Stretching across the heart of Midtown Manhattan, 34th Street is one of the busiest and most congested corridors in the entire city. As part of an effort to accelerate crosstown bus traffic, STV provided preliminary engineering and design services for the implementation of select bus service – a limited stop service – from the East River to the Hudson River. Looking to establish faster, more convenient, crosstown Select Bus Service (SBS) through this heavily traveled, two-mile corridor, the New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) in conjunction with MTA New York City Transit (NYC Transit) retained STV to develop engineering design services for offset, bus-only lanes to reduce congestion, increase ridership, and improve travel times.
A crucial component of this endeavor was the development of an ambitious traffic model that gauges future traffic conditions along 34th Street to determine how select bus service would be used along the corridor. STV performed traffic and pedestrian simulations and studies and gathered data for the computer model.
