As of June 27th, Queens College students, faculty, and staff have been faced with the discontinuation of the Q34 bus by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).
Well-known for being a commuter college, the QC community has used five main bus routes to get to and from their residences including the Q25, Q25 LTD, and Q34. These bus routes have connected residents from areas like Flushing, Jamaica, College Point, and Whitestone to QC.
However, since June 29th, the Q34 and Q25 LTD bus lines have been discontinued.
Starting from Flushing, the new Q25 bus route starts from Poppenhusen Avenue and 119th Street in Flushing and travels through Kissena Boulevard and Parsons Boulevard to reach the southern bus terminal in Jamaica.
Commuters traveling from Jamaica Center and the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) at Sutphin Boulevard and Archer Avenue have one available bus route to QC — the Q25.
According to the MTA info website, “The Queens Bus Network Redesign is a historic effort to bring new and improved transit service to New York’s largest borough. We’ve worked iteratively over the last five years to develop and refine proposals that meet riders’ needs, modernize service, and improve operations for our workforce.”
The discontinuation was part of the MTA Queens Bus Network Redesign. The redesign plan began as a draft in 2019, finalized in December 2023, and approved by the MTA board in January 2025.
Facing the discontinuation of the Q25 LTD and Q34 bus routes, students as well as other commuters find it difficult to attain a bus on time with little congestion. Finally, as of June 29th, the first phase of the project took action followed by phase two routes which began on August 31st.
“800,000 Queens residents depend on our buses every day, and we owe it to them to find new ways to speed service. No matter what else is going on in New York right now, the new MTA is listening to our customers and delivering bus speed improvements – whether it’s by transformative redesign of the bus network, Automated Camera Enforcement, or congestion pricing,” said MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber in a June 29th ABC7 press release.
To assess equitable access to transportation in Queens, the MTA introduced an Equity Evaluation, which was included in the Proposed Final Plan Addendum and approved by the MTA Board on January 29th. This assessment utilizes three equity tiers identifying equity concerns defined by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Equity Evaluation described the Q25 and Q34’s shared routes along Kissena and Parsons as a “redundant service.” The Q25 is meant to absorb the Q34 to “improve service on one of the Queens routes that serves the highest number of residents living below the poverty line.”
“The adjustments made in this addendum are a direct result of our engagement with the community. We have developed our proposed new network, which will add 124 total routes, including 94 local routes and 30 express routes. Of the 124 total proposed routes, we made changes or adjustments to routing, frequency, span, and route type or route number,” said Rick Hajduk, project manager of the redesign, in a January 22nd QBNR Townhall.
While this new restructuring of bus routes is aimed to create an easier network for commuting, it remains to be seen if this redesign can help decrease travel times and improve the quality of transportation.
The QC community as well as other Queens commuters can reference the MTA website for further information on modified, re-routed and discontinued bus routes.
