NYU is slowly but steadily revealing more of its ultimate expansion plans for completion by 2031. They’re epic in scope, and while most of the activity remains below 8th Street, there’s always the chance that their desire to grow will have them heading our way, as if we didn’t already have enough of that going on. Here’s the plan.
With the forthcoming 15-month L train shutdown edging closer, the MTA and the city’s Department of Transportation have decided to convert Manhattan’s 14th Street into a busway three months ahead of the April 2019 shutdown.
The two agencies will launch the M14 Select Bus Service on January 6, 2019, in hopes that riders will give it a test-run before the actual shutdown begins. “By implementing the M14 SBS months before we start the L train tunnel repairs, we hope that customers will take the opportunity to try our buses and see how the 14th Street busway can factor into their commutes once we start work fixing the L train tunnel,” said New York City Transit President Andy Byford.
Between 5 a.m. and 10 p.m., 14th Street between Ninth and Third avenues eastbound and Third and Eighth Avenues westbound will be restricted to bus traffic only. The new SBS route will complement the current M14A and M14D buses and combined, the three routes will be able to handle roughly 84,000 passengers per day, notes amNY.
The SBS route will start off with five stops between First and Tenth avenues that match up with subway transfer points and will run every two minutes during morning and evening rush hours. After its initial launch, the SBS route will be extended east to the planned Stuyvesant Cove ferry terminal on the East River to accommodate ferry customers from Brooklyn. This is expected to happen shortly before the beginning on the shutdown.
Another pandemic victim: Babu Ji on 13th St. It was the sixth restaurant to have a go of it in the space in the past 25 years.
Here’s a guide from the Union Square Partnership.
The magazine shop and discount store on the north side of 14th west of 5th are both gone. What is next?
Joyce Leslie, “the store where you send your daughter to dress like a hooker,” has been gone for a while on the corner of University and 8th. A replacement has finally been named: CVS. So the neighborhood gets yet another alternative to the surly hellhounds at Duane Reade.
Thanks to Charles Stimson for purchasing and sharing these four photographs from the city archives. Shot for a tax survey in 1939, they show our block and are full of fascinating detail if you click on them to blow them up and look a little closer. Wouldn’t you love to stop off at Marty’s Luncheon for a sandwich? As New York races into the future, it’s quite a thrill to be able to look back and remind ourselves how things used to be.