Mayor Bloomberg’s deadline for handing the city’s franchise bus lines to the MTA came and went last week. Newsday said funding issues had proven impossible to resolve, and that the city has now set Jan. 1, 2004 as the new date for the takeover.

The paper also reported that the city’s contribution to the bus lines will decrease from $100 million to $75 million this year. This will likely mean big service reductions and continued uncertainty for riders and bus managers and workers. Jamie Van Bramar, spokesperson for four of the seven lines, told MTR the companies didn’t know how or when the subsidy cut would play out: "Neither the City nor MTA has had any contact with us regarding the takeover," he said. "We know nothing about how the takeover will affect the systems, our locations, or how or when the process will occur."

Bramar also noted that the private companies were already under severe financial pressure.

The franchise bus companies are not the only ones left in the dark. The Transport Workers Union Local 100 has filed a grievance saying it has been excluded from the negotiations. Some of the issues to be resolved involve the contracts for the workers at the private bus companies. 

Newsday last week called on the city to get moving on the bus deal and chastised it for not taking riders’ interests into account. "The City has a duty to negotiate in the best interest of its underserved bus passengers. So far, there’s little evidence that it is." The editorial also called for the city to transfer its $100 million annual subsidy to NYC Transit, saying that Mayor Bloomberg’s preferred "clean break," which would cut the subsidy at the same time that the lines are transferred, is unrealistic. 

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