Many New Yorkers are familiar with the anxiety of waiting for a city bus to take them to LaGuardia Airport, all while anxiously checking the time to guess whether they will make a flight.
That anxiety may ebb soon — Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today that a new Select Bus Service will take New Yorkers to LaGuardia Airport starting next year.
Last night, the city held a public meeting at Renaissance Charter School in Jackson Heights to refine three new routes they say will improve travel times up to 50 percent — and save New Yorkers up to 40 minutes.
“LaGuardia Airport is a transportation hub and a city unto itself that
needs a better connection to the transit network,” Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said today.
Five bus routes go to LaGuardia now, four in Queens and the
M60, which travels through Harlem on its way to the airport.
The city estimates that M60 buses are stopped 60 percent of the time and
travel as slow as 2.7 miles per hour while trudging along traffic-heavy 125th Street.
And many passengers have luggage, meaning a 20-minute wait for the bus
can end with the bus lumbering past, the driver waving that it is full.
The Select Bus Service will speed travelers as well as about 8,000 employees to the airport, many of who rely on buses to get there.
One proposed route, for the M60, would travel from 125th Street and Lexington Avenue, zipping along in 23 minutes — before it was about 32 minutes, the city estimates.
And in Queens, a 23-minute commute from 74th Street and Roosevelt Avenue will get slashed to nine minutes.
Bronx passengers would get an 43-minute ride from Fordham Plaza, which would have been 83 minutes before.
