NICE Bus debuts to promises, skepticism

About 1 a.m. Sunday, the last-ever MTA Long Island Bus trip and the first-ever Veolia NICE Bus trip crossed in their respective runs between Jamaica and Hempstead.

The moment was the culmination of a challenging year for Nassau's bus system, which was caught up in a clash between politicians and transit officials about how to best provide bus service to the county's 100,000 weekday riders during an economic crisis.

Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano's solution to the problem came to fruition Sunday with the official launch of the Nassau Inter-County Express -- the county's newly privatized bus system that Mangano and Veolia Transportation officials vow will provide better service than did the MTA, and at a far lower cost.

"I appreciate the MTA's service. Nassau County residents just cannot afford to quench the MTA's thirst for more of our hard-earned tax dollars," Mangano said Friday -- the MTA's last weekday spent getting Nassau bus riders to and from work. "Residents can afford NICE Bus service and riders can depend upon it."

Skeptics have a hard time believing that Nassau will be able to deliver on its promise of better service at a lower cost to taxpayers while Veolia manages to turn a profit. They predict Veolia eventually will resort to drastic service cuts and steep fare hikes.

"We want them to be successful, but in order to do that, there's going to be a need for stronger support from elected officials," said Ryan Lynch, of the Tri State Transportation Campaign, a nonprofit group that has advocated for the system's riders. "It's all about waiting and seeing."

Bus finances a concern

Sunday morning at the Rosa Parks Hempstead Transit Center -- a hub for many Nassau bus lines -- Kira Maxwell, 20, of Hempstead, said that service "really can't get much worse" than it had been under MTA.

Maxwell, a pharmacy technician student who is a regular on the N35 and N15 lines, said she is worried about accountability now that a private company is running the bus system. "Where the money is going, how it's being spent, we deserve to know that."

But the chief concern for the half a dozen other riders interviewed Sunday morning was that new management would raise fares -- even though the agreement between Veolia and the county freezes the $2.25 rate through 2012.

In 1973, the county consolidated several private bus companies and contracted with the MTA to operate them as the Metropolitan Suburban Bus Authority. The system, later renamed MTA Long Island Bus, became one of the country's largest suburban bus systems, providing more than 30 million passenger trips each year.

As the MTA worked to integrate its various bus systems into one operation about four years ago, LI Bus grew in priority and profile at the MTA. But at the same time, the system's financial problems had begun, as Nassau moved away from fully funding its bus system to providing the MTA only a designated subsidy, which got smaller and smaller as the years passed.

By 2011, Nassau was providing $9.1 million toward the system's $141 million budget, and the MTA said it no longer would make up the difference. Unless Nassau came up with $26 million more, the MTA said it would be forced to eliminate half of LI Bus' routes.

Mangano balked, and chose instead to put the system up for bid to private operators. And so, in April, the MTA voted to end its deal with Nassau after 38 years.

"The MTA is proud of the service we provided for nearly four decades at Long Island Bus and thank our employees for their dedication to the people of Nassau County," MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin said. "As promised, we worked hard to facilitate a smooth transition and have transferred a well-maintained bus fleet."

Cautiously hopeful

In June, Mangano chose Veolia Transportation, the largest private bus provider in the United States with more than 200 contracts, to take over. Despite Veolia's reputation for success, critics questioned the company's ability to run the system with a county contribution of $2.5 million a year.

Veolia, which has set a $106 million annual budget for NICE Bus, has said it will find more efficiencies than the MTA, and will rely largely on other government funds, fares and new ad dollars to fund NICE Bus.

"Anybody who is the least bit open-minded will see that this is a better way of getting it done," said Michael Setzer, the new chief executive of NICE Bus, who acknowledged that the more government money Veolia gets, the better off riders will be. "The difference is that for a given amount of dollars, we'll put more service on the street than the MTA would. . . . But in the long run, it is all about the resources."

Now, with the MTA having literally handed over the keys to Nassau's bus system, even those who are skeptical of Mangano's privatization say they have little choice but to wish for the best.

"I hope, for the taxpayers of Nassau County and the riders and everybody who depends on the bus system, that this is the magnificent deal that the county executive is portraying it to be," Lynch said. "But history has shown that to support mass transit of any kind, you need to be able to fund it."

With Nicholas Spangler