MTA restores service on bus lines, keeps G extension

Relief is on the way for city commuters.

The MTA will spend nearly $30 million to add service to more than 30 bus routes and one subway line over the next 14 months, officials announced Thursday. The plans will be formally presented to the MTA's board during committee meetings on Monday.

The shot in the arm to the system comes about two years after the cash-strapped agency slashed $93 million from its operating budget, in part by axing two subway lines and dozens of bus routes.

"The service investments we are announcing today will give our customers more connections to where they want to go, more options on nights and weekends, and more reason to stay out of their cars and take buses, subways and commuter trains instead," MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota said.

The MTA is making an extension to G train service in Red Hook permanent, and adding five new bus routes throughout the city -- marking the first time the agency has added a brand-new bus route since 1999. Brooklyn, which is getting the biggest bump in service, will also have the B39 bus -- which was cut in 2010 -- restored. More than a dozen bus routes will be extended, and 11 routes will make more frequent stops, according to MTA officials.

The added bus stops were planned in areas where riders don't get enough service, Lhota said, and he hopes they will bring more money into the MTA's coffers.

"They're investments because it helps the people get from point A to point B, but it also will increase ridership," Lhota said of the new bus service. "It will also increase the amount of revenue that we receive."

Some of the service additions will begin in October, while the majority will start in January. The new bus lines are scheduled to begin next September.

Officials said they are now able to afford the increases because of a rise in riders and from lowering expenses.

Allen Cappelli, an MTA board member who had called for the agency to add $20 million for increased service all year, said he was "extremely pleased" by Thursday's announcement.

"It's fiscally prudent. It's responsible to our riders, who deserve the best that we can do," he said.

Bill Henderson, of the MTA's Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee, called the new service "a start," but said he was disappointed that train frequency, which was lowered on some subway lines in 2010, wasn't restored. "It shouldn't be like rush hour seven days a week, 24 hours a day," he said.