Suffolk launches on-demand buses in southern Brookhaven Town

Using Suffolk County’s on-demand bus service is kind of like hailing a shared ride with Uber or Lyft, with a few differences — not least that instead of a car, a 15-seater cutaway bus comes to pick you up.

The county launched the service within a roughly 14-square-mile zone in southern Brookhaven Town late last month, allowing riders to hail a bus with just a few taps of a phone app, or by calling, for $2.25 a trip. At the same time, it canceled the 77 and 77Y bus routes that had operated for years in the same area with relatively low ridership.

Part of a nationwide "micro-transit" trend that Nassau County is also testing out in less-trafficked areas, Suffolk’s new zone comes as it prepares to add additional zones in Smithtown and Islip in the coming months. Two other on-demand zones have existed for several years in Southampton and East Hampton.

Commuting to his job at Stop and Shop in Medford on Wednesday, Dan Umanzor, 31, said he’d been using the service for a week and thought it was an improvement on the fixed routes.

“[The old bus] ran late and I'd be late to work sometimes," Umanzor said. "But with this, I order it, I get it within 15 minutes, and it’s been having me actually early to work lately."

The detours to drop off other riders didn’t add much extra time, since there has never been more than three other people on the bus, he added.

The county said the South Country on-demand zone is currently served by four vehicles and had 131 riders on Wednesday in Patchogue, East Patchogue, Medford and Yaphank. That’s about 71% of the ridership of the fixed routes it replaced, though ridership is expected to grow as word gets out.

County Executive Edward P. Romaine said the change, implemented Oct. 24, is not a cost savings for the county but rather is aimed at increasing convenience.

"At the end of the day, I want to offer the residents of Suffolk County a better public transportation system and less traffic on our roads, and buses are important to that," he told Newsday.

How it works

When Newsday took several trips Wednesday, pickup wait times ranged from 16 to 39 minutes using the official SCT On Demand app. For someone used to Uber, that might seem long, but it’s not necessarily worse than the old fixed routes, which ran every half hour at peak times but only hourly the rest of the day.

Upon pickup, the driver confirmed the rider's first name, then followed a route displayed on a tablet, which was generated by Via, a software contractor. Pickup and drop-off locations can be anywhere within the zone.

Elisa Picca, Suffolk County’s chief transportation officer, said her team conducted extensive outreach before rollout, especially aimed at senior citizens less familiar with ride-hailing services.

Angie Ribisi, who was hosting an afternoon bingo game at the Pinehurst senior apartment complex in East Patchogue on Wednesday, hadn’t used the new service yet but said it sounded similar to one she is familiar with: the county’s paratransit service, or Suffolk County Accessible Transportation, for people with disabilities. 

"It works good," Ribisi, who is in her 70s, said of SCAT, though she noted it costs $4 per ride and requires booking a day in advance, whereas the new on-demand service is cheaper and requires less planning even if its range is shorter.

The on-demand buses are available to people without disabilities, but they are also accessible (they look virtually identical to the SCAT buses).

Expansion plans

The new on-demand zone comes in addition to a similar zone in Southampton, in operation since 2021, and another in East Hampton, operating since 2024.

By the end of the year, the county plans to add another on-demand zone in Ronkonkoma, where it would supplement rather than replace existing fixed routes. There, it would finally provide a public transit connection from the Long Island Rail Road station to MacArthur Airport. After that, an on-demand zone is planned for Kings Park.

Romaine said the county has been collecting feedback — mostly positive — from riders and is open to tweaking the system. He hopes to add even more on-demand zones, but doing so is contingent on state aid.

While state grants helped launch the new service, overall, operating aid is largely determined by state funding formulas. Suffolk County Transit gets significantly less than other systems relative to its population size, but above average relative to ridership.

Romaine said ridership will grow if the system improves — and that takes investment.

State aid provided about 42% of the bus system’s operating budget last year, according to budget documents, while county general funds provided about 35%; the rest was covered by fares, advertising and federal grants.

"It’s a chicken or the egg question," Romaine said. "And my attitude is, I want to build a better public transit system."

By Peter Gill

peter.gill@newsday.com