A Busway to Nowhere: The M14A receives an “F” on Comptroller Brad Lander’s “Bus Report Card”

Comptroller Brad Lander’s recently released “Life in the Slow Lane: A Report Card for NYC’s Buses” offers something rare in today’s policy debates: hard data. And that data confirms what residents of Murray Hill and surrounding neighborhoods have been saying for years — a 34th Street Busway is not only unnecessary, it’s potentially harmful to the fabric of our community.

Supporters of the proposed Busway love to point to 14th Street as a model, claiming that what worked there can simply be copied and pasted onto 34th, ignoring the major differences like the tunnels bookending the street on either side. Even some elected officials and community board members have dismissed calls for a comprehensive traffic analysis, as though one size truly fits all. But this latest report shows just how misguided that thinking is.

According to the Comptroller’s data:

• The M14A receives an F with an average speed of 5.9 mph
• The M14D earns a C, at 6.3 mph
• The M34A also gets an F, running at 5.6 mph
• The M34 is rated a D, moving at 5.4 mph

In short, the 34th Street corridor performs almost identically to 14th Street, despite lacking a Busway. That should raise a red flag for anyone still clinging to the belief that removing cars is the only solution to improving bus service.

What is different is the number of buses in operation. There are significantly fewer buses running on 34th Street than on 14th, and that’s the root of the problem, not car traffic. Wait times are longer, and service is less frequent. We don’t need to ban vehicles. We need to add more buses.

Even more telling is how the city’s other crosstown routes fare. The M42 and M57 are even slower than the M34 and M14 lines, and the M23 is only marginally faster. The idea that we should force traffic, including vehicles heading to or from the Lincoln and Queens-Midtown Tunnels, onto narrow side streets just to raise the bus speed by a fraction of a mile per hour defies logic and basic urban planning principles.

It’s also important to understand the unique complexity of 34th Street: it connects two major tunnels, serves as an extension of I-495, and handles a massive volume of cross-city and regional traffic. Turning it into a Busway isn’t just a transit decision. It’s a gamble with consequences far beyond the corridor itself.

So where do we stand?

• The 14th Street Busway earns an average of a D
• The 34th Street corridor earns an average of a D-
• And the plan is to overhaul 34th Street — displacing traffic, endangering narrow side streets, negatively impacting quality of life, and upending local mobility, just to reach a “D” grade?

It’s not worth it. And it never has been.

The solution isn’t radical transformation — it’s basic investment. Add more buses to 34th Street. Improve frequency and reliability. Don’t punish NYC residents for a policy experiment pushed by a narrow group of Transportation Alternatives activists.

Take Action Now

Tell Mayor Eric Adams that a 34th Street Busway is not the answer.

DON’T WAIT! EMAIL HIM TODAY AT: mayoreric@cityhall.nyc.gov

ALSO, SIGN THE PETITION AGAINST THE BUSWAY TODAY: Change.org

Read the full Bus Report Card here: https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/life-in-the-slow-lane/