A preliminary design for the proposed 34th Street Transitway is due this spring, DOT said officials at a meeting of the transportation committee of Community Board 6 last night.

An article by Noah Kazis at streetsblog.com today had a headline that said, in part, that "CB 6 Is Ready For Busway to Fail."

The article said that committee members "seemed to have already made up their minds about the project," adding that the committee "asked DOT officials a series of questions last night, most of which assumed various forms of failure."

"A formal list of questions from the committee asked whether the environmental assessment would measure the economic loss of the storefronts sure to close if the rapid bus service is implemented, for example, and whether the traffic model would really include the fact that making 34th Street one-way would send drivers circling around the block," the article said.

"While up until now the department has been using three different concepts of how the city's first physically separated bus lanes could be sited on 34th - in a median, along one side of the street, or along both curbs - the design could include elements of all three. 'On each block, we're looking to see which design fits that block the best,' said DOT director of transit development Eric Beaton. That preliminary design will then be plugged into a new traffic model that the department has created to study Midtown Manhattan," the article continued.

"Bob Cohen, a committee member particularly opposed to the project," the article added, "suggested that rather than add a new pedestrian plaza between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, the city should build a set of underground tunnels for those on foot instead. Beaton noted that pedestrians make up a majority of those using 34th Street. 'The goal isn't to move them out of the way for cars,' he said."

The "Transitway" proposal is even more controversial than the Department of Transportation's proliferating bike lanes.

The department claims that it "will create a set of fully protected bus lanes from the FDR Drive to 12th Avenue, as well as pedestrian crossing islands and sidewalk expansions to address pedestrian safety needs....These routes will be upgraded to Select Bus Service routes with on-street fare prepayment, transit signal priority, and real time arrival information....this set of improvements will improve transit service on both crosstown and commuter buses, make 34th Street safer and more pleasant for pedestrians, simplify traffic patterns, and provide the infrastructure to accommodate the crosstown travel growth expected from new development (such as at Hudson Yards, Moynihan Station, or First Avenue Properties.)."

The department argues that the project will provide a 20 to 35 percent improvement in travel time and expanded sidewalk space for pedestrians and says it is expected to be implemented in 2012.

It says that there are 17,000 passengers a day on local buses, another 16,000 on commuter buses and 10,000 passengers on more than 500 tourist/charter buses each day. It did not say anything about school buses.

34th Street is most notable for Macy's and the Empire State Building.

A November 5, 2010 article by Jill Colvin at DNAinfo.com noted that midtown residents attending a DOT forum on the project "once again slammed the plan," noting that the proposed project "would create bus-only lanes all along 34th Street and reduce other vehicle traffic from the current two-way street to only one-way" and that the DOT has estimated that it will "shave about seven minutes from the average river-to-river trip."