The city Department of Transportation has completed work on a double bus lane on Madison Avenue and a conversion to an offset bus lane on Lexington Avenue.
Photo courtesy NYC DOT
The city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) will announce Tuesday that it has finished installing a new set of double bus lanes on Manhattan’s Madison Avenue — among the first such projects Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced he was restarting early this year, amNewYork has learned.
The Madison Avenue bus lane extension is one of many street redesign efforts that the Mamdani administration has revived after being stalled, altered, or killed during the term of his predecessor, Eric Adams.
Deputy Mayor for Operations Julia Kerson and DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn announced in early January that Mamdani’s administration would complete the project this year, after revealing it had been slow-walked in the final year of the Adams administration.
“Since the cold days of January, our administration has unstuck and advanced bus lane projects that will shorten daily commutes for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers,” Mamdani said in a statement. “Now, as summer enters full swing, we’re completing them — and returning more time to New Yorkers’ already busy schedules. These projects will deliver on our promise of fast buses and build a reliable, efficient transit network for the working New Yorkers who power our city.”
A cross-section image of how Madison Avenue looks with the addition of a double bus lane.Credit: NYC DOT
The newly completed project extends an already existing double bus lane south from East 42nd Street to East 23rd Street — creating a continuous double bus lane between East 60th and East 23rd Streets. It is designed to shorten commutes for roughly 92,000 daily riders using 34 local and express bus routes along the stretch.
Under the redesign, the rest of the thoroughfare will be taken up by one general vehicle lane and one parking lane.
DOT is also set to announce that it has completed construction of an offset bus lane on Lexington Avenue between East 52nd and East 60th Streets. The switch is aimed at further speeding up buses for roughly 71,000 riders using the corridor because the offset design is more effective at keeping bus lanes clear of obstructions, such as illegally parked vehicles.
“Our bus priority work on Madison and Lexington Avenues will speed up buses and keep New Yorkers safer as they travel from all corners of the five boroughs,” Flynn said in a statement. “These improvements are just the beginning of our commitment to support the next generation of bus service. We look forward to continued partnership with the MTA to deliver faster, more reliable service across the city.”
A view of how Lexington Avenue looks with an offset bus lane.Credit: NYC DOT
Before the DOT added the new lane to Madison Avenue south of 42nd Street, according to the agency, buses often moved as slow as 4.5 miles per hour. Yet 55% of those traveling along the corridor took the bus before the agency added the lane.
The addition of a double bus lane on neighboring Fifth Avenue sped up local routes on that road by as much as 12% and express routes by up to 20%, according to the agency.
Similar to Madison Avenue, buses on Lexington Avenue were averaging 5 mph during the daytime, due to the curb lane being obstructed by vehicles making deliveries and picking up or dropping off passengers.
It will build upon an already-installed offset bus lane on Lexington Avenue between East 96th and East 60th Streets, which DOT completed in 2019. The agency says that the project boosted bus speeds by 26%.