Rubber Off The Road! Less Bus Service Starting Next Month

Three vital bus lines serving Bedford Stuyvesant will be less frequent starting next month, according to the Metropolitan Transit Authority.

The B25 will have 16 fewer buses on the road Monday through Friday, and the B38 will lose the same amount on Saturday.

That means a two- to three-minute increase in wait times for those two lines, depending on the time of day.

The B45 will also have 20 fewer buses in service per day, though the MTA says that the cuts will not result in longer wait times on that line. An MTA spokesman did not explain how that is possible, despite a request for further information.

Regardless, the cuts did not sit well with straphangers.

“The B25 takes too long already!” said Ola Alabi, who was waiting for the bus at the corner of Fulton Street and Lafayette Avenue. “Sometimes two or three [buses] will come at once, and then you have to wait even longer if you missed them!”

The MTA calls the cuts to service “seasonal adjustments” that are not tied to the authority's well-documented budget issues.

“Adjustments are made periodically reflecting ridership,” said an MTA spokesman.

But some locals weren’t buying it.

“I don’t believe that!” said Mary Walters, from Bed-Stuy. “The B25 is always crowded!”

She added that the service changes will likely result in her having to wait even longer for the bus.

“Sometimes I wait 20, 30 minutes for the bus,” she said.

The service adjustments — totaling 64 schedule changes on 58 bus routes, as well as one change on the J train — will actually cost $300,000 to implement, according to minutes from the January meeting in which the MTA approved the plan.

The details of the service changes beginning in April break down as follows.

B25

• Monday through Friday during the evening peak hour the wait time will increase from six to eight minutes.
• Monday through Friday from 8 to 9 p.m. the wait time will increase from 12 to 15 minutes.
• 16 fewer buses will be on the road.

B38

• On Saturday during the morning peak hour the wait time will increase from eight to nine minutes.
• On Saturday from 8 to 9 p.m. the wait time will increase from seven to nine minutes.
• 16 fewer buses will be on the road.

B45

• 20 fewer buses will be on the road, though the wait time for the bus will not increase, according to the MTA.

Further details are available on page 7.4 of this MTA document.