City Council asks MTA to add transit options outside Manhattan

With more New Yorkers taking jobs outside of Manhattan, the City Council is urging the MTA and Department of Transportation to add quicker ways for them to get to work.

"More workers are commuting from Brooklyn to Queens, from the Bronx to Westchester, from Staten Island to New Jersey or Brooklyn than ever before and yet our city's transit infrastructure has not kept pace," transportation committee chair James Vacca told officials from both agencies Tuesday. Vacca added that many people feel compelled to drive to work because of a lack of mass transit options, saying, "If it means that a person is going to take three buses, that person is likely to get into a car."

The MTA and DOT said they were tinkering with ways to ease congestion, and were eyeing extra bus service in the outer boroughs, including adding Select Bus Service along Webster Avenue in the Bronx, Utica Avenue and Brooklyn and making changes to buses that go to LaGuardia Airport, such as creating bus lanes or collecting fares off-board.

The MTA is still mulling a plan to bring Metro-North service to Penn Station, but only after its East Side Access megaproject to bring Long Island Rail Road trains to Grand Central is completed in 2019.