Providing More Direct, Full-Time Service For Neighborhoods Along the S42 & S54 Routes

Providing More Direct, Full-Time Service For Neighborhoods Along the S42 & S54 Routes

      As most of you know, the areas along the S42 & S54 routes were hit hard by the 2010 service reductions. The cuts to the S54 left entire swaths of Westerleigh, Castleton Corners, Meiers Corners, and Great Kills without any weekend service. Meanwhile, the cuts to the S42 left a section of New Brighton without any midday or weekend service.

      The problem with the S54 is that ridership is very low, and the cost per passenger is high, but at the same time, for those few people that used it, it was their only transit option. The MTA likes to say "Our guidelines call for riders to be within a half mile of a bus route. It doesn't necessarily have to be a north-south or east-west route". Well, that's easy for them to say. While it may theoretically be possible to make the trip, it's still a heck of a lot easier when you don't have to go all the way out of the way to do it. For instance, say if you're going from the south end of the Todt Hill Houses (Manor & Westwood) over to Forest & Jewett. With the S54, you simply take the bus straight down Manor Road and get off at Forest.

      Without the S54, you have to take the S48 to Broadway, take the S53 to Victory Blvd, take the S61/S62 to Manor Road, and then walk almost a half mile down to Westwood Avenue. Let's compare the trip times when the S54 is running to when it's not running. When the S54 isn't running, it doesn't even give you any transit options, because it actually takes longer to use transit than it does to just walk it. (It would be understandable if we were just talking about a 5-10 minute walk, but when Google Transit is telling us to walk over a mile and a quarter, because transit would take longer, that's a serious problem)

      Just on a side note, this is an issue in my own neighborhood too (which is one of the issues I'm trying to remedy with the S57/S66 restructuring). For instance, let's look at a trip to Susan Wagner High School. Google Transit gives you the option to take the S44 or S59 going northbound, and then take the S54 or S57 going southbound. So in order to go south, first you have to go north. You could make the trip a little more direct by walking all the way down to Victory Blvd (which is nearly 3/4 of a mile away), but the time saved by the more direct trip is lost with the extra walking. (Note that even taking the S44 or S59, you're still walking almost a half mile, and as I've said before, depending on where exactly in the neighborhood you are, you might even be walking over a half mile)

     Now let's forget about the how much more indirect and time-consuming trips are as a result. And let's also forget about the fact that they use a lower-standard for lower-density neighborhoods. (For most neighborhoods, you're supposed to be within a quarter mile of a bus route, but for lower-density neighborhoods, they raise the standard to a half mile). Even using the lowest standards, there are areas where the only available route is the S54.

    For instance, the walking distance from Manor Road to Bradley Avenue is 0.60 miles. The cutoff for being within a half-mile of Victory Blvd is Westwood Avenue, so basically, everybody south of Westwood and east of about Fanning Street is left completely without service.

   Over in Great Kills, we see that the eastern portion of the neighborhood is left without service on the weekends. They're too far from the SIR, too far from the S74, and definitely too far from the S59. Even in the western portion of the neighborhood, there's still portions further than a half mile from a transit route. And remember that we're using the most basic standard.

     If you look at the ridership and cost-efficiency numbers for the Staten Island routes, you'll notice that the most cost-efficient routes go to one of two places: Either St. George, or Brooklyn. And it makes sense when you think about it: St. George is basically Downtown Staten Island. There's a lot of government offices and businesses, but parking is very difficult to find, so a lot of people use mass transit to get there. Then there's the ferry, which brings people to Manhattan. Mass transit is cheaper than paying for parking at the terminal (I think parking is $7 or $8, whereas taking the bus or SIR costs $2.50 and you get a free transfer to use in Manhattan). Not to mention that even for intra-island travel, St. George is a major hub, because you can get to almost any neighborhood on Staten Island with a transfer at St. George. You often see a lot of people making transfers at stops like Victory & Bay, or Bay Street & Borough Place.

      For Brooklyn, it's a similar situation: The toll is $6, and parking is probably going to be difficult and/or expensive to find at your destination. (Whether it's Bay Ridge itself, or an area like Downtown Brooklyn)

     So logically, if the routes that run to the ferry or Brooklyn are the most cost-efficient (and there's a logical reason why), then the best way to improve ridership on a route is to send it to one of those two destinations. And that's why I came up with the idea to extend the S54 to St. George. By doing so, it would give all of those areas along Manor Road direct access to St. George, while also taking some pressure off the S46 along Castleton Avenue. Most of the time, the S46 is crowded from all the people from points further west, and it could use a supplementary route. My original proposal would've just been to extend it straight down Richmond Terrace (which would also help out the S40 & S44 a little bit), until I later came up with the idea to combine it with the S42 (which I'll get to in a minute). But by doing so, it would improve ridership, and it would be efficient enough to run on the weekends.

     Now, with the S42, the issue isn't really that the people are too far from the nearest transit route. The issue is that the area is up a steep hill coming from Jersey Street. (This is coming from York Avenue. There's a slight hill coming up from Jersey Street to York Avenue that you have to climb in addition to the one along Prospect). Coming up from the S44 at Lafayette & Henderson isn't too much better.

    So now, how are the S42 & S54 related to each other? They have entirely different ridership bases (I'm sure there's plenty of people on the S54 that don't even know the S42 exists, and vice versa). Well, at first, I didn't see any connection either. I was half-joking around with a friend, and said "The S42 & S54 are kind of close to each other. They should just combine the two and maybe that will save them", in the meantime thinking "This will never work out. Those routes serve entirely different neighborhoods and have entirely different purposes".

    Well, remember how I said that extending the S54 to St. George would result in a definite boost in its ridership and efficiency? While doing so, I figured I might as well see if I can benefit additional neighborhoods while doing so. So that's how I came up with the plan to combine the S42 & S54 like so.

    The S54 would supplement the S46 along Castleton Avenue between Clove Road and Brighton Avenue, and would also provide direct access to Richmond University Medical Center and I.S.61. Then it would go up Brighton Avenue & Lafayette and serve the neighborhood currently served by the S42. You may also notice that the route goes down Franklin Avenue, which means that people in that area have an alternative to walking all the way down to Richmond Terrace to catch the S40 or S44 (it's not too far distance-wise, and the hill isn't quite as steep as the ones by the S42, but if you can make it easier for people, why not?)

    You may have noticed that that stint along Broadway between Castleton Avenue & Richmond Terrace loses service. Well, they'd get it back with my plan to add limited-stop service to the S53 (more on that later). In addition, very few people actually use the S54 in that area, and most of them are/were walking over to Castleton Avenue or Richmond Terrace anyway, because those routes connect to more popular destinations. (The S40/90 & S46/96 go to the ferry, the S53 goes to Brooklyn, and those routes are much more frequent than the S54. In addition, they also offer connections to other major corridors such as the S74/76 on Richmond Road, and the S78/79 on Hylan Blvd). There's also more of a demand to go to areas like Park Hill, Port Richmond & Mariners' Harbor (served by the S53 & S46/96), compared to areas like Westerleigh & Castleton Corners along the S54. And for that matter, the S54 would be going to St. George as well, and the increased ridership will likely lead to improved frequencies at certain times of the day. So even riders going to areas like Westerleigh & Castleton Corners benefit, because now they have more frequent service, not to mention weekend service as I've said before. (And for the schoolkids from Wagner, you can still keep Richmond Terrace & Broadway around as a terminal for the trippers to and from school. Yes, "trippers" is an official term. It basically means "special trips" in MTA jargon)

      You may have also noticed that Brighton Avenue between Lafayette Avenue & Jersey Street loses all service. Well, the good thing is that that portion of Brighton Avenue is fairly flat, so riders can still walk over to Jersey Street for the S52, or Lafayette Avenue for the (new and improved) S54 (the distance between the two is 0.30 miles, which means that if you live right in the middle, you're walking 0.15 miles, which is reasonable. Even adding in the block or two that you need to walk to Brighton Avenue, it's still under a quarter mile). In addition, I have a plan that I'm sort of iffy on, which would provide service to Brighton Avenue, in addition to College Avenue in Westerleigh. But that's for another post.

     Now, you may have noticed that in my map, I have the S54 terminating at New Dorp instead of Eltingville. The reason for that is because the S57 gets a decent crowd at the New Dorp SIR station, whereas the S54 doesn't get a comparable crowd at the Great Kills SIR station. So by sending it to New Dorp instead of Great Kills, you improve ridership while decreasing milage.

    You're probably wondering "What about Great Kills? Didn't he just show that they're more than a half-mile away from service on the weekend, and now he wants to remove service completely?" Well, I've got them covered as well, and similarly to S54 riders on the northern end, they're going to have improved access to destinations they actually want to get to. My plan entails creating a branch of the S79 (let's call it S79A) that serves Great Kills. I've drawn a map of it here.

    Remember how I said that the most efficient routes go to St. George or Brooklyn? Well, Great Kills is now served by a route that goes to Brooklyn (which of course, would run 7 days a week). In addition, the S79A would provide a direct connection to the Staten Island Mall, Eltingville Transit Center, and shopping along Hylan Blvd, especially in the New Dorp area. As of now, the S54 doesn't really provide access to any area that would be of interest to most Great Kills residents. Yeah, it provides access to Seaview Hospital, and access to shopping in Castleton Corners and West Brighton, but most people in Great Kills aren't looking to go there. Most of them do their shopping along Hylan Blvd, and at the SI Mall, and I'm sure some would take advantage of the direct connection to Brooklyn. Not to mention that at the SI Mall, you not only have shopping, but you also have connections to other bus routes, which opens up easier access to other parts of Staten Island (even if there's relatively few people looking to go there)

     And as an added bonus, local riders along Hylan Blvd get additional service. One of the major issues with the +Select Bus Service+ on the S79 was that the local stops along Hylan Blvd only have the S78 serving them. The S78 generally runs every 15 minutes for most of the day, which wouldn't be a huge issue, except for the fact that it can be unreliable at times. You have traffic on certain portions of Hylan Blvd (especially in the New Dorp area, but the whole stretch from New Dorp up to Arrochar can be a mess at times), and on top of that, if there's any problems in the Stapleton/Clifton/Rosebank area, you're basically screwed. So now, at least they'd have a little bit of a backup. (The S79A would run every 20-30 minutes most of the day, which isn't the greatest, but combine that with the S78's headways, and it becomes more reasonable).

     Keep in mind that I plan on changing the routings of the routes around the Staten Island Mall (again, for another post), but for now, I have the S79A taking the current S79 route by the SI Mall.

    As always, questions and comments are welcome.