Adopted at regular meeting 5/16/19.
In March, the MTA surprised our local Community Board with a plan to cut 40% of the M14A and M14D stops below 14th Street — 50% of the M14A stops below Delancey Street.
In the two months since then, Grand Street Democrats engaged diverse community groups, participated in protests, collected petition signatures from our neighbors, spoke out on TV, plastered social media, showed up at community meetings, rallied our local elected officials, and won significant improvements to the MTA’s plan for seniors, students, and people with disabilities.
In addition to the work of our own District Leaders and members, there is credit to go around:
- All of our elected officials — from City Council up to Congress — rallied against the MTA’s proposed cuts and supported community members’ demands to restore all local stops to the M14 bus route.
- Jose Ortiz and the members of The Senior Advocacy Leadership Team (SALT), who started a petition that collected 5000 signatures and organized a successful May Day rally and march for seniors on Grand Street to protest the bus service cuts.
- Daisy Paez, our next-door-neighbor District Leader, who rallied neighbors on the streets and online, stood up at community meetings, and led the May Day rally on Grand Street.
There is also still a lot to keep fighting to change:
- The MTA made no attempt to reach out to the community before announcing its proposed service cuts.
- The MTA “open house” meetings were designed not to encourage but to stifle community input.
- Proposed service cuts were based on agenda-driven metrics, not community needs.
- Our neighborhood is still losing two stops south of Delancey. Those most in need of convenient public transportation have to settle for a compromise victory.
- While the purported goal of service cuts was to speed up M14 buses, NYC Department of Transportation still has no plan to mitigate traffic on Grand Street, which is the biggest factor in slow bus speeds below Delancey.
- Our neighbors above Delancey have lost even more local stops on the M14A and M14D bus routes because of the MTA’s misguided approach to transit policy in the East Village and Lower East Side.
