Mayor Closes Deal On Four Remaining Private Bus Lines
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The Bloomberg administration has reached a $25 million deal to acquire the city’s four remaining private bus lines, allowing the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to operate all the fleets by the end of February.
Yesterday’s agreement completes a nearly three-and-a-half-year effort by the administration to acquire the assets of all seven of the city’s private bus companies, which provide about 115 million rides a year on more than 1,200 buses along 82 local and express routes in every borough except Staten Island.
The city had missed half a dozen self-imposed deadlines to take over all of the private bus lines because negotiations failed to resolve concerns over the fate of both union and nonunion workers operating the private fleets.
The impasse caused union workers at Command Bus Company and Green Bus Lines to strike last December. In mid-August, a state Supreme Court judge in Queens stopped the transfer of the four companies’ assets after nonunion workers filed a lawsuit seeking to protect their jobs, benefits, and pensions.
The agreement resolves some of those concerns, though a spokesman for the four companies, Jamie Van Bramer, did not return several requests for comment.
Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday that the pensions of union employees working for the four companies acquired in the deal – Green Bus lines, Command Bus, Jamaica Buses, and Triboro Coach – would be paid by the MTA, a move that would compound the burden faced by the authority to pay off pension liabilities owed to its current employees.
A spokesman for the mayor, Jordan Barowitz, said the issues regarding nonunion workers had not been resolved.
The city had subsidized the bus lines since 1974, but with little return on their investment. Over the years, the fleets deteriorated along with service.
The city will continue to pay about $200 million a year to operate the fleet, but with the expectation of better results.
New buses that have been sitting idle in depots will soon be deployed to replace the private lines’ aging fleets. Earlier this year, the MTA Bus Company, the subsidiary created to operate the private lines, ordered 284 new hybrid electric buses.
