Volvo Cars said on Monday it was planning to raise around 20 billion Swedish crowns ($2.3 billion) in the IPO, down a fifth from its previous plans.Įuropean and U.S. Pearlstein said, “there are few things more important to our recovery than fast, frequent and reliable bus service.At the current price, Volvo Cars would be valued at just over $18 billion, down from as much as $23 billion it had expected at the top of the pricing range. Pearlstein said.īus ridership has rebounded to between 1.4 million and 1.5 million daily riders, which is about 65 percent of prepandemic levels, according to the M.T.A. “For a mayor who prizes equity, saving bus riders time should be at the top of his agenda,’’ Mr.
This year, they had pledged to install or improve another 28 miles of bus lanes and busways.ĭanny Pearlstein, a spokesman for Riders Alliance, an advocacy group for transit riders, said he was frustrated by the stalled Fifth Avenue busway and said that business leaders view the avenue primarily as a “retail playground” rather than a vital transportation corridor. Gutman has said that expanding the city’s network of bus lanes was a priority, and the agency completed more than 16 miles of bus lanes in 2020, which city officials said was a record for a single year. The presentation’s arguments echo those of the Fifth Avenue Association, a real estate-backed organization that has been campaigning against the original plan and whose chairman is a Vornado executive who oversees retail leasing for the company. “Do not implement proposed new turn restrictions that will confuse and congest.” “Leave the current busway as is - two dedicated bus lanes only,” the slide show says. The presentation cites concerns that the city’s plan would imperil retail stores and hotels that have yet to recover from the pandemic. Buses, it says, have transformed the avenue “from a street for the people to an express highway.” It calls for rerouting some buses off Fifth Avenue. In Vornado’s slide show presentation, which was obtained by The New York Times, the company argues that the city should continue to allow continuous car traffic down Fifth Avenue, but reduce the number of car lanes from three to one. Rather than require all personal vehicles to exit the busway onto the nearest side street, the proposal allowed cars to travel longer distances on Fifth Avenue before having to turn off.įifth Avenue currently has two bus lanes, no bike lane and three lanes for cars. This summer, following pressure from retailers, the city provided a new plan that allowed greater car access and truncated the busway by 11 blocks.
If other drivers wanted to access the avenue, they would have had to do so from a side street, provided they turned off the avenue at the next opportunity. The city had wanted to bar most vehicles, except for buses, bicycles and emergency vehicles, from driving continuously along Fifth Avenue, between 34th and 57th Streets. de Blasio is delaying is a more car-friendly version of his original proposal. Adams declined to comment on his intentions for the Fifth Avenue busway. Before the pandemic, 75,000 bus riders made daily trips on the avenue.īut a spokesman for Mr. More than 40 different bus routes serving all five boroughs run down Fifth Avenue, and congestion there can delay service citywide. Busways severely restrict local car traffic as a way to increase bus speeds and reliability. In June 2020, he announced he would turn over 20 miles of streets to buses, installing 3.5 miles of busways along five major thoroughfares and an additional 16.5 miles of dedicated bus lanes. de Blasio does not oversee the buses, which are operated by the state-controlled Metropolitan Transportation Authority, he does control the city’s streets.
The transportation department has been reconsidering plans to put a protected bike lane on a main thoroughfare in Sunset Park, Brooklyn according to one of the two people familiar with the mayor’s decisions. de Blasio’s ambivalence about the Fifth Avenue plan comes during the deadliest year for traffic fatalities during his eight years in office and as some of his other transportation priorities appear to have fallen by the wayside. We’re going to beat those records this year, and this busway will be part of that legacy.” A spokeswoman for the mayor, Danielle Filson, said, “This administration installed a record number of bike lanes, bus lanes, and busways last year - in a budget crisis and a pandemic-shortened installation season. de Blasio’s mayoral campaigns.Ī spokesman for Mr. The developer, the Vornado Realty Trust chief executive Steven Roth, is one of New York’s most prolific donors, though city records indicate he has not donated to Mr. The mayor’s change of heart comes as he is actively piecing together a bid for governor of New York State.