MTA Misses Yet Another Deadline For Takeover

Culminating a 40-year battle for commuter transportation equity, the city has put off an April 30 deadline and scheduled the transfer of three privately-operated Queens bus lines to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to this summer.
The takeover would affect the 33 Queens bus routes operated by the Green Bus Lines, Triboro Coach Corp., and Jamaica Buses Inc.
The 13 routes operated by Queens Surface Corporation since 1937 were already acquired earlier this year.
City Council Transportation Chairman John Liu, who has strongly monitored the transfer of ownership, remained unconvinced of this deadline.
“It is not the bus line takeover that is important for local riders,” he declared, “but the rapid delivery of better buses and a safer, more reliable service. Unless administrative accountability is factored in, the mayor’s words will have proven hollow.”
Queens’ train-starved commuters have ridden on privately operated bus lines for nearly one hundred years.
As part of the acquisition program, the city has promised that all outdated private buses will be replaced by the Transit Authority (TA) with new units at an estimated cost of $350,000 per bus.
An estimated 650,000 Queens commuters use public and privately-owned buses per day. Currently, there are well over 100 bus routes in Queens: 63 TA bus routes operating alongside 46 privately-run routes.
Local commuters and elected officials fear that once the transfer is completed, the TA will attempt to cut operating expenses by eliminating, or modifying, repetitive public or private routes that criss-cross or run alongside each other.
A study conducted by Community Board 7, in northeast Queens, showed that three private bus routes operated by Queens Surface Corp., traveled along parallel routes with six TA routes.
Hardest hit by bus route changeovers will be seniors, the handicapped and school-bound youngsters.
Commuters in CB 7, 8, and 11, with nearly the same local street mileage as Manhattan, must use 23 bus lines to reach a single subway station (Main Street, Flushing) to get to work.
Victor Ross is a freelance writer.