Nassau and Suffolk bus riders seeing piles of snow at stops

Some bus stops in Nassau and Suffolk counties remain buried in snow and inaccessible to riders nearly two weeks after a major storm hit Long Island.

On Wednesday, Narendran Buthenkalam walked onto the westbound Hempstead Turnpike to wait for a Nassau Inter-County Express N6 bus. The stop itself, at Brooklyn Avenue, was covered by foot-deep, blackened, rock-hard snow.

"It's dangerous, I know," Buthenkalam said.

But the corner where he might have retreated from the traffic was also blocked by snow. So he waited for one of Nassau's busiest bus lines on one of its busiest roads.   

Stops on the southern portion of Suffolk Transit’s Route 1, following Route 110 from Halesite to Amityville, appeared clear of snow Wednesday, but the westbound Route 6 Walt Whitman Shops stop on Veterans Memorial Highway was snowed in. A passenger who waited to get on the bus there in the afternoon faced a choice: wait on the highway shoulder, the entryway for a nearby shopping center, or perch on the icy crust that surrounded the stop. She chose the ice.

Snow-filled shelters

Long Island’s bus passengers are far outnumbered by its rail passengers, who make the Long Island Rail Road the busiest commuter railroad on the continent, but they still total in the tens of thousands each weekday.

Some of them now face streetside shelters that are filled with snow, or offer limited or no access to the street because of snow or ice. Meteorologists say temperatures warm enough to melt the snow and ice won't come anytime soon. The next time Long Island's daytime high could top the freezing mark is next Wednesday, when it will approach 33 degrees, according to the latest forecast from the National Weather Service. Various forecasts put Wednesday evening's low across Long Island in the teens.

A Newsday reporter on Wednesday visited stops on the NICE N6, 24 and 27 lines and on Suffolk Transit’s Route 1; a photographer visited a stop on Route 6. Many of the N6 stops with shelters had been cleared, but the N24 stop at Herricks Road and Jericho Turnpike near Garden City Park was surrounded by as much as 3 feet of snow. Many N27 stops appeared inaccessible from Charles Street, near Mineola, north on Roslyn Road at least as far as Lincoln Avenue, in Roslyn.

Clearing bus stops of snow and ice and making them accessible for passengers is a shared responsibility, said Mark Smith, a NICE spokesperson. The system is responsible for clearing the stops, but sidewalks near and leading up to the stops are the responsibility of the property owner or businesses on the property, Smith said.

"With a limited staff, NICE teams have worked daily since the late January major winter storm to clear our bus stops along major thoroughfares systemwide, including our most frequented stops and by passenger request," he wrote in an email to Newsday.

An ongoing effort

NICE has cleared more than 1,200 bus stops, Smith said, starting with transit centers and the heaviest used stops before focusing on travel needs of customers with limited mobility, then returning to lower use stops and customer waiting shelters.

He said higher-use stops along Hempstead Turnpike had already been cleared. The ones Newsday visited, he added, were lower use. Nevertheless, Smith said, "NICE will have a team out tomorrow along those stretches."

Nassau County spokesperson Chris Boyle, in a text message, said: "We are aware of the situation and have been in contact with NICE bus who has assured us they are diligently addressing any issues."

In Suffolk, county spokesperson Michael Martino said for 2,224 bus stops, "crews continue to clear snow from bus stops across the county. If there is a location that needs to be addressed, residents are asked to call the county’s 311 line to report the issue."

But responsibility is complicated for the 302 stops with shelters. Of those, 136 are owned by Suffolk County, 95 by advertisers contracted by the towns where they are located, 19 by the New York State Department of Transportation and 51 by private companies. They, not the county, are responsible for clearing the snow from their shelters, Martino said.

One Suffolk rider said he hoped the stops would be cleared soon. On Monday in Port Jefferson Station, Alexander Rivera, 20, of Sound Beach, stood on the shoulder of Route 112 near the Chereb Lane station, waiting for the bus to take him to work. This was a stop without a shelter, just a sign protruding from the snow.

Rivera judged standing on the road to be safer than trying to stand on the sheath of ice and snow behind it. Still, "I’ve been hit by chunks of ice in the chest" as vehicles passed, he said. "It’s unsafe for anyone taking public transportation."

By Nicholas Spangler

nicholas.spangler@newsday.comspanglernewsday

Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.