The Indypendent63%
On the Move: Inside the City’s Ambitious Plan to Improve the Bus Service 18%
By Elsie Carson59%
8/4/2026, 12:24:45 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 19 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Ambiguity (Equivocation), and Framing Effect, with Optimism Bias as the most egregious example at 19.6% saturation with 123 hits. Analysis detected 753 faulty-reasoning hits from 627 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 25.6% and a BS Rank of 18% (25,028 of 30,209 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 82.80% of the article peer group.
Any New Yorker with a pulse can recall the mantra of Mayor Mamdani and his army of supporters from campaign days of yore: fast free buses, universal childcare, rent freeze, and the less catchy municipal grocery stores.
With free childcare and city-owned groceries stores on their way and the rent frozen on one million rent-stabilized apartments, the Mamdani administration now turns to what might be its most elusive goal: making buses fast and free.
For now the emphasis is on fast.
Mayor Mamdani announced on July 8 that the administration is speeding forward to improve the commutes of bus riders across the city.
The plan, released by his administration with state transportation agencies and Governor Hochul, is aptly titled Fast Buses, Better Service — free, the mayor said at his July 8 (CK) press conference, is “not at all” over, though there is no mention of free bus service in the plan.
An average of 1.1 million New Yorkers ride the bus every weekday according to 2025 data from the MTA.
“For the working New Yorkers who power our city, buses are a lifeline.
Yet for too long, our streets have not prioritized riders, and our buses have not moved at the speed of our fast-paced city.
In a place where every minute counts, some buses crawl at 5 mph,” Mayor Mamdani said when he announced the plan.
The mayor’s plan relies on “priority corridors,” to increase the speed of buses by up to 20%, saving riders up to six minutes during their journey.
These priority corridors would be created or improved through bus lane infrastructure, new traffic signal technology, and operational enhancements, and enforcing that busways stay clear.
It was previously announced that Flatbush Avenue would be one of the first recipients of one of these corridors.
In April, city officials broke ground on exclusive two-way bus lanes, streamlining the journey between Downtown Brooklyn and Grand Army Plaza which is currently clogged with traffic jams.
Utica Avenue, which crosses through Crown Heights, Flatbush, and Flatlands, is also being revamped.
The B46, one of the City’s busiest bus lines, services Utica Ave.
In 2025, it had a total ridership of over 5.4 million people while creeping along at an average speed of 6.9 miles per hour, according to Gothamist .
Other new rapid bus corridors include Kensington–JFK, which stretches from JFK airport to Central Brooklyn, Tremont, which spans the width of the Bronx, and Northern Boulevard, which runs from North to central Queens.
Construction on the Tremont corridor started in late July — also marking the Bronx’s first-ever “busway,” marking a major improvement for bus riders in the Bronx.
Subway lines run North to South, so people traveling east to west are completely dependent on the bus.
Danny Pearlstein, spokesperson for the Rider’s Alliance called the plan “a very big victory for riders.”
“We’ve suffered through America’s slowest buses for decades, and it’s wasted untold hours, days, years worth of time cumulatively.
We’re excited about the plan as a platform from which to win the service we deserve,” Pearlstein told The Indypendent .
Pearlstein pointed to the 50 routes across the city and the 5 rapid bus routes as being particularly big milestones, as well as improved enforcement of bus lanes.
The endgame, in the view of Riders Alliance, is to make riding the bus a competitive option for transit by increasing bus ridership, pointing out that ridership has declined with bus speeds.
“A big, big part of this is political will.
It’s the will to get cars out of the way of bus riders and operators.
And that’s what this mayor and is encouraging his administration to hit the gas for fast busses.”
Speakers
2speakers38%attributed speech391writer words
Selected voice
90%flagged-word coverageDanny Pearlstein
157 attributed words67% of attributed speech65% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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Analysis
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