Here’s a story we never saw coming. NICE Bus, Nassau County’s spit-and-duct-tape replacement for the Long Island Bus, is facing a budget gap and wants to implement service cuts. And the cuts are steep, Newsday (paywall hidden) reports that the Veolia, the company that runs NICE, wants to reduce service by more than 20 percent on some lines.
NICE debuted to great fan fare earlier this year. At the time, it was the Nassau County’s cheap-o way of sticking it to the MTA, which terminated their Long Island Bus contract last year after the Nassau county refused to pay for even half of the service. NICE bus was supposed to be Nassau’s chance to show just how inefficient the MTA was; they charge the same $2.25 fare as the MTA, and they even restored service to areas that the MTA had axed in previous years.
Of course, we were pretty skeptical of the whole thing, saying:
Sounds great, right? Well, for now it is. Of course, the true test will be seeing how Nassau keeps those buses up when costs start rising.
Well surprise! It’s hasn’t even been four months yet and already Veolia is struggling in the same way that the MTA was. Here’s the big secret: it seems that no one in Nassau thought about how to pay for the bus. They were so busy trying to win a PR battle with the MTA that they pushed out a really flawed plan that is coming back to bite them.
It’s simple economics: you can’t keep 2008 era service and 2010 era prices in a 2012 world. The price of gas costs more, bus driver salaries costs more. Something has to give. Either Nassau pays more money or the bus system has to cut service. (No matter what the crazy people at the Long Island Bus rider’s union thinks. They seem to live in the same fairytale land as their politicians.)
Anyway, this doesn’t end well, and the only group that comes out looking good is the MTA, which gets to loudly say “WE TOLD YOU SO.”
