Petition For M15 Select Bus Stop On East 72nd Street Denied by Transit Authority

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The New York City Transit Authority will not convert the M15 bus stop on East 72nd Street to a select bus station despite a petition signed by thousands of Upper East Siders and support from the local community board and several elected officials.

With express bus stops already in place at East 68th and 79th streets the transit authority has argued that adding another at East 72nd Street will slow down service on the bus line.

"Fewer stops is a key component of Select Bus Service in order to increase bus speeds along busy corridors," Kevin Ortiz, a spokesman for the New York City Transit Authority, told Patch. "The M15 Local still serves [72nd Street]. It remains our position that adding an SBS stop at 72nd Street will slow trips for all customers riding through this segment of the M15 SBS route."

But Upper East Siders weren't convinced. More than 2,700 people signed a petition by the East 72nd Street Neighborhood Association for express service at East 72nd Street and five elected officials wrote a letter to Veronique Hakim, the president of NYC Transit, in October to support the petition.

The letter — signed by Councilman Ben Kallos, State Senator Liz Krueger, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and State Assembly members Dan Quart and Rebecca Seawright — listed several reasons why East 72nd Street deserves select bus service.

"With high bus-dependent populations, infrequent local service, crosstown bus service, hospitals, community support and opening of the Second Avenue Subway with a station at 72nd Street, now is the perfect opportunity to increase ridership by restoring M15 Select Bus Service at 72nd Street," read the letter.

The petitioners argued that the high concentration of families with young children and elderly people in the immediate area of East 72nd Street warranted select bus service at the station. One of the group's main arguments was that the elderly and young could not walk to the nearby select bus stations and that M15 local service had deteriorated at East 72nd Street — leaving people stranded.

City Council Member Ben Kallos claimed that local M15 service was four times slower at the East 72nd Street stop since select bus services was implemented on the line.

“Residents feel abandoned by our buses. Watching five Select Buses go by what used to be a Limited stop makes seniors with limited mobility feel abandoned as they wait for a local bus that never seems to come,” said Kallos in a press release. “Seniors and children live in one-third of the households near 72nd Street and they must be able to rely on bus service to get where they are going.”

But the transit authority rebuked those claims, stating that existing ridership data at East 72nd Street did not show a demand for select bus service at the station, Ortiz told Patch. The data indicated that the East 72nd Street stop has a ridership of less than one-third of the average select bus station, Ortiz said.

Community Board 8 voted to urge the transit authority to convert the station into an express bus stop in October, but the board is solely an advisory body.

City Councilman Ben Kallos did not immediately respond to a message left by Patch.

Photo by MTA via Flickr/Creative Commons.