Alison Hardwood is a health care worker who says she must take the B41 from her home in Flatbush to Methodist Hospital.

“I stand at the bus stop for a long period [of] time till I can get a bus, see the bus coming,” Hardwood said. “And I gotta work sometimes pretty early, sometimes I gotta work late, sometimes I get docked from my paycheck. It’s horrendous.”

What You Need To Know

  • A report from Riders Alliance and The Pratt Center found most of the 1,800 bus riders surveyed on Flatbush Avenue are Black, women and low-income 

  • Ninety-one percent of riders suffered ill effects, including being fired because of bus delays, the report said

  • Five percent of riders say they would do more shopping and dining on Flatbush Avenue if the bus ran more smoothly, according to the report

She’s one of the 132,000 daily bus riders along Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.

A new report from the transit advocacy group Riders Alliance and the Pratt Center for Community Development lays out the hardship faced by those commuters, who are not alone. 

“The vast majority, 91% of bus riders reported that they experienced at least one negative consequence of bus delays,” Sylvia Morse, the senior program manager for research and policy for the Pratt Center, said. “So one in three bus riders has lost pay, been reprimanded or been fired as a result of bus delays.”

The survey found that it disproportionately affects Black, women of color and low-income riders, two out of three riders endured long waits in bad weather and 85% would do more shopping and dining along the corridor with better service.

The report also found 87% supported bus lanes.

On Tuesday, riders and supporters of a bus lane gathered along Flatbush Avenue to demand the city's Department of Transportation to move faster with an effective proposal.

“There’s a lot of really ambitious options and improvements they can do,” Jolyse Race, senior organizer at Riders Alliance, said. “And we don’t want those ambitious projects to get watered down.”

In June, the DOT proposed three types of bus lanes for the northern end of Flatbush: curbside, offset from the curb with a lane of parking and center running.

Now the DOT says it’s coming back to the community with a new proposal, saying in part, “We look forward to continued public outreach, design refinement, and completing our traffic analysis in consultation with the community.”

But advocates hope they listen to these riders.

“We're hoping that they use the findings of this report to go with the most ambitious project for the northern part of Flatbush Avenue,” Race said. “Then, start looking really in depth at the central and southern part soon.”

The DOT expects to present its new proposal in the coming weeks and chose a final bus lane design by the spring.