About 34,000 daily riders of the BX36 endure long waits among buses that bunch along Tremont Avenue.

“You have to wait for the cars to go in order for the bus to go. And I’ll be late sometimes waiting for these cars to go,” rider Ebony Grant said.

“They could be a little more frequent for it to have a lot less traffic,” rider Patricia Jacobs said.

What You Need To Know

  • The city Department of Transportation presented its final proposal for a busway on Tremont Avenue between Third Avenue and Southern Boulevard in March 2025

  • By summer, the busway was stalled, with City Hall citing not enough community support, including from a community board

  • A representative for the community board says the group never opposed the busway, just had concerns that were addressed

Yet the Adams administration has hit pause on a busway — from about Third Avenue to Southern Boulevard — that would virtually prohibit cars from the street between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m., except for pickups and drop-offs, trucks, buses and Access-A-Ride.

“Tremont is not dead but Tremont is a project that we will continue having community engagement and meeting with elected officials,” city Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez said.

In a statement, City Hall said the mayor is committed to better transportation but that the busway “remains under review because we were informed by DOT that this project had yet to achieve the level of community support necessary.”

“This project was also opposed by a local community board and has yet to receive the support of most local elected officials,” the statement continued.

Sources say Community Board 6 did not approve of the busway and expressed concerns, but those sources add the board’s concerns were addressed by the DOT.

“We’re not opposed to it,” CB6 District Manager Raphael Moure-Punnett said. “We didn’t take a position as opposed to the busway.”

Letters obtained by NY1 showed the board was concerned about bus bunching in February and did oppose the plan as presented.

The DOT responded, saying the area of concern showed the bunching was due to multiple bus routes, not the BX36.

However, the agency also made a change to signal timing near the Washington Bridge, where the bus crosses from upper Manhattan.

There were also concerns from some business owners who say people drive and double park to get food.

“You’ll come and buy the food for $20, and you get a ticket. See, it’s affecting us. It makes our business slow down,” said Patricia, a restaurant owner who would only give her first name. “If it’s sometime when I’ve got that stuff and I move back into my store. I also get the tickets.”

Moure-Punnett knows there will be loading zones, but they never received any answers on enforcement of double-parkers by DOT. Basically, the board was ghosted.

“DOT was going to implement the busway in April,” Moure-Punnett said. “And that’s kind of where we left things off. And we stopped getting answers in April.”

Calls and messages to the office of local Councilmember Oswald Feliz have not been returned. It is unclear where he stood on the busway.