An order by Governor Pataki in January to contract a private bus company to run two of four new Staten Island South Shore express bus routes led to an Island-wide commuter crisis this month when Academy Bus Tours terminated all 13 of its SI routes after being passed over for the deal. Announced on June 11th and in effect last Friday, the end of Academy express Manhattan service left the City, NYC Transit and an estimated 2,100 commuters scrambling for alternatives. Approximately 3/4 of Academy commuters live in the South Shore where the four new routes will not begin until summer's end. 
    NYC Transit President Larry Reuter and NYC DOT head Iris Weinshall held a press conference last Thursday to outline their contingency service plan that begins today. Atlantic Express Coachways, the South Shore contract winner, will run 2 of Academy's former routes via New Jersey. For the rest, NYCT will add up to 13 buses to existing routes, some of which parallel Academy routes. 
    The uproar among bus riders and elected officials over the new schedule brings long-standing Island bus transit problems into sharp relief: 

• Commuters now forced to switch to NYC Transit routes face a doubling or tripling of their commute as they trade a 45 minute ride via the NJ Turnpike, and Lincoln Tunnel with the clogged Gowanus Expressway. Advocates, officials, and civic groups have called on NYC DOT for years to redesignate the Gowanus HOV lane into an HOV-3 or bus-only lane to speed transit trips (MTR #234, 298). 
  
  
• Transit President Reuter told SI Borough President Guy Molinari that the agency would have to study whether it could redeploy some NYC Transit express routes through New Jersey. NYC Transit has used the excuse that it does not "do interstate service" to defuse pressure to begin offering buses for Staten Islanders to the end of the Hudson Bergen Light Rail line in Bayonne, NJ (MTR #271). 
  
  
• Islanders and their state and city reps pressed for additional NYC Transit South Shore service last year because private operators like Academy were seen as unreliable. Experience in other boroughs raise questions about whether a private operator under City contract will be an improvement (MTR #252). 

Pressure Rises in Albany for South Shore Buses - June 26, 2000

Groups Call For Gowanus Bus Lane - August 20, 1999

NYC Scuttles S.I.-N.J Bus Talks: 'We Don't Do Interstate Service' - May 29, 2000

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