Impending UWS Bus Stop Move Sparks 96th Street Traffic Worry

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — With construction set to start soon on a major development at West 96th Street between West End and Broadway, an Upper West Side community board presentation from the project managers sparked major worries over the added traffic that the work would cause on one of the neighborhood's busiest streets.

Earlier this year, a new building permit was filed for a 23-story residential tower to be built on a lot encompassing 266, 268, and 270 West 96th Street.

In a recent Community Board 7 Land Use Committee meeting, representatives from the incoming building's real estate developer, Fetner Properties, gave an update on where the project stood.

The worries from the Upper West Side community board kicked into gear during the mention that the M96 bus stop that sits on West 96th Street between West End and Broadway would be temporarily moved to make room for construction.

While the plans are not yet fully finalized, Fetner properties said that the bus stop would be moved slightly east on the 96th Street block into where the usual bus layover area is. The bus shelter at the original location was already removed last week, and the bus sign will be removed this week.

The announcement immediately prompted the UWS community board members to ask the logical question of where the layover area would then be relocated to.

"There are always two or three buses just sitting there and there's not enough room if you eliminate the layover," said community board member Richard Asche. "It would be of importance of us to know, where the layover is because as you know, traffic in that area is already horrendous without that construction."

The 96th Street block between West End and Broadway is busier than most for a number of reasons, but chiefly for being the route to the nearby West Side Highway entrance, the buses, and its proximity to the 96th Street subway station.

Asche's question of where the bus layover area would be moved to wasn't answered immediately, but one of the people overseeing the tower's construction eventually did give some clarity.

"The new layover area is suggested, not confirmed by the MTA yet, but in our correspondence, they are suggesting to move that to the north curb (96th Street) between Broadway and Amsterdam," said the construction manager.

"That sound's concerning," Richard Robbins, a community board member, immediately said.

There is also a bus stop on West 96th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam.

Representatives from Fetner Properties added that a pedestrian walkway would be built in front of the construction on the south side of West 96th Street between West End and Broadway.

"I'm really worried about what the impact of traffic will be if you're blocking 96th Street, and people are going to be going onto side streets, and if it's going to create massive gridlock and endanger community members," Robbins said.

Fetner Properties did assure the construction would never fully block the east-bound lands on West 96th Streets. The representatives also pointed multiple times to the ongoing construction that has taken place on the corner of the same West 96th Street for the past couple of years, saying they planned to follow the same game plan.

The major difference, though, as pointed out by the community board members, is the M96 bus stop did not have to be moved to make room for that construction.

You can watch the full Community Board discussion below. The bus stop conversation starts around the 21:40 mark.

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