A City Council member who notoriously helped kill an enhanced bus lane that would have created faster commutes for tens of thousands of constituents has repeatedly driven or parked in the bus lane on that very street, Streetsblog has learned.
Bronx Council Member Oswald Feliz's Honda Accord has been dinged three times for driving or parking in a bus lane since 2021 — including twice in the bus lane East Fordham Road. He also parked or drove once in the Main Street busway in Flushing, but he challenged the ticket and won.
Feliz's car has also been caught speeding in school zones six times since 2020, the most recent time on Sept. 28 in Maspeth, Queens, according to city records. He's fully paid up — except for a $115 ticket for parking in front of a fire hydrant that was slapped on his car on Dec. 7.
Confronted by Streetsblog with the violations, which include two after he was elected, Feliz said the Honda Accord was "shared," but provided few details. He said that the driver of the car — he did not say who it was — had learned a lesson after the final ticket.
"The last bus violation which occurred in 2022 — reiterated one thing: Stay off bus lanes," Feliz texted to this reporter.
In his time on the Council, Feliz has been a staunch opponent of the Department of Transportation's plan to improve the existing Fordham Road bus lane, where speeds and ridership have collapsed since 2014, partly due to drivers who park in the bus lane.
DOT said that its proposal would have boosted bus speeds by as much as 20 percent. But Feliz and a handful of powerful interests in the Bronx opposed it, pushing instead a compromise to merely repaint the existing curbside bus lane and, ironically, expand the use of bus lane cameras.
And that did help — marginally. According to the MTA, bus speeds on Fordham Road have increased from 6 miles per hour to 6.3 miles per hour — but they're still well below the Bronx average of 7.2 miles per hour.
Feliz is in rare company in collecting three bus lane violation tickets. The MTA has said that 80 percent of people who get a bus lane ticket never get a second one and an additional 12 percent who get a second ticket never get another one. Only 8 percent of drivers with two tickets got a third one.
New York City Transit President Richard Davey, who advocated for the bus lane project throughout 2023, was fed up.
"I can’t put it more plainly: if you’re not a bus, get out of the bus lane — or you will pay for delaying New Yorkers trying to get where they need to go," he said. "The current bus lanes don’t work because drivers consistently block them. There’s been success with automated camera enforcement, and thankfully we know most drivers correct their behavior, but cameras alone aren’t enough to deliver better, faster, safer bus rides."
