Where to Find Room for More Tour Stops in Lower Manhattan?
Community Board 1 (CB1) is welcoming a new tour bus operator to Lower Manhattan, but asking City regulators to locate its stop anywhere but Broadway. In a recent resolution, CB1 noted that “tour bus operator Aurora Tourism Services [doing business as New York Iconic Cruises], a new minority-owned business, has submitted an application for a bus stop that they can use in the Financial District.” The same measure indicated that “the location of the bus stop that was assigned by the Department of Transportation [DOT] is on the west side of Broadway, north of Trinity Church and across the street from 100 Broadway.”
This stretch of Broadway between Thames and Rector Streets already hosts one MTA bus stop, along with stops for two other tour operators: Gray Line and Big Bus. Between the bus line on the right side of the street and a bike lane on the left, there is room for only a single lane of through traffic.
“There is concern about the potential for sidewalk crowding due to people waiting for the bus to arrive and when a group exits the bus,” the CB1 resolution noted. The same measure indicated that “CB1 supports tourism and new minority owned businesses like Aurora Tourism Services. However, the demand that is being scheduled on that block of Broadway frequently results in congestion as the buses stop for four to six minutes each to drop off and pick up passengers.”
CB1 concluded by “imploring DOT to consider assigning Aurora Tourism Services to a bus stop on Trinity Place rather on Broadway, in order to avoid CB1’s concern about adding to the traffic congestion that is already too common on Broadway.”
In 2018, the City Council considered but did not enact legislation to limit the number of tour buses on local streets. According to a report that year from the Fix NYC advisory panel, “the number of tour buses licensed to operate in [the City] has risen from 54 in 2003 to 237 in 2016,” the last year for which complete statistics were available.
In dramatic contrast with almost every other type of license issued by the City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, there is no statutory limit on the number of permits that can be issued to sightseeing bus companies. And the fee charged by the City for these lucrative franchises is surprisingly meager: a maximum of $100 per bus for a two-year permit. This appears to mean that the first two passengers who board a Gray Line double decker bus on January 1 (each paying $54) have more than satisfied the company’s obligations to the public treasury for the year.