Archives | 2001

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: STATEN ISLAND UP CLOSE; Bus Roulette: Add Four Routes, but First, Cancel Seven

By JIM O'GRADY

As express bus service on Staten Island is preparing to take four steps forward, it has just taken seven steps back.

The city plans to add two new express bus lines on the South Shore in August. At the same time, Atlantic Coach Expressways, a private company, will get a $2 million subsidy to run two new lines in that area. That would bring four new routes to some fast-growing neighborhoods.

But 3,000 Staten Island commuters lost seven express bus lines when Academy Bus Tours, another private company, stopped all service in the borough on June 22.

The company had bid against Atlantic Coach Expressways for the subsidized lines. But when it lost, said Melanie McEvoy, an Academy spokeswoman, it decided to shut down its four South Shore and three North Shore express bus lines.

''Financially, it didn't make sense,'' Ms. McEvoy said.

That has left Dawn Pettersen, a Mariners Harbor resident, to play a daily game of bus roulette. She used to take a $6 round trip on an Academy bus from the northwest shore to her job at a textile company on 36th Street in Manhattan. The one-hour trip took her over the Goethals Bridge and up the New Jersey Turnpike before entering Midtown Manhattan by the Lincoln Tunnel.

Now she tries to catch one of the small, irregularly scheduled express buses that a few enterprising firms have sent out to fill the transit gap. These buses follow the New Jersey route. But if one doesn't come, she must embark on a two-hour commute by city bus, ferry and subway.

Or, she can catch a city express bus that crosses Staten Island to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, then up the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway into the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. These buses must then battle crowded streets to get to Midtown. She said the trip took two hours.

Ms. Pettersen's solution was to send one of the city's North Shore express buses through New Jersey. Al O'Leary, a transit spokesman, said the city was studying that idea at the request of Borough President Guy V. Molinari. JIM O'GRADY

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A version of this article appears in print on July 15, 2001, on Page 14014008 of the National edition with the headline: NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: STATEN ISLAND UP CLOSE; Bus Roulette: Add Four Routes, but First, Cancel Seven. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe