NYC DOT has new plan for bus lanes on Fordham Road in the Bronx

A fight is brewing over buses in the Bronx, as the city Department of Transportation appears set to abandon plans to make Fordham Road bus-only.

Transit advocates on Wednesday wrote a letter to Mayor Adams in support of limiting Fordham Road to buses only, arguing that a city DOT plan to add additional bus lanes while keeping two-way car traffic and adding parking and loading zones didn’t go far enough.

Meanwhile, opponents of the DOT’s plans to change traffic patterns on the busy commercial street argued that any change to the road was a step too far.

A DOT spokesman this week indicated that the agency intends to put forward a plan disliked by transit advocates and area businesses and institutions.

The city proposal would retain car travel in two directions, bordered by so-called “offset” bus lanes, which are bus lanes one lane away from the curb. The lane closest to the curb would be reserved for parking.

Fordham Road currently has curbside bus lanes and no parking.

“We look forward to presenting a refined proposal for upgraded bus priority on Fordham Road to the community this month and continuing to develop designs for offset lanes with their feedback,” DOT spokesman Vincent Barone said in a statement.

“This design would create dedicated curbside loading space to help keep our bus lanes clear for the 85,000 daily commuters on the corridor, who deserve faster and more reliable service,” he said.

Transportation advocates, though, said the DOT plan won’t do enough to speed bus travel.

A letter to Mayor Adams Wednesday by Riders Alliance, a transit advocacy group, asked the city to continue considering the bus-only plan.

“While offset lanes would offer modest improvements, a [bus-only] busway would be a true victory for riders,” said the letter by Betsy Plum, who is Riders Alliance’s executive director.

“Rather than concede to the weight of so-called business owner feedback, which is based on unfounded fears and misunderstandings, we ask you to give riders the opportunity to win the speed and reliability that only a busway can deliver,” Plum wrote.

But David Rose, Chairman of the Fordham Road Business Improvement District, was sour on the DOT plan, and called on the city to simply enforce the bus lanes already in place.

He called the proposal for offset bus lanes “a cynical red herring by DOT to distract the public from their ultimate goal of shutting down this major artery to private vehicles.”

“DOT continues to ignore our serious concerns about the negative ramifications for this vital Bronx ecosystem, and they disregard our strong suggestion that they enforce the bus lane rules which worked when the lane was first implemented 15 years ago,” Rose said in a statement.

A set of DOT proposals that included the possibility of making the east-west thoroughfare bus-only — or limiting car traffic to a single, one-way lane — drew the ire of several high profile Bronx institutions last week. Besides Roses’ group, the opponents include Fordham University, the Bronx Zoo and the New York Botanical Garden.

The consortium invited Adams to dinner to discuss the plan, which they said would “significantly impact crucial traffic flow” along Fordham Road.

“Bus speeds should be faster; however, it cannot be accomplished at the expense of the community at large,” they wrote last week in a letter to the mayor.