Mayor Mamdani advanced a project Wednesday to install a dedicated busway along Tremont Avenue in the Bronx — the borough's first — serving 39,000 daily riders on a corridor where buses crawl at 5 mph and 630 people were hurt in crashes over four years.

A week after Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a 50-corridor bus acceleration blueprint, Mamdani moved Wednesday to put a shovel-ready project in the ground: a dedicated busway along Tremont Avenue in the Bronx — the borough's first.

The corridor carries roughly 39,000 daily bus riders and ranks among the city's slowest, with some routes averaging 5 mph. The plan calls for an eastbound busway from Third Avenue to Southern Boulevard, a westbound busway from Southern Boulevard to Belmont Avenue, and a shared bus-and-bike lane running eastbound from Webster Avenue to Third Avenue. Safety improvements at eight intersections — shorter pedestrian crossing distances, geometry changes to slow turning vehicles — are also part of the package.

The safety case for the corridor is stark. From 2020 through 2024, 630 people were injured in crashes along Tremont Avenue, including 46 severe injuries and four deaths, according to city data. NYC DOT's own record on busways — dedicated lanes enforced by bus-mounted cameras and NYPD — puts the speed benefit at up to 60 percent and the crash-injury reduction at up to 45 percent. Cars can use the lanes to access adjacent driveways and businesses but must take the next available right turn.

Mamdani framed the Tremont project alongside a feedback portal the mayor's office opened Wednesday for three Brooklyn corridors — Flatbush Avenue, Utica Avenue, and Church Avenue — where 13 routes combine to carry about 150,000 daily riders. "New Yorkers should not lose hours of their lives sitting in traffic on a bus," Mamdani said in a statement. "These projects will make commutes faster, make our streets safer and return precious time to nearly 200,000 New Yorkers every single day."

The Tremont busway would be the second city busway announced under Mamdani, following a similar corridor plan for 34th Street in Midtown advanced last month. Both move under NYC DOT authority, which controls street design on city roads, rather than requiring the lengthier MTA capital-program process. The city says construction is targeted for later this year.

The broader bus-speed question is a money-and-physics problem: buses in New York average 7.5 mph systemwide — slowest in the nation — because they run in mixed traffic on streets that were not designed to prioritize transit. Dedicated lanes change the physics. Whether the city can move quickly enough on enough corridors to shift that average is what riders on Tremont Avenue, and the 13 Brooklyn routes next in line, will be watching.