NYC plans 'busway' for 34th Street that would ban most car traffic

City transportation officials plan to ban most passenger vehicle traffic from 34th Street as part of an effort to speed up one of Manhattan’s slowest and busiest bus routes.

The transportation department said it would propose the “busway” to a Midtown community board on Monday night. The plan would impose new traffic restrictions along the corridor between Third and Ninth Avenues, only allowing buses and trucks to drive along the street. Under the changes, any passenger vehicle that turns onto 34th Street in the area would have to take the next required turn off the street.

Officials said they plan to implement the changes later this year. The M34 bus route that runs along 34th Street is used by roughly 28,000 daily riders, but averages a speed of just 3 mph during peak periods, according to the transportation department.

The idea is all but identical to the busway the department put in place on 14th Street in 2019, which led to a 24% speed increase on the M14 bus route. Locals were originally concerned that traffic at nearby local streets would get worse with the implementation of the busway, but transportation department data shows that there were no effects.

“The vast majority of commuters in Midtown are traveling by transit and they deserve world-class, fast, and reliable buses,” city Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez said in a statement. “After seeing tremendous success on 14th Street — where buses have sped up, traffic has virtually disappeared, and far fewer New Yorkers are getting hurt in crashes — we are excited to propose a similar design on 34th Street. We look forward to refining the design with the community.”

The changes to 34th Street would help foster easier connections among 16 subway lines, as well as commuter railroad service at Penn Station.

The plan would also come with pedestrian improvements, including redesigning the street with shorter intersections and brighter lines on crosswalks.

While busways have proven to be a boon for bus riders, they’ve also been a source of controversy in neighborhoods across the city. Two years ago, the city rolled back plans to install one on Fordham Road in the Bronx after pushback from groups including the New York Botanical Garden, the Bronx Zoo and Fordham University. And in 2021, a group of business owners in Flushing, Queens filed a loudly protested plan to install a busway on Main Street in the neighborhood, prompting the transportation department to only impose the traffic restrictions on the street from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. instead of 24/7.

The 14th Street busway was originally intended to help transit riders during the MTA’s planned closure of the L train’s East River tunnel. The transportation department moved forward with the plan even after former Gov. Andrew Cuomo made a last-minute change to the tunnel’s construction plan and ordered the MTA to only do the work on nights and weekends, averting a full shutdown.