Expressway: A statistic in the bus cutbacks

It is 6:55 a.m. on a recent Saturday. While the kids sleep and my husband is starting his shower, I am standing at the bus stop in East Meadow, waiting for the N48.

I don't know precisely when it will arrive; the timetable states only the time it will roughly cross my stop en route to the Hicksville train station. But that's OK. I've been doing this Saturday-morning routine for 16 years: Get on the bus, then board a train to Manhattan to teach classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Suddenly it is 7 o'clock. No bus in sight. Then 7:05. I start to calculate the "connecting with the railroad schedule" in my head. At 7:10 I begin to sweat. I tell myself I'll be OK without breakfast and a breath before class. Finally, the bus arrives a few minutes later and I heave an audible sigh to some birds and a nearby dog walker.

This uncertainty will hit many others hard starting April 8. That's when the Nassau Inter-County Express, as Long Island Bus is now known, cuts back or eliminates service on four low-use routes. A week from today, the N48 line will not run on Saturdays at all. No other bus will come early enough to get me to my Hicksville train on time, and, for the first time in all these years, I'll have to get a car ride to the station.

It's troubling not to be able to rely on mass transit. Before my family moved to Long Island from Brooklyn in 1995, my husband and I used it for everything -- even our "baby handoff," when we met at the 23rd Street subway station so one parent could go home with our daughter while the other started a later shift at work.

He and I learned how to drive based on New York City bus routes. We timed our trips door to door for each subway line. Our umbrella stroller had more mileage than an old Buick.

In retrospect, I suppose I have never fully acclimated to a county synonymous with car pools and minivans. While one of us usually commutes to the city for work via mass transit, the other is home on the Island with our car. Years of Little League, summer recreation programs and birthdays could be supported only that way.

Now I am a statistic, among the 3 percent of unique daily riders who will be "significantly impacted," as reported in Newsday, when Nassau's bus system is beset by these "adjustments" starting tomorrow. I realize that the bus company is at the same time adding expresses to and from Jamaica, and restoring service to Jones Beach. But in a time when riders need the system most, isn't there something our county could do to accommodate all of its workforce?

I am not wealthy or one of the working poor. I'm just another commuter trying to put food on the table. I look to government to protect the way I get to work so I can pay taxes and buy the goods that support the local economy. I'm tired of being cast among the forgotten Long Islanders. We're here, we ride and, as they say, we vote.

So, for those with later personal schedules, there will be alternatives on other bus routes. As for me and my fellow riders -- the nurse's aides, construction workers and retail employees who normally catch the early N48 on Saturdays -- we have a week left to establish our "plan B."

Reader Lauren Isaacson-Lev lives in East Meadow.