes time to load and unload produce, meats, etc. By cutting out the parking lanes at this time, you are telling trucks that they have to block the entire roadway in order to make delivery. This is going to come as an enormous emotion cost to residents, but worst is that the trucks will deliver no matter what. The tickets that they receive will simply be passed along to the retailers who will then try to pass it along to the consumer. Customers will be forced to shop elsewhere for competitively priced products...and THAT is what will put the small businesses out of business.

Pedestrians - Removing the parking lane endangers pedestrians. Kings Highway is very narrow and pedestrians cross it at will, like any small town. When you remove the parking column, they have no protection when they step into the street, especially the elderly, even when they cross at the corners. The area around 12^th street is particularly pedestrian with people hanging out on benches or by their cars on the Quentin Road triangle. Currently traffic goes very slow. The buses will go much faster than current traffic. It is a huge error to put articulated buses at 25 MPH (and likely more) running down the bus lanes with pedestrians coming and going. There is no way any double tandem bus will be able to stop. This is an unnecessary risk that will lead to tragedy.

Additionally, the Tandem Buses are very long. This will create a huge inconvenience for pedestrians trying to cross with a train of tandem buses blocking walkers. This is even more the cse right in front of the station entrance where people are constantly running across the street, back and forth. Tandem buses create a trap.

Schools, Yeshivot and School Buses - The area in question is surrounded by educational institutions. School buses need to make pickups and drop offs in the morning along Kings Highway and must have curb access. Touro College, and B'nos Yisorael Girls School are directly in the business district as are a number of trad schools and the Kaplan preperation center. Propsect Park Yeshiva and Bais Yockov Academy, St Benards Catholic School and the Mirrer Yeshiva are less than a block away. All these schools need curb access in order to function and need to cross Kings Highway.

One of the more grievous parts of this proposal is the closing of East 12^th Street. This will completely lock up access to Kings Highway as the other side streets have been stopped from crossing the road. This will shove all the traffic, especially school buses, either directly onto the Kings Highway road way and up Coney Island Avenue.

Bus Riders traveling from Canarsie to Coney Island - The trip from Canarsie to Coney Island is difficult by mass transit. If one goes by subway, they take the bus of walk to the Rockaway Parkway L train station. They ride to Broadway Junction and switch for the C train on the Fulton Line. They transfer to the Franklin Avenue Shuttle to the Brighton Line and take the Q or the B Train to Coney Island. Alternately, they can take the L train to 14th Street and Union Square in Manhattan and return back on the Q train. Today there is the new route using a transfer to the IRT at Liviona Avenue to Atlantic Avenue to the Brighton Line. If leaving from East 107th Street and Flatlands Avenue, all these way is over an hour and twenty minutes. (according to google maps and by experience). The fastest means, shaving about 15 minutes from the trip, is to take the B82 to Kings Highway and the Q to Coney Island, which reinforces the importance of the leg of the B82 to Coney Island. One can take the B82 straight through to Coney Island, but that one of the longest routes, and is the chief reason for wanting to streamline the route with the SBS. It maintains a single seat ride through south Brooklyn and in theory, reduces the time to make a trip.

Overall, this is a fairly complete look at all the stakeholders involved with the implementation for a SBS B82 bus route with articulated buses through the Kings Highway business district, aside from the interests of the MTA itself, and the manufacturers of articulated buses and so on. Reviewing the motivations of the MTA in this matter and its self interest is a long and complex discussion, one worthy of serious study, maybe even necessary and vital, but beyond the scope of this evaluation. But we will touch on the subject as necessary. More directly related to this issue is an evaluation of the data and promotion of this project that the MTA presents. In that regard we are left to evaluate several of the powerpoint presentations and PDF files that the MTA has left behind, and we will try to dig through some of the source material, in order to understand what the MTA is presenting to the public, and how they have manipulated data to misrepresent the facts to the public. Then hopefully we can clarify the meaning of their data, and determine its real meaning to the public, and look at the real costs and benefits of this route.

One of the MTA's most insistent arguments for the SBS B82 is that it will benefit the most people to have this form of bus and bus lane in the route route they proposed. The claim is that nearly 30,000 riders take this route daily and it implies, but never shows us, that this is a significant, in fact majority interest in the affects of such a route. It then evaluates the business districts current user population, and draws a conclusion that automobile drives are a vast minority of the use cases and should not be given, what it considers, preferential treatment to the limited resources of the streets withing the district.

It is difficult to examine this source data without concluding that the MTA is purposely misrepresenting the situation and the data. For starters, the breakdown of constituencies is based of false assumptions. Already has been presented in detail the 8 (at minimum) major constituencies and stake holders in street access to the Kings Highway Business District and it can not be broken down into the 3 segments that they listed which are pedestrians, drivers and transit users.

In evaluating the ridership totals for the current B82, the latest figures from the MTA are located on their website at http://web.mta.info/nyct/facts/ridership/ridership_bus.htm and archived on the Brooklyn-Living website at http://www.brooklyn-living.com/busridership_2017.html and in PDF format. According to this report, the MTA's B82 carried 27,959 passengers in 2016, which is fairly steady over the last few years with a slight 0.1% uptick over the last year. For comparison, the B6, which is a sister route in Canarsie that runs along Flatlands Avenue has 41,320 riders on it and is the largest route in Brooklyn and it gained about 0.4% points. The B44, which is the Nostrand Avenue bus and which currently has a SBS with a designated bus lane has 37,418 passengers which is up 1.1% from last year. As an interesting side note, the B44 has lost ridership since the implementation of the SBS on the B44 since 2010 until 2016. The Nostrand Avenue SBS was started in 2013.

According to the MTA, these numbers represent all metrocard swipes for paying clients:

Bus ridership includes all passengers who board buses using a valid MetroCard, cash, transfer, Select Bus Service ticket, or pass. Ridership does not include employees, non-revenue passengers (e.g., children under 44" tall traveling with an adult), and B42 riders boarding inside the paid zone of the Rockaway Parkway L subway subway station.

Additionally, these average numbers for weekdays are manipulated because of reasonable occurrences that distort the averages such as Hurricanes which shut down weekday service, etc.

Accorinding to the MTA, the 27,959 average weekday riders is expanded to 32,000 daily passengers according to their own propaganda which was created in 2015 to justify the project. Figures are listed as 10,000 on the limited and 22,000 riders on the unlimited. One can see these numbers on the presentation on the MTA website at http://www.nyc.gov/html/brt/downloads/pdf/2015-10-14-brt-southbrooklyn-bkbsc.pdf, and again archived on Brooklyn-living at http://www.brooklyn-living.com/docs/bus_b82_sbs_powerpoint.pdf . There is no geological breakdown of where passengers get on or get off the route. It would seem though, that since the Canarsie routes of the B6 with 41,320 weekday riders, and the B82 with 27,959 riders make together two of the heaviest bus routes within Brooklyn and all converge on the Rockaway Parkway station along with the B17 and the B60, that it is likely that the Canarsie branch of the B82 make up the bulk of its ridership. This would reflect in the 22,000 passengers that use the local instead of the 10,000 passengers that opt for the limited despite the fact that the limited has more buses during rush hour scheduling, 25 as opposed to only 19 buses between 5:15Am and 8:15AM westbound for example, and similar posted figures for west bound traffic.

The B82 Limited makes only a few stops in Canarsie: at Rockaway Parkway and the sister stop on East 98th and Flatlands Avenue, and the Remsen Avenue stop, and the Ralf Avenue stop over 20 or more blocks, the whole of Canarsie. Additionally, it should be noted that passengers coming from Starret City and east of the train station are forced onto the express and there is no local through traffic at rush hour when the limited is running. One might expect, therefore, to see a more balanced ridership between he express and and the local, but local Canarsie riders coming from the L train need local stops along Flatlands Avenue and this reflects in the nearly 2:1 ridership of the local over the express, average on weekdays.

How many people are actually going through, or even to the Kings Highway train station on the Brighton Line is anyone's guess. And how accurate the MTA data itself is, is also very questionable. Informally, I observed from January to April 2018 between 9:00PM - 10:00PM 6 to 14 B6 Buses for every B82, and all the B6 buses seemed to be packed, and the B82, not so much. That would seem to make the passenger breakdown of 41k to 28k in 2016 very questionable. Also, during this time it would seem that at 9:00AM - 9:30AM in the morning that same time period the limited B82s out numbered and are bunched together at 6 limited to 1 local B82. That would seem to beg the question as to the accuracy of the published schedule.

If we look at the Subway ridership for the Kings Highway station, we can produce a clearer image about the total traffic flow about Kings Highway. The B2, the B31 and the B100 feed directly into the train station from its East 16th Street and Quentin Road entrance. The B31 has 2,753 riders a day according to the MTA. The B2 has 2,464 riders per day, and the B100 (which for some reason is listed in a different table of the MTA's at http://web.mta.info/nyct/facts/ridership/ridership_busMTA.htm ) has 5387 riders. In total the three feeder lines have 10,604 weekday rides. That comes out to be about 5,000 passengers feeding into the subway daily from these three routes, a number which might be a bit generous but a good thumbnail estimate of number if individuals coming to the business district to take the subway from Mil Basin, Marine Park and Gerritsen Beach by bus. That is almost the total amount that the Limited B82 carries, the bus that the SBS would replace, from Canarsie to Coney Island all day.

Furthermore, the train station itself has an average weekday ridership of 20,094 according to the MTA in 2016, which on the face of it feels like a low number. Subway ridership per station is measured differently from bus ridership. Only metrocard swipes are measure:

Subway ridership consists of all passengers (other than NYC Transit employees) who enter the subway system, including passengers who transfer from buses. Ridership does not include passengers who exit the subway or passengers who transfer from other subway lines, with the exception of out-of-system transfers;

This means that a passenger who rides from Kings Plaza to Macy's on 34th Street in Manhattan by taking the B2 to the B train and back is counted twice on the bus and once at the trains station.

The Kings Highway station on the Brighton line is measured by the MTA to have had an average weekday ridership of 20,094 which ranks 69th in the city (according to the MTA). Of those riders we know about 5000 people are coming from the old 2 fare zone feeder buses, and that leaves about 15,000 passengers entering the system from either the immediate community, or the B82 and B7 buses.

The B7 carries no more that 6000 passenger per average weekday and would contribute at most about a maximum of 3000 passengers a day to the rail, and that is a very generous number, and the B82 Limited no more than 5000 passengers, and again that is very generous. That is 13,000 passengers at very very most feeding into the Q/B train, and that assumes no one on the B7 or the B82 limited get off anywhere other than the station. That would mean that 7,000 passengers on the Q/B train come from the immediate neighborhood by foot or car. Not surprisingly, even if being ridiculously generous with the MTA provided numbers, the largest number of users of the B/Q station, which sits in the middle of the Kings Highway business district, are local people who walk there, take a car or use the local B82, most likely from near by and which would not be serviced by the SBS service.

This is just a very rough view of feeder traffic into the train station and doesn't include those who go to Kings Highway for local business. It assumes that most of the local B82 traffic is local to Canarsie. It assumes that everyone who takes a feeder bus goes to the Train Station. And in terms of the SBS proposal, it does not take into account the number of passengers who would convert from local to express service if it was available 24/7. But nothing in this data allows us to draw a conclusion that the majority of people who use the Kings Highway business district would benefit from the SBS. Those riders are one of eight constituency stakeholders and at most about 5000 users of the districts transportation network, out of over 20,000 mass transit users in the district.

In order to understand what is happening within the businesses district requires a professional survey. To my knowledge, one doesn't exist. But that didn't stop the MTA from producing a survey of their own, which we can only hope is not an example of how they make decisions and gauge information.

MTA Community Board 15 Slide which misrepresents constituencies involved in the SBS B82 proposal

According to their Community Board 15 presentation, they surveyed 7500 people between W10th and Ocean Avenue. This would be the kind of survey you would do if you don't want any answers about the affects of your proposed service on any of the 3 business districts along Kings Highway which it affects. People who live near W10 Street are in a completely different community and have a completely different retail and transportation situation than those near Ocean Avenue. This wide geographic spread tells you nothing about the habits and the population within the Kings Highway district centered on the Brighton Line, which is a bustling city center with box stores, supermarkets, fruit markets and new stands. Nor does it tell you anything specifically about the area leading to McDonald Avenue, which is very narrow and with a variety of small sized retail stores which are more ethnically focued. This includes a number if Kosher restaurants, and clothing store on bothg sides of Ocean Parkway which cater to the Sephardi community around Avenue R. Nor could it accurately reflect depict the business community opposite McDonald Avenue which is far more transient, a area with broader streets and a heavy Hispanic mixture. Nor does it reflect the increasingly Italian community as it moves past McDonald Avenue or the heavy commercial district that is about McDonald Avenue. Nor can it adequately describe to smaller community about the N train on Kings Highway and W7th street. All of these business districts are distinct and with different patterns. The fact that the MTA lumps them all together is in of itself condemning of their attitude towards the different communities that straddle the roadway they covert so badly.

Even with such a flawed survey, their own data saws that a whopping 74% of the weekday traffic arrives to anywhere along the Kings Highway loop, is specifically the local residents. It is the local residents who arrive either by walking (you don't walk to W10th from Canarsie), or drive. Drivers are always most likely local residents running errands with their families, than they would be visitors from other areas looking for a deal on fresh Piazza or long cut skirts such as those valued by the Orthodox Jews of the area.

The remainder of the population that arrives by mass transit makes up a minority of users of the district. They are 24% of people on the street. Only a minority of that minority come by bus, which would be 11%. And only a small slice of that 11% would make up the population that would arrive by the SBS B82, or the current B82 limited service which would be replaced by the SBS. How many individuals would actually be serviced by the B82 limited from these business districts, it would be impossible from this data to say. Dozens of bus lines service the whole area between W10th and Ocean Avenue. What part of 11% would be B82 riders? We don't know. Whatever is it, however, it represents a small minority of the population compared to the 89% of the surveyed areas users of the district who come by means other than the bus.

To make this even more crazy, it seems that the same chart was quoted to presentations in Community Board 11 and Community Board 15. In Community Board 15 it says 7500 people were questioned, and for community board 11 it says only 2500 people were question. The MTA can’t seem to get its figures straight and shows a disregard for the communities they are presenting to.

The MTA intentionally misleads the public by lumping together two constituencies that have nothing to do with each other: local pedestrians with visiting residents from other communities that arrive by mass transit.

Business Surveys and Deliveries according the MTA

In the presentation to CB 15 they claim to have spoken to some unspecified number of businesses. Among those businesses, 48% would find a delivery zone useful But when you read the pie charts, you find out just the opposite. 44% don't want any change, and 17% would take a loading zone only if it was right in front of their business. Another 8 percent has some other ideas that were not classifiable (perhaps they didn't understand the question). Only 31 percent in theory would accept a loading zone other than right in front of there store...in theory.

In the real world though, the MTA is asking the wrong people this question. The people really affected are the truck drivers and not a single driver making delivery was asked if they wanted a loading zone. It is a mystery how a loading zone would work around the Brighton Line, where the bus lane is to be run against the sidewalk where the parking lane now exists. Getting accordion articulated buses around delivery trucks, often double parked delivery trucks, is a key problem that has no solution at all. These trucks will deliver when they need too, MTA permission or not. And frankly the community needs them. The Kings Highway Business district has a thicker concentration of stores than anything encountered on the other SBS routes. And in addition, it is to be remembered that the route is an integral part of the official NYC truck route, which directs a lot of big rigs though the business center, competing for road space. In the real world it is hard to imagine any plan that involves longer, less mobile buses, creating conditions for shorter travel times. Those buses will not fit on these street unless they are shut down to traffic altogether, similar to the Fulton Mall downtown.

Business Surveys and Deliveries according the Real World

At 7:30 AM on April 23rd, 2018, we went out and did a real survey of the competing constituencies for space on the Kings Highway segment that boarder the Bright Line Subway, from Coney Island Avenue to Ocean Avenue. Below are the images of that survey and one of the things that becomes most evident is that at the time the MTA proposes rolling out accordian buses down a designated bus lane that will occupy current curbside parking, that parking itself is not even the worst of the negative affect that the MTA plan will have. All these photographs in this section was photographed within a half hour.

The first thing that we will see is that a large number of trucks, from vans to trailers are making ugently needed morning deliveries that cover everything from Milk and Donuts to life saving drugs. Starting on East 19th we have double parked trucks making milk deliveries.


Following westward down the street we see two trucks parked between E18th and E17th street, loading the Rite-Aid accross the Street, with a third truck, a milk truck, rolling down the street to its morning destination. These trucks are parked where the proposed bus lane will be. Here we have a fruit delivery truck on the 17th Street spur. Fruit stands are some of the heaviest users of street space, often getting multiple deliveries a day with a very complex method unloading because of the bulk and fragile nature of fruit and vegitables.

Following still westward, we get deliveries to a contstruction site. It was mentioned that Utilities are a constituency for space, but not to be forgotten is that a great deal of construction is happening on and around Kings Highway, and it appears that this will continue for another decade at least and the lifespan of many of the building sup and down the road has been reached, and repair or rebuilding, often on a grand scale, is happening or is planned. Construction crews can take aways lanes for months, and have permits to do so.

Continuing West to East 16th Street and the train station, we find a full size 18 wheeler parked and resting on the corner, with blinkers flashing, blocking the view of other trucks and cars approaching Kings Highway, just before the overpass. Opposite this positon is feeder bused that connect to the large second entrance to the train station. I asked this guy why he was parked there and he said he was waiting for an opening to deliver to a supermarket down the Street. He was just another working guy, putting food on his table whose job will be mangled by the SBS accordian buses and through lane.


Here, on the other side of the station we have more trucks rolling through. Remember that this is a designated trucking route. Sorry for the unfocused image
On this same street we have a drug delivery. I am familiar with the boxes and drivers. They don't say they are drug wholeslaers because it would make them a target. In order to keep up with the hustling of this hard working community several of the pharmacies open early.


More deliveries are happening down the street. One thing should be clear is that no section of this viaduct is not being used for local commerical delviveries, even as early as 7:30AM

Truck Route and Traffic Competition

Here we see very very wide trucks heading down what the MTA expects to make a very very thin lanes