Red Hook, Brooklyn residents renew push for express bus service

NEW YORK — People in Red Hook, Brooklyn are renewing a push to bring express bus service to their community. They've been advocating for the service for 30 years and want to take advantage of a rare opportunity to make it happen.

"Manhattan is right there"

Maria Nieto struggles with mobility and sometimes has to use a wheelchair to get around. She often relies on buses to get to the subway, in order to commute into Manhattan.

"We really have very limited options. We are a transportation desert," said the longtime Red Hook resident.

Neighbors can see lower Manhattan right across the water, but say getting there often takes more than an hour and several transfers.

"The tunnel, it's right here. Manhattan is right there. So to have a bus that does a loop through Red Hook, makes three or four stops, or a few stops along the houses, loops back around Van Brunt just like the 61 does, and you take a right and you're in Manhattan," explained local activist Nico Kean.

The neighborhood is home to two NYCHA complexes comprising the Red Hook Houses, the largest housing development in Brooklyn. Many low-income residents don't own cars and must rely on the MTA. Their decades-long push for express bus service has fallen on deaf ears, however.

"Thirty years, Red Hook has been advocating for it. I know that CB 6 was involved in 1994," Kean told CBS News New York reporter Hannah Kliger.

Neighbors hope Brooklyn Bus Network Redesign offers

Recently, neighbors formed the Red Hook Coalition for a Bus to Manhattan , a renewed push in light of the MTA's ongoing Brooklyn Bus Network Redesign . The MTA touts it as an ambitious plan to improve bus travel.

"It was the ideal time before changes are made to call for that bus to Manhattan," said Kathy Park Price, a Brooklyn Organizer for Transportation Alternatives.

They met near a local park which stands in the shadow of the ventilation tower for the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel. It sends exhaust fumes down into the neighborhood skate park. Members of the coalition say this is especially unfair because they get all of the pollution from the tunnel, and none of the benefits.

"To be so close and yet so far, it's absolutely frustrating," Nieto said.

MTA responded with a statement that reads: "We continue to study a variety of transit options to and from Red Hook separately from the Brooklyn Bus Network Redesign."

The neighborhood has a stop along the NYC Ferry, but activists say it's too far from NYCHA residents and doesn't allow transfers to the MTA, making it an additional cost.

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