Five articles curated by the Wagner Planner staff: Here’s what the Wagner Planner staff is reading. This week: free transit for Albuquerque, a city council election roundup, an assessment of four pandemic-era bus lanes, worsening Citi Bike service, and Manhattan’s unsold trophy apartments.
Should public transit be a free service? One city just said yes (Marketplace) “Albuquerque, New Mexico’s City Council made its free-transit experiment permanent…Sarah Kaufman, director of New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation, said in many cases, investments in the quality of transit are more likely to boost ridership. ‘People prioritize reliability and frequency of service over affordability or free fare,’ she said.”
Bronx GOP Council Win Adds Historic Note to Otherwise Quiet Election Night (The City) “Republicans in the City Council got a surprise win in Tuesday’s election, as a progressive Democrat in a politically mixed area of The Bronx couldn’t hang on to her Throggs Neck seat…[F]irst-time candidate Kristy Marmorato, a Republican, appears to have bested incumbent Democrat Marjorie Velázquez — who faced major opposition after she reversed her stance and supported local zoning changes pushed by Mayor Eric Adams to allow more development in her district.”
Eyes on the Street: How Are De Blasio’s Pandemic Era Busways Doing? (Streetsblog NYC) “Four busways announced and implemented in 2020 and 2021 during the latter days of the de Blasio administration appear to have sped up service for transit riders, according to official MTA bus speed data…Bus speeds have improved along all four routes, though the magnitude of the improvement varies by time and location.”
NYC comptroller: Citi Bike service has worsened since Lyft’s 2018 takeover (Gothamist) “Citi Bike users in Sunset Park, Red Hook, and Kensington in Brooklyn and Fordham Heights, Morris Heights and University Heights in the Bronx encountered stations with no bikes or out-of-service docks more than 20% of the time during peak hours throughout June and July 2023, the report found. Riders in the Bronx were 89% more likely to encounter an unusable station than in the three other boroughs in the network.”
Manhattan’s Trophy Apartments Are Gathering Dust (Curbed) “While the low-interest-rate-fueled buying spree of the past few years burned through most of New York City’s residential inventory, it barely touched Manhattan’s newly built trophy apartments. On Billionaire’s Row, 23 percent of sponsor units remain unsold, according to an analysis by appraisal firm Miller Samuel. And that’s not counting all the people looking to offload the ones they previously bought, which likely brings the total percentage of trophy apartments seeking buyers closer to 50 percent.”