CM Epstein on community engagement and bus pilots in lower Manhattan

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

And we'll follow up with a council member's questions around pedestrian safety.

I know you said you do a lot of community engagement when you're making street design changes.

How much are you committed to ensuring that the community board and local leaders'feedback is taken into consideration when making decisions?

And changes?

Absolutely.

We value the input that we get from communities, from electeds, from community boards, and it's one of the important factors that we take into account.

I really do appreciate it because of a community.

community board says we don't want to do something and the elected say we don't want to do something, it sounds like DOT should side with the local elected and the community board in their decisions.

So I want to hear from you, Commissioner.

Well, I think at the end of the day, we have an important mission to save New Yorkers'lives, and so we're balancing all different factors.

Right, exactly.

So we're talking about saving New Yorkers'lives and pedestrians, and I appreciate you listening to communities when issues come up like that.

I know you mentioned expansion of bus pilots, and I really appreciate you wanting to do that.

It's really important to expand those bus pilots.

Can you, in lower Manhattan, do, I know we talked about Madison Avenue, I've talked to you a lot about the 14A bus.

Are there any expansions potentially coming for lower Manhattan at this point?

Around buses specifically?

Yes, bus lanes.

You said speeding up buses.

You know, this is something I've been working on for many, many years prior to coming to the council.

I'm wondering if you have any proposed projects coming to Lower Manhattan.

We will have the Faster Buses Action Plan coming out in the coming weeks, and there'll be a lot of big ideas in there.

We're excited to share.

We're excited to work with you and other partners to basically help flesh out what those projects look like.

And we're prioritizing routes, like I said earlier, based on ridership or bus speeds or things like that.

So I don't...

I'm not sure specifically about Manhattan, but...

Sure, sure.

I'm sure we have some ideas there.

I would love that.

And, you know, we talked about the Avenue A bus lane.

I'd love to see that expanded as we've talked about before.