Report throws MTA under bus

NEW YORK commuters can’t seem to catch a break, whether they travel above or below ground.

City buses have been “neglected” by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in favor of the rest of New York’s public transportation system, according to a report city Controller Scott Stringer released Monday.

The result is an outdated bus system that’s lost 100 million passenger trips in the last eight years — and that underserves many of the outer borough communities that rely most on it, the report said.

Ridership is down in Manhattan by 16% since 2011, according to the report. Stringer blamed “age-old institutional failures by the city and MTA to maximize the system’s potential,” not unavoidable circumstances.

“Its routes are often slow, unreliable, long, meandering, confusing, congested and poorly connected,” the report said, adding the bus system has been “stifled.”

In addition to Manhattan, Brooklyn saw its bus trips drop by 4% since 2011.

Even some of the city’s speedier Select Bus Service routes in those boroughs shed riders.

“We’ve got to bring many of those riders that account for those trips back to the system,” Stringer (photo inset) said. “It will take some pressure off our subway system and it will also create additional revenue that could be put back into the system.”

Officials with the MTA and city Department of Transportation say they’re tackling the problems with the bus network, but to transit advocates and Stringer, those efforts are about as slow to arrive as a crosstown bus going through Midtown.

“The recommendations of this report are very practical,” said Tabitha Decker, deputy executive director of the Transit Center nonprofit. “The steps that are outlined here are often times things that the city and the MTA could take action on this year.”

Among the changes the MTA and DOT could make are adding bus service in offpeak hours, redesigning bus routes to cut down on frequent stops and turns, and giving buses priority at intersections by tweaking traffic lights.

“The MTA is planning like we’re still a 9-to-5 city,” Stringer said. “We are moving at a snail’s pace.”

MTA officials say riders fed up with traffic are taking the subway instead.

The MTA is trying to move things along faster with a new fare payment system that will let bus riders board at any door and by outfitting the fleet with technology that would give buses priority at intersections by 2020.

By 2020, the city DOT hopes to have 1,050 intersections on 20 routes fitted with the transit-signal technology.

The bus crisis also enters the conversation on congestion pricing, with Gov. Cuomo and MTA Chairman Joe Lhota supporting the idea to boost revenue and bust gridlock in the Manhattan’s core. “The proper and progressive way to deal with the scourge of traffic is for everyone to support a responsible congestion-pricing plan,” Lhota said.

City DOT spokeswoman Gloria Chin pointed to the city’s efforts to create 21 Select Bus Service routes over the next 10 years and spend $270 million on designing streets to speed up bus service on

local routes.