The MTA will remove more than a dozen stops from the M14 bus route as part of its highly contested plan for a Select Bus Service route along 14th Street, the agency said Thursday.
The MTA said it has decided to remove the local stops in order to introduce speedier crosstown bus service on 14th Street to help travelers during the "L" train slowdown.
The agency also wants to install kiosks so passengers can pay their fares before boarding at any one of three bus doors.
The now-finalized plan, which is slated to go into effect in June, calls for removing 17 M14 stops and adding one. The plan will take away five fewer stops than initially proposed. The MTA said the bus stops would be 675 feet apart on the Lower East Side.
The M14 runs east-west along 14th Street, and north-south in the East Village along Avenue A and Avenue D.
In a statement, an MTA official called the plan a compromise with residents, advocates, and elected officials, and said the agency will monitor the rollout, but residents have protested plans to reduce the number of stops in the East Village. Older riders and people with disabilities said that would cause them hardships.
"Select Bus will take, let's say, for example, seniors, people with disabilities, parents with strollers too far off away from their stop and they would have to walk back, and that can be quite an inconvenience," Daisy Paez, a Grand Street Guild resident, said in March.
The MTA says the Select Bus Service route will cut travel times. They hope it will reverse a decline in ridership on the line by one-third since 2007.
The MTA is introducing the Select Bus Service route as it is cutting back evening and weekend service on the L subway line for tunnel repairs. The L runs beneath 14th Street in Manhattan.
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