My social media algorithm knows I want better transit in the Bronx.

I’ve been served up a few videos of someone running for local office saying something like, “We don’t need the Cross Bronx Expressway! We Need a Cross Bronx Subway!”

These clips get attention. They get mine.

As I watch, I nod my head along. I think most people in the Bronx agree on two things:

1. The Cross Bronx Expressway is bad for the Bronx. It pollutes the air and keeps neighborhoods disconnected.
2. Getting across the Bronx without a car sucks. Driving is the easiest option. Hence, the level of traffic on the Cross Bronx.

The harm the Cross Bronx causes is well-documented. In the past few years, even the federal government has researched ways to mitigate the harms of the Cross Bronx. All the homies hate Robert Moses. That’s not up for the debate here.

What is up for debate is what a serious alternative plan for Cross Bronx transit looks like.

As I like to say, think radically, act incrementally. We can not imagine what the Bronx and city can look like without highways like the Cross Bronx, unless we create alternatives.

In this article, I aim to provide a realistic plan for Cross Bronx transit. Some of this could happen this year. Some of this, my unborn children have a much better chance of experiencing than I do.

Summary: A Generational Cross Bronx Transit Plan

None of these ideas is mine. They’re all stolen from actual transit professionals.

Give Cross Bronx Buses Priority

• Implement already designed, shovel-ready plans for Cross Bronx busways. Start with Fordham Rd and Tremont Ave, but don’t stop there.
• Standardize bus priority improvements on all cross-borough bus routes. That means enforced bus lanes, signal priority, and keeping them in the travel lane.

Improve Walking and Biking Connectivity

• Pedestrian improvements along the Cross Bronx, as proposed in the Reimagine the Cross Bronx study.
• Cross Bronx protected bike lanes both north and south of the highway, as proposed in the Reimagine the Cross Bronx study.
• Citi Bike access throughout the whole borough.
• Secure bike parking, borough-wide.

Not-Fantasy Train Service

All of them are possible in the coming decades.

• Build a Cross Bronx Light Rail, as proposed by researchers at NYU’s Marron Institute.
• Make commuter trains “Through-running,” which means a New Haven train may end in New Jersey instead of Grand Central to encourage transit trips through the borough.
• Build an IBX connection at Harlem-125th, which would provide easier connections between the Bronx and other outer boroughs, as proposed by Andrew Lynch.

Before we get into this, let’s briefly go over some Bronx transit history.

Why East–West Transit in the Bronx Is Broken

More than a century ago, The Bronx developed around its north-south subway lines. As in Manhattan, new subways encouraged dense, walkable living. They were great for getting people from the growing Bronx neighborhoods to work in Manhattan, but they never connected the borough itself.

That reality remains today.

In the mid-20th century, planners like Robert Moses bulldozed Bronx neighborhos to build the Cross Bronx Expressway.

This and other highways made it easier for people to get through the Bronx in a car, but they made it even harder to get around the Bronx without one.

These highways induced more cars to come through the Bronx, encouraged sprawling housing patterns, and made walking and biking unpleasant at best, impractical, and dangerous at worst.

Despite planners centering Bronx transportation around cars, car ownership in the Bronx is very low by U.S. standards and lower than the NYC average.

The Bronx needs better mass transit. Here’s the blueprint for it.

Better Cross Bronx Bus Service

Let’s start with bus service.

Improving bus service is the fastest and cheapest way to improve transit in the Bronx.

Luckily, the city already knows how to improve bus service. This year, we can start with what’s already studied, and design, and ready.

Build Shovel-Ready Busways in 2026: Tremont Ave and Fordham Rd

Busways are politically challenging, but transform a street.

It’s when sections of major streets are only for buses, taxis, trucks, and emergency vehicles. No private cars. Why? Even with bus lanes in red paint, buses get stuck behind traffic.

Dozens of people on a bus can be held up by a single car double-parked, a single traffic delay, a single

It’s overdue for the Bronx to get the busway redesigns that are already ready.

Tremont Ave Busway Between Third Ave and Southern Blvd

The Bx36 bus carries 34,000 passengers each day. It runs along Tremont Ave, just a few blocks north of the Cross Bronx.

As StreetsBlog reported in 2025, “It’s the fifth-busiest bus route in the Bronx, but buses crawl along at speeds of less than 5 miles per hour during weekday rush hours. In addition, 72 percent of the households on or near Tremont Avenue do not have access to a vehicle, and 57 percent of people said they got around the area by using the bus.”

So the Department of Transportation designed a busway. Between those streets, private vehicles would have to make the next available turn. This would speed up the buses by getting them out of traffic.

In 2025, Eric Adams cancelled the busway under political pressure.

And this was for only a section of the street!

Fordham Rd Busway

The year before, Adams, under similar pressures, killed the Fordham Rd Busway. The Bx12 bus alone has 40,000 daily riders. It is the busiest in the Bronx and the second busiest in the whole city.

Between five bus routes, there are 85,000 average daily bus riders on Fordham Rd. According to DOT’s info on the Busway, 71% of people on the Bx12 corridor commute to work via public transit, walking, or biking.

Build the busway.

When a single bus route carries that many people despite being slow, unreliable, and exposed to congestion, it’s clear that the Bronx needs better east–west rapid transit.

The city has successfully designed projects like this, such as the 14th St Busway.

In both cases, the complaints were the same. They’re the same ones we always hear. We hear that giving buses priority will hurt local businesses (it won’t, drivers don’t stop and buy things as much as pedestrians and transit riders do).

We hear that it would worsen traffic (ignoring that the majority of people on these routes travel by bus), even though faster buses encourage more people to take the bus, which can decrease traffic.

We always hear these same concerns, but if we ever want reliable, fast buses that go across the Bronx, we need to fight and win these political battles, not back down from them.

Replicate This Success Across Other Crosstown Routes, This Mayoral Term. It Is Literally the Law.

In 2019, NYC passed the NYC Streets, Law 195, which required the city to build 30 miles of protected bus lanes each year.

It’s literally the law to build more bus lanes.

Starting with what’s ready is great, but if the Bronx ever wants efficient crosstown transit, bus lanes and busways need to become the norm.

Any street that a bus goes on should have a bus-only lane. If it already has a bus-only lane, we should be moving that towards busways (I’m looking at you, 149th St.)

Other Strategies to Speed Up Buses

Since Zohran Mamdani ran on improving the buses, I decided to write about how the NYC mayor can speed up buses, without Albany. It’s not specific to the Bronx.

• Automatic enforcement of bus lane violations
• Designs to keep buses in travel lanes continuously
• Transit signal priority
• Creating loading zones (so people can make deliveries, picks-ups and drop-offs without double parking)

Train Plans That Are Actually Realistic

None of these will happen soon. But all of them could happen. Actual planners and researchers have proposed them.

A Cross Bronx Light Metro

In their report, A Better Billion, researchers at New York University’s Marron Institute discuss how they would spend $1 billion to improve NYC subway and metro service over the coming four decades.

In the 4th decade, they propose a Cross Bronx light metro to run along Fordham Rd, tracing the Bx12 route.

Their concept calls for a fully automated light metro, similar to systems operating in cities like Copenhagen and Vancouver, and the system proposed for the Interborough Express in Brooklyn and Queens.

These smaller trains would run frequently, as often as every 90 seconds, allowing the system to deliver high capacity without the enormous station sizes and tunneling costs associated with traditional subways.

It would create Metro-North and subway transfers along all North-South Bronx train lines.

They estimate this to cost $6.4 billion in 2025 dollars.

Expensive? Yes.

But in the context of modern megaprojects, not outrageous, especially for a line that would fundamentally reshape how people move across the borough.

Why This Is More Plausible Than a Traditional “Cross Bronx Subway”

When politicians talk about a new Bronx subway, they often imply something on the scale of the Second Avenue Subway.

Automated light metro may be the way to go. We can…

• Build smaller stations and less expensive tunneling
• Reduce operating expenses
• Run the service more frequently
• Scale capacity over time

Several European systems have been delivered for under $500 million per mile, a fraction of what deep-bore subway construction often costs.

If we want everybody to be able to get anywhere throughout the Bronx without a car, we need high-capacity east-west rail. It’s a shame this could take four decades, but I think if the IBX comes in on-time and on-budget, we can push for it sooner.

“Through-Running” Commuter Trains

This idea comes from a YouTube video by Joint Transit Association on through running. I’ll focus on the components relevant to Cross Bronx Travel.

I didn’t know what through-running meant until I watched it.

Instead of commuter trains terminating in Manhattan, as they all do, trains would continue through the city onto another regional rail line.

A Metro-North train wouldn’t just end at Grand Central.

It might continue to New Jersey or Long Island.

As the video says, “Someone in Connecticut who wants to go see a show at the Prudential Center in Newark can just take the train. Someone in the Bronx who works at Metropark would just take the train.”

This wouldn’t take increased track capacity. The biggest challenge is getting the railroads to work together.

Why This Matters for the Bronx

Much of the traffic on the Cross Bronx Expressway isn’t going to the Bronx. It’s passing through it.

Drivers are traveling between:

• Westchester and New Jersey
• Connecticut and Long Island
• Queens and Westchester
• The Hudson Valley and employment centers outside Manhattan

Today, few people, especially in suburbs with high car-ownership, are going to take a Metro-North into Manhattan, navigate across town to Penn Station, then get on an NJ Transit train. They’re going to drive to Jersey.

Through-running makes cross-region train rides faster and easier.

Fewer transfers → shorter travel times → more competitive with driving → fewer car trips → less traffic in the Bronx.

The Infrastructure Mostly Exists

What makes through-running compelling is that we don’t need to build new tunnels or tack capacity beyond what’s already planned.

The infrastructure needs improvements, including signal timing, platform, and station upgrades, but that’s a lot easier than tunneling.

Penn Station and Grand Central already connect the railroads. The “Penn Station Access” project will bring Metro-North into the Bronx with four new stations, and trains from Connecticut into Penn Station. Meanwhile, the Gateway Tunnel project will expand train capacity between New York and New Jersey.

But, the agencies will need to figure out how to work together.

An “IBX-North” Connection at Harlem-125th St

Here’s another plan I’m blatantly stealing. The Interborough Express is set to connect Brooklyn and Queens. As I was researching why the IBX is not continuing to the Bronx, I read Andrew Lynch’s proposal for “IBX-North.”

Instead of continuing to the Bronx, the IBX could go across to connect at Harlem-125th St.

That would mean Bronx residents would have a faster transit route to get to Queens. You can take whatever Bronx train you take down to 125th and transfer to the train heading to Astoria. That takes away trips that people make today by car, because getting between the Bronx and Queens takes forever on transit.

Making Walking Across The Bronx Easier

Every transit trip begins and ends with a walk.

The Cross Bronx Expressway has made basic pedestrian movement harder, forcing residents onto indirect routes, lengthening trips to subway stations, and cutting neighborhoods off from each other.

Cap The Cross Bronx

One of the most transformative ideas in the Reimagine the Cross Bronx study is also one of the simplest: cap portions of the highway and reconnect the street grid.

That means new green spaces, but it also means more direct and easier walking routes.

In 13 locations, the study proposes building decks over the expressway that would allow streets to pass continuously from one side to the other.

As one example, they show how a 20-minute walk from a public school to subway station could be cut to 12 minutes, and a current 12-minute walk could be cut to 8.

A 10-minute walk to the train is about the threshold of convenience. Beyond that, those with the means will likely choose another option.

NYC Knows How to Build Safer Streets

Large caps may take decades, but safer walking conditions can happen much sooner.

I could talk about dozens of street design improvements that shorten crossing distances, improve visibility, and calm traffic.

I’ve watched NYC implement this. We just need to do it at scale. The biggest challenge is political, because every street redesign comes with oppostion, especially if it removes parking.

Again, do we want a Bronx that’s filled with concrete for parking and highways and pollution, or do we want faster buses, safer streets for pedestrians, and less pollution? I want the latter.

Biking Connectivity

This section is probably the most controversial. Especially in the Bronx, cycling for transportation is seen as a gentrifier/transplant thing. And it sort of is, but it also really isn’t. Wealthier, whiter people tend to bike, I argue, because the whiter, wealthier areas have safer streets to bike.

The success of Citi Bike’s $5/month program for NYC residents who receive SNAP or who live in Public Housing and increasing bike ridership on the borough’s new bike lanes show that people ride bikes when it’s a safe, affordable option. They don’t ride bikes when you’re at risk of dying or there’s nowhere to park a bike or you don’t know how to ride a bike because growing up, there was nowhere safe to. That’s been the case for generations. Taking culture and politics out of it, better cycling access objectively provides people with a convenient, inexpensive, and healthy way to get around.

Build East-West Protected Bike Lanes

In its Reimagine the Cross Bronx study, NYC DOT outlines concepts for continuous east–west bike connections linking three major greenways:

• Harlem River Greenway
• Bronx River Greenway
• Hutchinson River Greenway

The plan explores routes both north and south of the expressway, including corridors along Tremont Avenue and Westchester Avenue, while also identifying opportunities to connect major parks like Claremont and Crotona.

Some long-term concepts even incorporate bike routes into potential highway caps, turning what is currently a barrier into a connector.

Protected bike infrastructure can reduce short car trips, improves safety for everyone on the street, and expands the reach of transit by solving the perennial “last mile” problem.

In dense cities, mobility works best when it operates as a layered system:

Expand Citi Bike Borough-Wide

One time, I found myself in the North Bronx with a friend who lived, I thought, nearby. I asked how he got there.

“I walked 50 minutes,” he said.

“It was faster than taking transit.”

Think about that.

In one of the densest cities in America, walking nearly an hour was the most rational transportation choice.

“What about a bike or scooter?” I asked. The scooter zone didn’t overlap with Citi Bike, the bus routing was indirect, and the train required traveling down before going back up.

So he walked.

Just expand Citi Bike across the entire borough already. Just like bus lanes, protected bike infrastructure and bike share often run into political resistance because they require reallocating street space.

But the benefits are well established:

• Fewer short car trips
• Cleaner air
• Faster neighborhood travel
• More affordable transportation options

If We Do All This, Can We Remove the Cross Bronx?

We should abolish urban highways. That’s what I mean when I say we must think radically. The highways should never have been built, so it doesn’t need to exist.

Highways like the Cross Bronx were forced through dense neighborhoods in an era that prioritized vehicle speed over human health. The consequences are still with us: elevated asthma rates, relentless noise, fractured communities, and public space surrendered to traffic that mostly isn’t even stopping here.

But radical thinking only works when paired with incremental action.

Removing the Cross Bronx tomorrow, before viable alternatives exist, wouldn’t be justice. It would cause chaos.

The expressway is also one of the most important freight corridors in the Northeast, carrying trucks to and from Hunts Point Market, which helps feed millions of people across the metropolitan area. We can’t wish that away.

So the question isn’t whether the Cross Bronx disappears overnight.

The question is: what conditions would make its removal a victory for everyone?

A Freight-Only Cross Bronx is Possible In the Next Generation

Imagine a Bronx where buses glide across dedicated lanes instead of crawling through traffic, where few cars are in sight. Imagine a crosstown metro coming every few minutes. Imagine safe, protected bike routes through the borough, wider sidewalks and shorter crossing distances, and mini parks and planters on land once surrendered to cars.

In that world, the number of private vehicles using the Cross Bronx would shrink, not through prohibition,but obsolescence.

And once traffic drops enough, the conversation shifts from “How could we ever remove this?” to “Why are we still dedicating this much land to cars?”

At that point, a realistic intermediate step emerges: restricting the corridor primarily to freight and emergency vehicles.

If that sounds radical, consider that transportation leaders are already exploring similar ideas for the aging Brooklyn–Queens Expressway.

The Cross Bronx will face that same decision.

In Two Generations, We Can Replace It With Something That Heals

It’s hard to overstate how much land the Cross Bronx occupies.

Land is power in a city. And today, enormous swaths of it are devoted almost entirely to moving vehicles through one of the most densely populated counties in America.

We have to be the ones to imagine a different future, one where the Bronx is walkable, with clean air, ample green space, tree canopy instead of heat-trapping asphalt, buses and trains that take people without a second thought.

The freight challenge is the biggest one. Even if the Cross Bronx Expressway were transformed or removed, freight wouldn’t simply disappear. It would need to be managed more intelligently. NYC DOT is already exploring strategies like designated truck routes, off-hour deliveries, microhubs, and better curb management to reduce congestion, improve safety, and limit the environmental burden on surrounding communities.

I imagine a New York City where we have hundreds more urban farms and gardens and can grow more of our own food, reducing the need for so many exports in the first place. That, I admit, may take generations.

It took a few generations to construct our car-dependent environment, and it will take a few generations to rebuild alternatives. But thinking these highways are permanent, inevitable facts of the American city, is a foolish myth to believe. It’s time for us to imagine something better.