On The Way: A new day for buses in NYC
Mayor Zohran Mamdani and MTA Chair Janno Lieber stood arm to arm, grinning ear to ear during a news conference in downtown Brooklyn on Wednesday.
Over the last year, the two have publicly disagreed over Mamdani’s campaign pledge to make buses free to ride. But they share the goal of speeding up service, and came together to announce a new plan to do just that along 50 corridors.
They declared it was a new day for collaboration between the city transportation department — which manages the streets and stoplights — and the state-run MTA, which operates public buses. Lieber noted that former Mayor Eric Adams largely resisted measures to improve New York City’s sluggish bus service.
“The support at the local level in the prior City Hall was, shall we say, uncertain,” said Lieber. “Not the case anymore.”
He called out the “overdue commitment” mandated by the city’s 2019 “streets master plan” law, which required the DOT to install 30 new miles of bus lanes every year. Building the new lanes “are, by the way, a matter of law in the city of New York,” Lieber said.
