Buses

As the MTA Board prepares to receive a proposal for the 2011 budget and upcoming fare hikes, the agency could pull its funding for Long Island Bus, Newsday reports today. Alfonso Castillo reports:

According to transit advocates and Metropolitan Transportation Authority sources, the MTA, as part of its preliminary 2011 budget, will demand that Nassau County and/or New York State come up with $40 million more to keep Long Island Bus running.

Without the MTA’s subsidies, which account for nearly a third of the overall LI Bus budget, the system “would literally be obliterated to almost nothing,” said Ryan Lynch, spokesman for the nonprofit Tri-State Transportation Campaign, which advocates for regional bus service.

The MTA already axed 11 Long Island Bus lines this year to save $1.6 million toward its $800-million deficit. Transit advocates say without the $40 million the MTA had been paying toward the system, LI Bus could afford to operate only a small number of its 47 current lines…

Nassau County, which owns LI Bus, pays just $9.1 million toward the agency’s $133 million budget. The state pays around $44 million, and the MTA and fare-paying customers pick up the rest of the tab. The Suffolk County Transit bus system received no financial aid from the MTA.

Out on the Island, transit advocates fear for the future of this vital service that keeps tens of thousands of cars off the roads. If these cuts go through and if the state and county do not foot the bill, entire bus routes could be lost. “[The cuts] would be a couple of routes here and there,” Lynch said. “It really raises the question as to whether Nassau County is even going to have a bus system anymore.”

Mitchell Pally, a Long Island representative on the MTA Board, hedged his bets. “The relationship between the MTA and Nassau County is continuing to be re-evaluated by both sides,” he said. “The ability to be able to come to an agreement is very, very important to everyone.”

While the Nassau County Executive slammed the MTA and the “job-killing payroll tax,” the truth remains that the MTA is paying far more to operate this service than Nassau County or the state of New York. Without operating assistance of higher fares, the service will not be feasible, and someone must step in to save it.

Around the corner from me, former bus stops were clearly marked as such. At other points, though, the shelters sat empty with no signs and no buses passing by. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

For some reason or another, city buses throughout America carry a bad reputation. In far-flung cities across the nation, buses are what the lower classes take as transportation because they cannot afford the luxury of a car. Forget the cost savings and the environment benefits of a full bus; these vehicles are looked down upon by citizens who don’t use buses and the politicians who are supposed to be subsidizing their operations.

In New York, then, as service cuts sent shockwaves through the MTA’s transit system, it is no surprise that bus riders were the most confused. While Transit sent out waves of employees to help straphangers navigate a subway system with a newly-routed M line and no V or W trains to be had, bus riders were left to fend for themselves amidst a sea of gleaming CEMUSA bus shelters and some hastily and haphazardly hung pieces of paper proclaiming “This location is no longer a bus stop.”

As part of their efforts at assessing the MTA’s effectiveness in introducing the cuts to the public, the Straphangers Campaign sent waves of volunteers to the far reaches of the city. The evidence was anecdotally in nature, but it served as an indictment of the MTA as it attempted to guide passengers through the elimination of 570 bus stops and numerous routes.

The biggest problem was one of information or the lack thereof. Bus riders, said the Straphangers in a release, were confused by the service changes and didn’t understand the alternate routes. Along 9th St. in Brooklyn, for example, neither the B77 nor the B75 were to be found, but a new route — the B61 — took its place. Transit said it did not have “sufficient space” at bus stops to post comprehensive information about the replacement routes, and instead, the Authority tried to hang up unobtrusive, but also unobvious, signs about the new info. Go to the website for a rundown, Transit officials said.

Meanwhile, at other routes — an old B48 stop at Franklin Ave. and Sterling Place — the stop had been eliminated, but you wouldn’t know that from the signage. In fact, nothing alerted riders as to the location of the nearest stop, and with the old schedule and route map still posted, people could be forgiven if they thought a bus might show up. Contradictory indications — bus stops with the so-called lollipop poles still standing, no signs indicating the nearest stop, outdated route maps — filled the city.

This problem of an information deficit doesn’t belong only to the MTA. Because the buses are surface transit, they also fall under the auspices of New York City’s Department of Transportation. DOT is responsible for maintaining the bus stop signage and the shelters that dot the city. When two agencies are in charge of coordinating, no one is in charge of coordinating, and those second-class buses and their former stops are left twisting in the wind. It’s hardly surprising that numerous stops still appeared in service, and they probably will look as they do for weeks.

As I walked up Union St. today, I passed a bus shelter at 5th Ave. The bus guide-a-ride, such as the one above, was approximately five feet east of the shelter and not visible to those walking up the hill that gives Park Slope its name. Neither the MTA nor DOT had hung signs up in the physical shelter itself, and except for a police squad grabbing a bite at the Uncle Louie’s stand across the street, the road was empty. The now-defunct B71 could have been just a few blocks away for all anyone knew.

The physical reminders weren’t the only illustrations of the city’s disregard for buses. As of this writing, the maps posted on the MTA’s map page are out of date. Download the Brooklyn map, and you’ll find the pre-service cuts schematic. Considering the minimal amount of time it takes to upload a PDF, this delay in updating the website — to which the MTA has told users to go for up-to-date information — is inexcusable. Elsewhere on the website, PDF files of the new routes had already been posted, but users will intuitively navigate to the first page with old information. This confusion just compounds the problem.

Eventually, someone will come along to determine the future of these spaces. DOT and the MTA say they are working fast to update the signs. Eventually, the markings of the old bus routes will fade away. The road space will probably revert to below-market-rate parking spots when they should become areas for bike parking. The CEMUSA shelters might remain as on-street advertising and semi-useful street furniture. They’ll serve as stark reminders of bus stops that aren’t and of the way we regard buses and their riders. Even in a city of two million daily bus users, the system remains an afterthought at times, left to the aged and poor who need it most and now don’t have it.

Commuter van stops, such as the one shown here in Queens, could become more prevalent. (Photo via flickr user AllWaysNY)

In five days, the MTA will pull the plug on numerous bus routes throughout the city, and all of a sudden, denizens of neighborhoods with little subway access will find themselves without the buses upon which they rely for everyday life. To fill the void, New York City will try to turn to the so-called dollar vans that have long operated below the radar. The plan, announced yesterday, is a controversial one with labor opposed to it and politicians wary of an unregulated industry, but it just might be the first step toward a better public-private partnership for transit in New York City.

The details are, for now, simple. The city will start a year-long pilot program under the aegis of David Yassky and the Taxi & Limousin Commission that will add three to six new commuter van lines in Brooklyn and Queens. The vans will replace buses lost to the MTA’s service cuts, and the mayor — who erroneously claimed that “nobody has been out there screaming for more money for the M.T.A. more than I have” — hopes the vans will encourage transit use. “The issue here is not whether it’s more expensive or less expensive,” he said at a press conference. “It’s whether the service exists or not.”

This plan is not without drawbacks and controversies. First, as Fernanda Santos of The Times notes, because this is, in essence, a privatization plan not run by the MTA, subway-bound commuters will have to pay for the two-dollar van rides and then pay for the connecting MetroCard swipe as well. The buses provided a free transfer to other New York City Transit-operated modes of travel.

More pressing though are the concerns of labor. The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1056 represents bus drivers in Queens, and already its officials have proclaimed that private commuter vans are “clearly not the answer.” According to union president I. Dankee Miller, a lack of industry regulation and oversight leaves passengers exposed to safety risks. In essence, the union is concerned that a successful commuter van program will jeopardize the livelihood of its bus-driving members.

On the other hand, the van owners and drivers themselves recognize the need for more government city and regulation. Noting that vans can never replace buses, one owner bemoaned the union protests. “It is unfortunate that the unions have this on an either-or situation,” Hector Ricketts said.

For now, though, the labor battle is neither here nor there, and this first step should be viewed as a victory for transit advocates who have been pushing the city to expand its potential offerings. Over at Cap’n Transit Rides Again, Cap’n Transit has been pushing for expanded commuter van offerings as the MTA’s service cuts have come into view. Today, he pens a detailed post about the new transit offerings. He writes of the plan — which also includes a $6 York Ave. taxi share program:

It occurred to me that this could be the culmination of a longstanding plot to privatize bus service, or some kind of brinksmanship to get real transit funding out of the legislature, but I think the best explanation is that the Mayor has come to the realization that Silver and Sampson will never properly fund the MTA. He sees it as a managerial challenge to provide good transit for the city, and if he gets to boost private companies and weaken a union or two, so much the better.

I have a few concerns with this plan, though. The first is the suitability of the routes. If they’ve been cut for low ridership, how does the Mayor expect them to work? Jitneys and taxis have lower overhead, but they can’t conjure up profits out of thin air. If the routes were eliminated because they duplicated other routes, then the jitneys will probably succeed. If they are the only transit route to a given place, they stand a good chance of failing.

The second concern is that this would widen the existing divide between the “haves” (Manhattanites with $6 share taxis) and the “have-nots” (outer borough residents with $2 vans). It would establish two tiers of transit service to correspond to the existing two tiers of taxi service, and re-establish the two-fare zone.

This would be okay only if these two pilots eventually merge with the MTA into a single system that would include a range of well-regulated options overlapping throughout the city, from private taxis to share taxis to jitneys to scheduled buses, eventually accepting Metrocards or their smart card replacements and allowing free transfers. Most importantly, it would include quality van service for upscale passengers who are willing to pay a premium to avoid lowest-common-denominator transit.

For those of us who want to see commuter van service emerge as a viable complement to MTA bus services, the Cap’n lays out a list of seven conditions which must apply. These range from tight oversight by Yassky and the TLC; the ability of vans to duplicate existing bus routes; an eventual free transfer between vans and NYC Transit-operated subways and buses; and dedicated lanes for high-occupancy public transit vehicles. The end goal would result in better transit for everyone.

For now, this new plan is but a first step. David Yassky has hoped to expand taxi-like offerings in the outer boroughs, and the commuter vans can accomplish this at a cost to riders that’s lower than a ride in a yellow cab. This move also helps the city pick up the slack that is sure to emerge from this weekend’s service cuts. Only with proper expansion, oversight and control, though, will commuter vans emerge as another viable transit modality in New York City.