By Forum Staff
Metropolitan Transportation Authority customer ambassadors on Monday greeted bus riders and answered questions on the first weekday of Phase 1 of the Queens Bus Network Redesign.
Officially launched on Sunday, June 29, the redesign marks the beginning of the most significant transformation of the borough’s bus system in more than half a century, MTA officials have said.
Phase 1 implements approximately 70 percent of the changes, and the remaining set of changes will roll out in Phase 2, which begins Sunday, Aug. 31.
MTA Photo Courtesy of Marc Hermann/MTA
The borough now boasts 11 more bus routes.
Over decades, demographics have shifted in residential and business communities and so have travel patterns. The redesigned networks deliver the needed larger-scale improvements to better meet the demand of current and future bus customers, according to the authority.
“There are literally hundreds of MTA ambassadors out today, making sure that everybody in Queens knows, especially eastern Queens, where the changes are in effect right now, that many bus routes have changed,” MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber said on Monday. “Now, the good news is there’s more service. We have 11 more bus routes than we did before. We’re spending $35 million more a year to give Queens better, faster bus service. We spent five years listening to Queens and making changes so people could get more service and better service, and we’re rolling it out right now.”
In 2018, a redesigned express bus network was implemented on Staten Island. In 2022, a redesigned local bus network was implemented in the Bronx.
