The MTA is taking its first steps to make riding its buses easier for parents.
Transit officials will test allowing unfolded strollers on seven bus routes in the Five Boroughs starting this week, authority leaders announced.
The six-month pilot, which was first reported by news site The City, will have dedicated spaces for the baby carriages on the selected routes without removing space currently reserved for riders with disabilities.
The change comes after an organized push by parents for the MTA to relax its blanket ban on unfolded prams aboard its buses.
“When I first arrived, I said we need to try a stroller policy that works for customers and it can’t take years, we need it now,” said New York City Transit President Richard Davey in a statement Friday.
The routes include the M31 from Midtown West to the Upper East Side, the B1 from Bay Ridge to Manhattan Beach in southern Brooklyn; the Q12 from Flushing to Little Neck in Queens; the Q50 from Flushing to Co-Op City in the Bronx; the Bx23 also in Co-Op City; and the S53 and S93 between Staten Island and Brooklyn.
Starting this week, transit workers will carve out a new space for one open stroller on buses along those routes, which will cover 142 buses by early October.
Depending on the vehicle model, the MTA will either remove seats next to the rear door or flip up two side-by-side seats to create the new space. In either case the area is completely separate from existing priority seating for riders with disabilities, according to officials.
The buses will have a stroller decal on the outside near the front door and at the new storage area inside. On other routes, the old rules still apply and straphangers have to fold up their carriages to board.
The move comes nearly six months after MTA leaders convened a working group of parents, caregivers, accessibility advocates, and operators to take a fresh look at the agency’s strict policy.
“Caregivers who use strollers, many of whom rely on transit to get around our city with their children, have been heard,” said Christine Serdjenian Yearwood, the founder and CEO of the parent advocacy organization UP-STAND.
In February, parents launched an organized push to get transit leaders to change their rules, testifying at the MTA’s monthly board meetings demanding they ease the ban, with some calling it “a total nightmare” and “insane” for people transporting young kids.
Moms detailed their experiences of struggling to collapse the carriages while getting onto crowded buses and holding their young ones at the same time.
Transit agencies in other cities like Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Dallas allow unfolded strollers on buses as long as there’s enough room for other passengers and depending on the cart’s size.
But MTA leaders worried that the strollers would take up too much space and could be a safety hazard during sudden stops because they aren’t fastened in place.
Disability advocates also fired back, raising concerns that the MTA take away their rights for space on the bus.
One East Side mom who sat on the advisory panel praised the MTA for quickly responding to parents’s demands and working with different groups on launching the new effort, but she said that officials should expand the program.
“I will give a lot of props to the MTA, they really reacted in lighting speed to this,” said Danielle Avissar. “This is a step in the right direction.”
“I don’t think that it’s quite enough of what New York City needs, but time will tell and we’ll see how this rolls out,” said Avissar. “This problem will never go away for New York. My kid will walk, but there’ll be a mother behind me, and a mother behind her.”
