Breaking: DOT Decides Against Yo! Bus Stop on Essex Street

“This probably isn’t the end of the road.”

Of course not! Essex Street between East Broadway and Grand Street remains a desolate place — if anything, it is most surprising that the prospect of putting a bus depot there has taken so many decades to come up! Now is the time to recognize the value of this space in the context of our community and to take action to fully integrate it into our neighborhood. With that in mind, I advocate opening the Essex Street gates of Seward Park! Details can be found here: http://spbuzz.org/articles/gates_of_seward_park.php .

Now that this is over I want to share some of my impressions from being iintimately involved with the opposition to Greyhound’s Bus stop at Seward Park.
To me, this is a story of great injustice inflicted on a local community:
First, the outrageous proposal that a large 28/day bus stop should be outside Seward Park. Then, the huge community opposition, the resulting CB3 vote’No,’ the NYCDOT’s total disregard of this community input, the relentless pressure the community put upon elected officials, the 3 elected officials who finally did an 11th hour rescue attempt, then still no response from DOT, a final push- and only 3 hours before Greyhound’s first 3 PM bus, DOT agreed to rescind Greyhound ‘YO’ Bus’s permit .
A truly fearsome tale of how NYCDOT so brazenly ignored community concerns. But not only them – Why did the local community have to go through so much torment convincing other NYC officials and elected officials that a curb side bus service should not destroy our gentle little park and neighborhood? Why did we have to fight so hard just for survival of this special place?
I will never understand this…..