Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled an $800 million plan Wednesday they said will shorten city bus rides by adding special lanes — and more Big Brother-style traffic cameras to squeeze drivers.
The Democrats unveiled the plan at a news conference in Flatbush, claiming new “rapid bus routes” would save riders six minutes per trip while expanding the Automated Camera Enforcement program with 200 new cameras added to 50 more routes by next year.
“In New York City, time is money. And we are going to give New Yorkers some of that time back,” Mamdani said. “Six minutes precisely.”
Mamdani started a stopwatch when he made his announcement, promising to keep his speech to six minutes — but the speech went longer, breaking the schedule like an M42 bus.
But Allan Rosen, vice chair of rider group Passengers United, said the six-minute promise also falls apart the moment you look at how far most people actually ride the bus.
“They are saying that bus lanes will save you up to six minutes,” said, who spent three decades at the MTA, including a stint running bus planning.
“That means if you travel the entire bus route, say 8 miles, you save six minutes,” he added. “The average local bus trip is 2.3 miles. So the average passenger would save only an insignificant two or three minutes from their 45 or 60 minute trip.”
The plan between the city Department of Transportation and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will install traffic lights with green turn arrows for buses and utilize tape-and-go boarding to speed up rides — though a former MTA bus planner said all the effort will only shorten rides by a couple of minutes.
City Hall said it will spend $254 million and $628 million in capital funds over five years for the plan, which also calls for bringing bus stop spacing “in line with international and national standards” — part of the MTA’s ongoing bus network redesign.
But that means some bus stops will be eliminated as US and international guidance puts urban local bus stops about every quarter-mile and New York City now spaces them closer to every 800 feet, according to the MTA.
Rosen said losing your stop can wipe out any time gained from faster buses.
“If you miss a bus because your bus stop was removed, you can easily add another 10 minutes to your trip. So your trip can take 20 minutes longer under the MTA’s planning,” Rosen said.
The bigger problem, Rosen said, is that buses are unreliable, not slow.
Only about 20 supervisors are assigned to keep 6,000 city buses running on schedule, he said, and the plan does nothing to fix that. The MTA did not respond to a Post inquiry about the number of bus schedule supervisors currently employed at the MTA.
Rosen zeroed in on the plan’s call to add hundreds more ticketing cameras.
“The real reason bus lanes are implemented is to raise fines from violators and to discourage automobiles by clogging up traffic by removal of lanes. It’s not to help bus passengers,” Rosen said.
But Mamdani’s plan does help an anti-car advocacy group that is quietly funded by the company profiting from more cameras on the street.
Transportation Alternatives’ November 2025 wish list for the incoming Mamdani administration called for exactly what the mayor delivered Tuesday — more camera enforcement and marquee rapid bus routes.
The mayor’s plan even named Transportation Alternatives as a stakeholder of his plan and he appointed a former executive from the organization to oversee buses for his administration.
Transportation Alternatives listed Verra Mobility, the company that runs every automated enforcement camera in the city, as a $100,000-plus donor every year from 2020 through 2023, the last year the group made its donor list public.
NYC DOT signed a new five-year, $998 million contract with Verra in February — an increase of about 34% from its last contract.
Verra said in a press release that growing bus lane camera enforcement was a big part of why the contract got bigger.
The city and MTA issued $152.9 million in bus lane-related camera fines and collected $126 million from drivers in fiscal year 2025 with revenue from bus mounted cameras increasing 551% year over year, according to the city Department of Finance’s annual Local Law 6 report.
Revenue jumped after the state expanded the MTA’s bus-mounted camera program to also ticket drivers who block bus stops or double park along bus routes.
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