Lander rolls out Bus Countdown Clocks

City Council Member Brad Lander (D-Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Kensington, Gowanus) gathered with representatives from the Riders Alliance and the Park Slope Civic Council Monday morning, to announce the arrival of 12 bus countdown clocks in his 39th Council District.

The group demonstrated a new clock on 7th avenue and 9th street, and proposed further improvements to spread bus time information throughout the city.

The “real-time passenger information”(RTPI) bus clocks are accessible and ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant, placed at bus stops with the highest rider-volumes in the district. They are meant to provide accurate, live countdowns for waiting passengers, and will soon be joined by 350 more, thanks to a citywide installation program announced in 2016.

“We know we have a lot to do to improve bus service overall, so you’re not waiting so long between buses. But it makes an enormous difference when you know when that next bus is coming,” said Lander, pointing out the prompt arrival of a B67 while he spoke. “We’ve already heard just great feedback from kids waiting for the bus to go to school, from seniors, from families. It makes a real big difference.”

Though Lander funded the clocks arriving in District 39 in 2014, over a dozen more will be coming to the district, after Participatory Budgeting (PBNYC) votes in 2015 and 2016.

“This is just a great example of citizen engagement and our elected officials and city listening to the issues and requirements of all of us,” said Kevin Kilgore, co-president of the Park Slope Civic Council. “Supporting us through not only the deployment of infrastructure like this, but measures that make a true difference, a true quality of life improvement for all of us.”

In addition to welcoming the arrival of the bus countdown clocks, Lander proposed an initiative to use LinkNYC wi-fi consoles to provide riders with live bus time information.

He said that though the introduction of bus clocks was a valuable new development, with over 15,00 bus stops in the city, it would be difficult to deploy enough clocks to make information quickly accessible to riders.

Each clock costs about $35,000, and that considering a LinkNYC plan to roll out a total of 7,500 consoles, with 1,000 already installed, supplementing RTPI could help spread information, Lander said.

“We believe it could be very straightforward for DOIT, the New York City agency that manages the LinkNYC franchise agreement, and LinkNYC, DOT and the MTA, to make it so that the LINKs display real time bus arrival information,” said Lander. “If we do that together with the deployment of bus clocks at key intersections, at places where they’re not close to a LINK, we could achieve a very rapid expansion of bus time information in a very affordable way.”

The representatives argued that though there were still many improvements to be made to the city’s bus transportation system itself, spreading accurate information to riders across the city was a crucial first step.

“This won’t solve all the problems we have with buses, there’s a lot that we need to do,” said John Raskin, executive director of the Riders Alliance. “But countdown clocks make the bus a more convenient, efficient option for bus riders, and they can play one part of what we need here.”

The city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) has completed the installation at six locations in the district: