6 Ways Mayor Zohran Mamdani Can Make NYC Buses Faster, Without Albany
Lots of media coverage has centered on Zohran’s campaign to get free buses. But what most of the media ignores is that he campaigned on “fast and free buses.”
For the latter, he needs a hefty paycheck and support from New York State to do. But the former is a different story. As mayor, Zohran Mamdani has lots of power to speed up New York City buses, no input from Albany required, with minimal cost.
Let’s talk about how. I’m here on the ground in New York, debating with people about how to speed up buses and following the improvements.
If Zohran plays his cards right, he could make 2026 the year of the bus.
The Summary: What The Mayor Can Do to Speed up Buses
- Using automated camera enforcement (ACE) to clear up existing bus lanes.
- Act on implementing shovel-ready busways.
- Make more bus-only lanes with something as simple as paint.
- Add infrastructure that allows buses to stay in travel lanes.
- Give buses signal priority and the ability to queue jump
- Create more loading zones by reducing free parking spots
Before we talk in-depth about these, let’s give some context on why they’re needed.
NYC’s Buses Are Slow. Here’s What It Means if They’re Faster.
According to a review by Comptroller Brad Lander’s office, buses moved at an average speed of 8.17 mph in 2024. That’s slow. Terribly slow.
It’s not just the average speed that’s a problem. When buses are stuck behind traffic, as they frequently are, they aren’t reliable.
A survey of 1,800 Flatbush Avenue bus riders found that…
- 91% have been negatively affected by bus delays
- 2 out of 3 have endured long waits in extreme weather
- Half have paid for a car service or taxi because the bus didn’t come in time
- 1 in 3 bus riders has been fired, reprimanded, or lost pay at work
And this isn’t a small number of people. 1.1 million New Yorkers ride the bus every day. These bus riders are those often neglected most by New York City and society at large. According to a report by Riders Alliance (which I’ll reference much more later), regular bus riders are 75% New Yorkers of color, 55% immigrant New Yorkers, and over half of them earn $51k per year or less.
They typically live in outer borough communities with subpar subway access. The disabled and elderly disproportionately rely on buses, since most subway stations don’t have elevators.
Faster Buses: Everyone Wins
Of course, the 1.1 million bus riders win. It directly improves people’s daily lives. It means they can get to more places (including jobs) within a reasonable time, expanding options, and it means they can count on getting there on time. But faster buses mean we all win.
First, they deliver direct economic benefits
When buses move faster, workers get to their jobs on time. Students get to class. Seniors make their appointments. Delays compound into real dollar costs across industries, especially in retail, health care, hospitality, and service jobs.
Every minute saved on someone’s commute is a minute they can put back into work, family, or rest. Multiply that across 1.1 million daily riders, and the return on faster service becomes massive.
Second, faster buses Mean Fewer Car Trips
A lot of New Yorkers drive only because the buses are too slow or unreliable. When bus speeds improve, even by 10–20%, mode shift follows. Some drivers leave their cars at home. People who currently default to Uber or Lyft stop bleeding money on trips they shouldn’t need to pay for in the first place.
This matters because every unnecessary car trip adds to the exact problems choking the city today:
- Congestion that slows deliveries, ambulances, and yes, buses. Good public transit is the solution to traffic.
- Air pollution. Neighborhoods with high levels of traffic have higher asthma, lunge disease, and heart disease rates.
- Unsafe streets. Crashes remain one of the leading causes of death for New Yorkers under 14.
Third, better buses = More Mobility and Freedom
When trips become faster and more predictable, entire corridors become more accessible. Commercial strips get more foot traffic. Outer-borough residents can reach jobs, services, and recreation that were previously too slow to get to. Parents can pick up their kids on time. Disabled riders gain mobility. Seniors gain independence.
And because most improvements required to speed up buses are cheap, the payoff is massive relative to cost. This is where mayoral power matters: the city controls the streets. It controls the signals. It controls curb space. It controls enforcement. A motivated mayor doesn’t need Albany’s permission to dramatically improve bus speeds.
Okay, let’s get into that.
Policies That The Mayor Has At His Disposal to Speed up Buses
With all the prelude, let’s get into the meat.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani doesn’t have to wait for Albany. He has a robust toolkit at his disposal. Here’s what I could find in my research
1. Automatic Camera Enforcement (ACE) of Bus Lane Violations
New York City already has lots of “bus lanes” painted red, where cars aren’t allowed to go. But these bus lanes are often ineffective because there are double-parked cars in the way.
When this happens, the bus has to merge into the regular traffic lane. They often get cut off from merging, and once they’re in, they’re stuck in traffic.
The MTA has already given the city permission to implement automatic camera enforcement (ACE).
The buses have a camera that can capture the license plates of those double-parked or driving in bus-only lanes. They will automatically be given a $50 ticket (with escalating numbers for repeat offenders.)
As Assemblymember, Zohran Mamdani was one of the leaders who pushed for this at the state level back in 2023. We must push him to deliver it as mayor.
In September 2025, Streetsblog reported that 40 bus routes already have mounted cameras. The program is ready to go, it just needs a green light.
I will admit that part of the double-parking problem is the lack of loading zones. We’ll tackle that later in the article.
2. Implementing Shovel-Ready Busways
Painting a lane red and having it marked with “BUS ONLY” is a good start.
However, the make buses fast and reliable, the mayor can mandate full redesigns on key corridors.
The most powerful option for a redesign is to create a “busway.”
New York City has done this before with success.
Today, 14th St is for buses, taxis, and trucks only (unless turning) for most of the street.
Limiting private cars on the street entirely is the best way to speed up the buses.
As noted in the Rider Alliance’s Much Better Buses Report, several of these are shovel-ready. They are already designed and ready.
- 34th Street Busway
- Fifth Avenue Busway
- Fordham Rd, Bronx Busway
- Tremont Avenue, Bronx Busway
These projects are controversial, and always mired in the same concerns, as reported earlier this year when Adams’ administration’s DOT scrapped the Fordham Road Busway. People say they’ll hurt businesses (ridiculous, speeding up buses and making places more pedestrian-friendly always helps businesses) or that it’ll affect “neighborhood character.” I guess if you want the “character” to be traffic-riddled and polluted, then yeah.
These two routes in the Bronx I think, are especially important because the Bronx has no East-West subway service.
Buses are the only way to get across on transit, and they’re disastrously slow.
These are some of the streets with the most amount of bus riders, and they’re treated as second-class citizens compared to those who own cars. The mayor and his DOT can give the green light on these busways that are designed and ready.
3. More Bus-Only Lanes, In Many Forms
While the busways are exciting and transformative, the mayor can make more bus lanes of all kinds.
I’m not into design enough to outline every single option at the disposal of the city to speed up buses. But aside from making busways entirely, there are many options.
Bus Rapid Transit-Like Resdesign
One ambitious design is the center-running Flatbush Avenue redesign that is shovel-ready.
It can look like protected bus lanes where there’s a barrier between the bus lane and the other lanes.
It can also just look like simple bus-only lanes made with red paint, combined with better enforcement. Many major streets with multiple buses still have no bus lane at all.
It’s actually a local law, Streets Plan, to create 150 miles of bus lanes by the end fo 2026. Adams since 2022 has said he wouldn’t meet this requirement.
With the law to build bus lanes on the books, Mayor Mamdani will have even more pressure (the good kind!) to build bus-only lanes.
4. Keep the Bus in The Travel Lane
Another one of the reasons that buses move so slowly is because they have to pull over to the curb at each stop and then pull out. Even with a bus-only lane that people respect, this slows things down.
There are many types of designs that give the bus a “bus rapid transit” aspect, where it stops more like a train would, without pulling over.
Some of these can be a durable plastic sidewalk extension, which doesn’t require pouring concrete or bike construction.
Other times that can, and should, be involved in a redesign.
5. Signal Priority and Queue Jump Features
Another reason buses crawl through New York City is simple: they stop at every single red light. But it doesn’t have to stay that way.
The mayor can dramatically speed up buses by expanding Transit Signal Priority (TSP) and queue jump lanes, two proven, low-cost tools that reduce delay at intersections.
Transit Signal Priority is exactly what it sounds like: when a bus approaches a light, the signal system either holds the green for a few more seconds or shortens the red so the bus can get moving again.
Queue jump features are another powerful option. These are short bus-only lanes at intersections paired with a special signal that lets buses move first—essentially a “head start” that lets them bypass the line of cars stuck at the light. They don’t require massive construction, they don’t require Albany’s approval, and they immediately cut through one of the biggest sources of delay: buses getting trapped behind congestion at intersections. The DOT has already started. The mayor can push them to speed up the rollout.
Both of these upgrades are low-cost and politically realistic. They don’t require major street redesigns.
6. Replace Parking Spots with Loading Spots
I know I’ve said it already, but double parking kills bus speed. Other cars can quickly go around, but buses often pull over to pick up passengers, and they’re, well, a bus, so it’s harder to swerve around cars just idling in a bus lane or driving lane.
It’s easy to blame the people double-parked (and the ACE program will blame them.) However, the root cause of double parking is a lack of loading zones. What’s stopping us from having more loading zones? We’d have to make parking spaces loading-only areas.
Make many street parking spots loading zones so that cars can drop-off whatever they need to without blocking the bus.
Here’s what this looks like from a cyclist’s perspective. Imagine being a bus. (And several buses go on this street (138th St in the Bronx).
There’s a Lot The Mayor Can’t Do Alone
Speeding up the buses with all-door boarding is up to the MTA. Increasing the Congestion Pricing toll to $15 it was supposed to be at would speed up the buses. That is up to New York State.
What It Will Take: Standing Up For Bus Riders
In the election, Zohran won transit commuters by 29% and lost car commuters by 23%.
The demographics of bus riders are exactly the people whom Zohran campaigned to stand up for: working-class New Yorkers who have been squeezed on all sides by the cost-of-living crisis. Of course, the correlation-causation you can’t draw, but he did campaign on a pro-bus platform.
He has the power to deliver faster buses.
Yes, Zohran will have to piss off wealthy car-owners who complain about parking and want to store their private object on public land for free. That’s the courage it will take.
I think the children of those people pissed off about “their” parking spot (it’s not theirs, it’s on public land) will be happy that Zohran helped speed up buses, reduce the traffic, clean the air, and make neighborhood after neighborhood in New York City more pleasant and efficient.
Exact Bus Routes Ready to Be Sped Up
If you’d like to dive deeper into which routes the mayor could speed up, and quickly, the Rider’s Alliance report on Much Better Buses goes into more specific routes.
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