Moving Forward

If there is one defining piece of transit infrastructure in the Bronx, it’s Robert Moses’ loathsome six-lane behemoth—the Cross-Bronx Expressway.

Its impact on the borough cannot be overstated. It devastated neighborhoods like East Tremont, and helped turn the Bronx into the city’s poorest borough.

In 1945, Moses saw the Cross-Bronx as a key connector in his superhighway master plan to link New Jersey, Connecticut and Long Island through New York City. For the city, it was a controversial, costly project, completed years late in 1963, to the tune of $250 million: “the most expensive road constructed in all history,” noted Robert Caro in his 1974 biography of Moses, “The Power Broker.”

For the Bronx, it was a wound that cut through communities, bringing with it a long list of troubles—asthma, housing issues, transportation woes and a history of underdevelopment.

For many Bronxites, the Cross-Bronx remains a scar, symbolizing how badly the borough is treated by the city’s brokers of power, and contributing to how tough it is for Bronx residents to simply get around.

Consider this. Say you’re sitting at the Bronx Alehouse in Kingsbridge and want to see where the pale ale you were drinking was brewed. It would take you about the same amount of time to get to the new Bronx Brewery in Port Morris on public transportation as it would to travel twice the distance to Brooklyn Brewery in Williamsburg. The quickest route to Port Morris—the Bx10 to the 4 train to the 6 train—would force you to travel into Manhattan in order to cross over to the other side of the Bronx.

The Bronx’s train lines have always been flawed. But they succeed at one thing: bringing those Bronx residents lucky enough to have access to a subway station into Manhattan, and back.

In recent years, though, fewer people are making that traditional commute on one of the eight red, orange or green lines to Manhattan. Nearly half of all Bronxites (up to 45.2 percent in 2013 from 43.3 in 2005, according to census figures) work within the borough or head to jobs in Westchester and Queens.

As the Bronx continues to build its economy, working within the borough has become a more viable option. Interborough travel has not kept pace.

Data show that the percentage of Bronx residents commuting by car is the lowest since the Census Bureau launched the American Community Survey in 2005, at 27.3 percent of workers in 2013. While more people are traveling to and from work on public transportation in all five boroughs, the Bronx is the only one where the number of people riding buses is increasing.

With no subway line running east-west through the borough and many remote residential areas lacking access to stops, ridership on Bronx bus lines has risen 5 percent over the last three years, according to new MTA data. Bus ridership has declined over the same period in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens, and there has been an 8 percent drop-off in Manhattan, the most significant change.

MTA board member and longtime Bronxite Charles Moerdler attributes the increase in Bronx ridership to the new buses the MTA added to alleviate overcrowding.

But there are also other factors contributing to increased bus ridership in the borough. “As far as the reverse commuting is concerned, the Bronx has seen more of that than anywhere—more and more people are traveling from the Bronx to Westchester than ever before,” said David Giles, research director of the Center for an Urban Future. “Nothing has been done to alleviate the outer borough commuting and the change in commuting.”

Though there is limited data on workers commuting to Westchester, commuters who work outside of the city limits are also likely contributing to increased bus ridership.

Giles is a proponent of boosting Select Bus Service and implementing a quicker method of paying on all buses. Right now the Bronx’s best public transit option for traveling across the borough is the Bx12, the MTA’s first Select Bus line and by far the most popular bus line in the Bronx. A second was added to Webster Avenue three years later, and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s OneNYC plan includes another east-west line in the South Bronx.

These days more than a few of the city’s power brokers hail from the northern borough. Moerdler and former Bronx Borough President Freddy Ferrer sit on the MTA board, and state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie calls the Bronx home. So the borough has enough political clout to address transportation issues, if slowly.

After numerous elected officials led by Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr. got behind a proposal for four new Metro-North stations in the East Bronx—in Co-op City, Morris Park, Parkchester, and Hunts Point—the plan is on the way to becoming a reality. Though it will provide a significantly more expensive ride than subway service, it will represent the only alternative to a long bus ride to the train for people living in places like Co-Op City.

Still, commute times for Bronx residents are long and getting longer—42.2 minutes on average in 2013, says the census. Good practice, perhaps, for anyone waiting on new transportation options.

“It’s like trying to turn around an ocean liner in a bathtub,” Moerdler said of the MTA’s approval process.

“It’s slow.”