Traveling By Bus On Dark Riverside Drive

A cautionary note: this blog post may be too New York-centric, unless you plan to visit soon and use our mass transit system.

On my way home from grocery shopping at the Target store in East Harlem on January 19, I took the crosstown M116 bus that travels along 116th Street to the West Side, where I live. The bus had a video screen mounted to the roof that faced the passengers and announced all of the stops both visually and by automated voice (female) as well as what buses and subways to transfer to.

I was hoping that the M5 bus, which I take often and that goes up Riverside Drive, would have similar screens installed.Some of these buses had roof-attached screens but they did not display transit and stop information;others didn't have the screens at all.The ones that did only featured info that told riders about bus etiquette such as not putting one's feet on the seats or not talking too loudly on their cell phone.

The thing that concerns me the most is that the street corners on the Riverside Drive route is so dark it's hard to read street signs from inside the bus. And since the drivers frequently fail to announce the stops, the on board message screens would be a big remedy to this problem.

Another remedy would be placing lighted cross street-name signs on Riverside Drive like the ones in the 34th Street/Herald Square area. Maybe the people who live in the buildings along Riverside Drive are too hoity-toity to have such signs on street corners.