Red Hook-Manhattan Buses
In 2018, Eric’s and my Brooklyn bus redesign proposal included a new route to run between Red Hook and Lower Manhattan using the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. This was not our idea; a junior planner we talked to suggested this. Our plan was not adopted, but in the formal process New York City Transit and consultancy Sam Schwartz engaged in, at community meetings riders proposed the same idea, and junior staff seemed to like it but it was still not adopted. Now, a coalition of neighborhood groups and city-wide transit advocacy groups is directly calling for such a bus to be included in the Brooklyn bus redesign, including ETA. My goal in this post is to look at some alignment possibilities, more carefully than we did in the 2018 proposal. On the Manhattan side, it is not too hard to hit Lower Manhattan jobs and subway transfers on a short bus loop, but on the Brooklyn side, the Red Hook street network and its connection to the tunnel force serious compromises.
Current conditions
There are express buses in the tunnel from points much farther out to Lower Manhattan, but they don’t make stops along the way. Red Hook is instead served exclusively within Brooklyn, in three directions: one north along Van Brunt to Downtown Brooklyn, one east along Lorraine to the Smith/9th Street subway station and Park Slope, and one also along Lorraine to Smith/9th but then going north to Downtown Brooklyn. The first two are together the B61 route, in an awkward C-shaped through-route; the third is the B57, which through-runs past Downtown Brooklyn to points northeast along Flushing Avenue.
The neighborhood has roughly three major destinations to serve. Visible in the center-bottom of the map are the Red Hook Houses, with a total of 6,000 residents. At the very bottom of the map is Ikea, the main destination for people coming into the neighborhood from elsewhere. Then on the left there is Van Brunt, the local commercial drag.
Per OnTheMap, the entire neighborhood has 6,700 jobs and 5,000 employed residents as of 2019; it is not at all a bedroom community. Ikea is not even one of the main job centers – the biggest are elsewhere, such as the nearby Amazon warehouse. The neighborhood’s residents work about 40% in Manhattan, 40% in Brooklyn, and 20% elsewhere, while the workers are half from Brooklyn with no other origin having much concentration (the second biggest county origin, Queens, is 14%). Only 300 people both live and work in Red Hook, so a transit system connecting the neighborhood to the rest of the city, for both origins and destinations, is vital.
Why the tunnel?
Red Hook’s current bus connections are only with the rest of Brooklyn. This materially slows down travel for the 40% of residents who work in Manhattan and roughly 10% who work in places one accesses via Manhattan, such as the Bronx or Long Island City. The on-street bus connections are slow, and the neighborhood is not well-located relative to the Brooklyn subway network. The B57 only kind of hits Smith/9th southbound, since Smith is one-way northbound and the southbound trip is one block west on Court. Smith/9th itself is not accessible, and is the highest subway station in the system above the local street level as it was built with high clearance below for shipping through the Gowanus Canal.
Let’s look at how fast it is to get to 42nd Street. Via the B57 or B61, it’s about 10 minutes by bus from Ikea to Smith/9th; the B61 runs every 12 minutes and the B57 every 15 or 20, for maximum inconvenience. Then from Smith/9th to Bryant Park, it’s 27 minutes on the F. A bus in the tunnel would get to Fulton Street in 25 minutes and then it’s 12 minutes on the A. In theory, it’s the same trip time from Ikea, and around three minutes faster in relative terms from the Red Hook Houses depending on the route. In practice, being able to connect in Manhattan means having a much wider variety of destinations than just what’s on the F, which doesn’t even get to Lower Manhattan. The benefits for Red Hook-to-rest-of-city commuters would be noticeable.
The Manhattan street section would have variable traffic. On the other hand, the tunnel is less congested than its approaches, and congestion pricing stands to reduce traffic exactly there, as on other roads into the Manhattan core. With no bus stops in the tunnel, the average speed would be reasonable even with a short loop through Lower Manhattan. Diverting ridership from slower buses to Downtown Brooklyn would save revenue-hours, which could then be spent on higher frequency on all remaining routes.
Compromises on the route
The routing within the neighborhood for any bus route using the tunnel cannot be perfect; the neighborhood is not laid out for it. This is seen in how awkward the buses through Red Hook are today, as mentioned above; none of them even goes through the Red Hook Houses, which are the dominant origin. All of the following constraints require creating a single compromise bus route:
- The ridership potential is not there for more than one route. Whatever option is chosen, whether it’s a shuttle as I’m implying in this post or an extension of an existing route that goes deeper into Manhattan (or Brooklyn), that’s the only thing that can run. Even with one route, there may need to be compromises on frequency (by which I mean a bus every 8-10 minutes instead of 6, not 12).
- Van Brunt, Ikea plus the other waterfront jobs, and the Red Hook Houses are not at all collinear.
- The only place to get to the tunnel from Red Hook is the ramp from West 9th or Huntington, and West 9th is one-way west and may need to be converted to two-way. In particular, Van Brunt is too far, and the interface with the tunnel needs to be to and from the Red Hook Houses directly.
In effect, what all of the above implies is that a bus to Manhattan on Van Brunt is not likely to work. Here is one version of what could:
The circles along the path denote control points on Google Maps, and not stops. The western waterfront may have to just not be served; people could walk from Van Brunt across Coffey Park and it would be faster than taking the bus the long way around, down Van Brunt and then along Beard and up Columbia.
At the Manhattan end, the route would either loop just far enough north to hit the Fulton Street subway complex, or through-run. Fulton is necessary because the Wall Street stations are inaccessible, and is generally useful for the connection to World Trade Center. Beyond that, one option is to through-run to the M9, which hits more Manhattan destinations. That said, Manhattan bus speeds are so low that nearly all riders would switch to the subway; M9 frequencies are also low, every 15 minutes off-peak, and when there’s not much traffic this is almost unusably low for Red Hook Houses-Wall Street trips.
Pedestrian Observations 
Should have been done a long time ago.
I read, that express buses have higher fare in NY, then regular one, do you thing, that fare should be pricier for express buses ?
How much this price differentiation affects ridership ?
They have higher fares but also massively higher operating costs, because they have long average trips and no seat turnover. I tooted about this here. The subsidy per unlinked trip on normal NYCT buses is $2.66; the subsidy per unlinked trip on the NYCT express buses is $14.47 (link).
Those people should seek for a ferry to access Lower Manhattan, instrad of a low-speed and unstable bus which only worsen the traffic.
Sorry for typo… *Instead of a low-speed and unstable bus.
The ferry isn’t going to be faster, and is going to be more expensive to operate.
Then turn to take the subway. I doubt how useful is a bus if you cannot guarantee its speed and stability. Keep in mind we are talking about commuting trips, not leisure trips.
Personally, I think Red Hook should be served by an elevated extension of the G train, as pictured. Construction costs would be low, it’s a short elevated route. Operating costs would be negative, compared to the current G to Church Ave. The G is not a very useful subway route, but there would be easy transfers to the F and A/C for Manhattan access.
https://imgur.com/a/8VqXtpD
Sounds attractive, for the “negative” operation cost. And I believe it could activate TOD potential for those former industrial land.
The train ascends to 87 feet / 26 meters at Smith-9th St station, the highest in the system, to allow for Gowanus Canal shipping. I forget the height of the highway on that stretch, but it clears the Canal , and within a mile or two dives to the Battery Tunnel. So you would have to build the rail junction, go over/under the highway, and a stretch of El, all at a height of 10 stories. Neither cheap, nor practical.
The subway is 87 feet high at Smith-9th, but is is underground at Carroll St. You could build the junction as the subway ascends along Smith (as Eric 2 showed) and then pass under the subway and freeway as they climb over the Gowanus, all at a normal elevated height for normal cost, not 10 stories in the air.
Would it be worth building a bus stop in the highway with surface connections now that the MTA is moving towards cashless tolling and no longer needs a massive toll plaza? Would make potential Red Hook routes less circuitous.
Hong Kong uses a lot of these, like the Cross Harbor Bus Interchange that has pedestrian connections to Hung Hom MTR and Hong Kong Polytechnic https://maps.app.goo.gl/yyAWDiJctLmMHZfb8?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy
A freeway flyer station in Seattle: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ugGHQ5AxfyQsQRdW9?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy
Relationship between such bus stops and the tidal HOV lane should be designed carefully.
How pleasant is it to wait at a bus stop right in the middle of a highway?
Build a cap with bus waiting lounges above the tunnel toll plaza. This is exactly what HK PolyU suggested to improve passenger experience at the cross harbour tunnel bus interchange.
pleasant is a luxury for people with options. You can’t take a fast bus that doesn’t exist.
if push comes to shove, it turns out that many are willing to use the freeway stations if it means that their buses don’t have to spend an extra ten minutes getting on and off a highway, multiplied by however many stops. Seattle has used these to great effect, and the high productivity bus routes that used these flyer stops are now being turned into the backbone of the light rail system.
There is an option: keep taking the bus to Smith/9th.
Sure. But it’s significantly more indirect.
Of all the things you could build, a concrete island with a bus shelter is pretty cheap, and then now people in Red Hook have three options:
The best part is that because it’s at the mouth of the tunnel, anyone doing the transfer has avoided all the hassle of getting onto the highway and tunnel.
We Hong Kong people appreciate Henry’s solution greatly and utilize it at almost each tunnel/highway. It enables bus service to reach maximum productivity.
(I just saw you’d written a similar comment that went to spam; I consolidated the second link from the spamfiltered comment into this version.)
thanks! I was having an issue with trying to comment with wordpress.
Your example in Seattle looks like a mature solution of bus stops in two-way HOV lanes. LA Metro J line is another such example. However, the HOV lane in Red Hook is tidal, which brings challenge to accommodate two-way buses.
eh, so long as the buses can safely enter the stop area from regular traffic lanes as well, it doesn’t matter all that much.
Just have the 1/9 trains 🚃🚃 be extended to Redhook Brooklyn and just get it over with. Stop adding more buses over there and just plan on bringing the 1/9 or the R W trains over to Redhook Brooklyn Because they don’t have no subway transportation over at Redhook. I know it doesn’t happen over night 🌃🌉. Adleast add some kind of subway lines that the people wants the subway trains to be extended to Redhook Brooklyn. They definitely should of been adding a subway 🚇 lines to go to Redhook Brooklyn decades ago. Including the N W trains to LaGuardia airport and bringing back the 8 Thrid Ave Elevated line back and extended the 6 Pelham line to co op city. Subways definitely needs to be extended im telling you. Lee cornwell