On summer days, New Yorkers stand on sun-baked corners, waiting for buses that may never come. They shelter in the sliver of shade provided by a street light or building and tuck themselves into doorways to hide from the unrelenting heat.
Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers rely on the nation’s slowest buses for transportation – and the vast majority of them wait for the bus at an unsheltered, unshaded bus stop.
Extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related mortality in New York City. Summer temperatures continue to break records, and heat waves are expected to triple in number by the 2050s.
Heat exposure kills hundreds annually, and Black residents are twice as likely to die of heat stress as white ones. New York’s bus stops are an under-recognized source of heat exposure for vulnerable New Yorkers.
While climate change has led policymakers to propose new ways to cool homes and businesses, public policy has neglected bus stops. Solutions that will keep bus riders safe and cool are readily available and beneficial to the city as a whole – such as building shelters, planting temperature-cooling street trees, and installing dedicated lanes that speed buses and shorten waits. Today, just one in five bus stops in New York City has a bus shelter, only one in three stops is near the shade of trees, and only 1.87% of streets have a bus lane.
Transportation Alternatives collaborated with the NASA DEVELOP Environmental Justice team to analyze summer daytime temperature data at New York City bus stops using thermal heat imaging satellites. We found that the hottest bus stops are 14.5°F hotter than the coolest – and more likely to be located in Black, Latino, Asian, and high-poverty communities, in Queens and the Bronx, and in the communities with the most bus riders.
Additionally, we analyzed the characteristics of New York City’s hottest and coolest bus stops to find trends in the built environment. We found that the coolest bus stops are more likely to have a bus shelter and be located near street trees, green space, or a body of water.
Based on this data, we identified 100 bus stops and three bus routes for high-priority intervention and outlined recommendations to keep bus riders safe and cool at these stops.
The average bus stop in New York City lacks a shelter, bench, and countdown clock.
Nowhere in America is the “urban heat island effect” – when limited green space and widespread asphalt traps heat – worse than in New York City, where heat kills at least 350 New Yorkers every year. With the slowest buses in the nation and wait times often stretching over 30 minutes, sweltering bus stops are a critical, overlooked, and increasingly pressing risk factor. New York City’s average summer temperature has risen five degrees in the past fifty years and is expected to rise nearly a degree with each coming decade.
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TA identified 100 bus stops and three bus routes in need of priority intervention. The 100 high-priority stops were identified by five characteristics: excessive heat, poor bus service, few if any alternative transit options, no bus shelters, and predominantly serving New Yorkers who depend on the bus or are low-income, Black, or senior citizens. The three high-priority bus routes are those with six or more priority stops along their route. (See methodology for more information.)
Of the 100 priority bus stops:
Transportation Alternatives recommends that New York City’s hottest bus stops be prioritized for the installation of bus shelters and the planting of street trees and greenspaces, as well as bus route improvements to minimize wait times and to improve the experience of waiting.
Specifically, to keep New Yorkers safe and cool while waiting for the bus, TA recommends:
Ask your elected officials to accelerate bus shelter installation and tree planting near bus stops to ensure all bus stops are safe and cool, and to minimize wait times on the hottest bus routes with car-free busways and protected bus lanes.
Take actionWe mapped every bus stop in New York City using publicly-available data. Find the stops that you use the most and see how they compare to other bus stops around the city.
The 100 priority bus stops are some of New York City’s hottest, and also have significantly poor bus service, few alternative transit options, little green space, and no bus shelters.
The Bronx
Brooklyn
Queens
Staten Island
The three priority bus routes are the routes that intersect with six or more priority stops.
The 100 high-priority bus stops were selected based on five criteria:
Public data was accessed in the spring of 2024, and recent updates may not be reflected in our analysis. About 7% of bus stops were left out of our analysis due to duplicate stops or stops removed or added between 2023 and 2024 – these stops are fairly evenly distributed across the city and should not significantly affect our findings.
More information and details can be found in the NASA DEVELOP team’s Technical Report.
Original research is the backbone of every Transportation Alternatives advocacy campaign. These reports introduce innovative new street designs, import best practices from around the world, and most importantly, hold New York City decision-makers to the highest standard of efficacy.