MTA to speed up more bus commutes with green-light technology – New York’s PIX11 / WPIX-TV

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MANHATTAN Every day in New York, commuters cram onto city buses for what often is a slow, gridlocked, frustrating trip. But thats slowly been improving with technology being used along a handful of routes, and its being promised a greater deployment to speed things up. The technology has already sped up travel times from five to 30 percent.

Now, the Department of Transportation is announcing 10 more bus routes are getting GPS technology, known as Transit Signal Priority or TSP, to make red lights shorter and green lights longer as busses approach intersections.It's being promised for lines in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island.

The MTA is promising that the average improvement of 18 percent faster commute times will roll out on the routes, including theM60 from Manhattan to LaGuardia and the Q44 from Flushing to Jamaica.

This is not exactly new, though. It's already been used very successfully elsewhere. London has a dozen times as many buses using the technology; Los Angeles three times as many. New York, though, dwarfs those transit systems.

It all started with a pilot program along Hylan Boulevard on Staten Island more than ten years ago. Then, it started rolling out across the city in 2012.

Transit Signal Priority is a GPS-type interface between buses and lights at intersections, where buses signal to the lights as they approach; it then speeds up the red light or extends a green to keep a bus moving along its route.

The MTA claims car commuters see very little impact, but bus riders are enjoying commutes that have been sped up by a third.

We talked to commuters along the B44 route in Brooklyn, which already uses the technology.

"Its just too slow most of the time, Annilyah Esprit said. I just take the train!"

Commuters who want to give the bus another chance can check out the technology in action by riding the lines that already have it, including:

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MTA to speed up more bus commutes with green-light technology - New York's PIX11 / WPIX-TV