Community Board 5 is stepping into the fray of the Queen Bus redesign.
The board convened its Transportation and Public Transit Committee meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 25, with MTA officials, when the public was encouraged to come listen and provide feedback on the Queens Bus Redesign.
While they had plenty of suggestions for the MTA reps, the committee’s main goal at the meeting was to listen and outline a few broad goals to the MTA officials.
The CB5 leaders said their plan is to assign members to look at different routes and make recommendations. They are also encouraging residents not just to submit comments to the MTA online, but also to the community board so they can keep pushing for the district residents.
Aside from a few members of the committee who raised pet concerns, the committee took the opportunity at this moment in the redesign process to stress several broad goals: court, airport and park access.
The MTA made a presentation that covered details of the redesign’s strategies, displayed its online resources and went through the main bus changes in the district one by one. Then the community board collected feedback from members of the public that it will use to create a comprehensive list of suggestions for the MTA.
In addition to the changes at stake in the Queens redesign, the community board was also anxious about how it would tie in with the Brooklyn Bus redesign plan, which will start going through the same process as the Queens plan over the next year.
“We rely on those B routes,” said John Maier. “We do need you to come back to talk to us about the Brooklyn plan.”
Maier mentioned that the Ridgewood Reservoir was a destination falling on the Brooklyn side of the Ridgewood border that he would like to see addressed in the Queens bus plan. The community board has long lobbied to get a bus route to drive directly to the reservoir.
While the rest of the committee’s feedback will take months to process, the MTA representatives did have an immediate answer to this particular point: it will have to wait until the Brooklyn Bus redesign began.
For more information on the Queens bus redesign, visit new.mta.info/queensbusredesign. To submit feedback to the MTA online, visit shorturl.at/vAH68.
