The Bronx is the northernmost of New York City's five boroughs and is home to nearly one-fifth of the city's population. It's a vibrant district with some of the city's most famous attractions, such as the Bronx Zoo, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Yankee Stadium. Despite its popularity, the Bronx bus network hasn't changed substantially in decades, delaying the start of the Penn Station Access project to expand Metro-North Railroad service in the Bronx. In the early afternoon of December 22, 1984, Bernhard Goetz shot and killed four young African-American men from the Bronx on a New York subway train.
This event sparked a discussion about how to improve public transportation in the area. Since then, there have been several initiatives to revitalize and improve the Bronx with respect to key indicators, such as population, employment, education, rent burden, and poverty. The State and City must track the use of funds to ensure that the Bronx receives a fair share of aid that corresponds to the serious damage it has suffered. On average, from March to August, 70 percent of Bronx zip codes had hospitalization rates that were in the highest third of all 177 zip codes in the city.
Despite these expansions, there was a gradual decline in subway maintenance and fewer trains began to arrive at their destinations on time. When analyzing the correspondence between COVID-19 health outcomes in the Bronx and median household income and percentage of residents belonging to minority groups, an association with more serious health impacts was observed. Given the large proportion of renters, lower household incomes, and higher unemployment rates in the Bronx, the county should receive significant relief from programs. Before the pandemic, the Bronx had the highest number of pending, scheduled, and executed evictions of any county, even though it had fewer rental units than any other county except Staten Island.
The City University of New York has two community colleges there (Bronx Community College and Hostos Community College) and one college (Lehman College). Characteristics that reflect economic and social inequities such as lower household incomes, higher poverty rates, jobs less conducive to remote work, and a higher proportion of minority residents make the Bronx particularly vulnerable. The Bronx had the highest rates of hospitalizations and deaths in the city, although it did not have the highest case rates. It would recover billions of dollars in travel time, reduce road congestion (save more time and reduce freight costs), improve quality of life for millions of workers, counter growing pressures, open up new areas for intelligence to grow, transform air travel logistics, improve environment, and provide great stimulus for construction industry.
The revitalization and improvement of the Bronx with respect to key indicators such as population, employment, education, rent burden, and poverty will serve as an important benchmark to measure City's success in achieving goal of an equitable recovery for all New Yorkers.
