NICE bus route eliminated in Freeport

Eleven of the Nassau Inter-County Express or NICE bus routes were cut on Sunday despite last minute efforts by Nassau County Legislator Laura Curran to save them. Four of the eliminated routes are within Curran’s district including Freeport’s N62.

In a letter sent to Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano, Curran suggested that the almost $4 million in higher sale tax receipts for the fourth quarter of 2015, could be used to save the bus routes now costing roughly $3.2 million a year to run. “Even if we used $1 million we could keep the buses running through the winter,” she wrote.

But the routes were not saved. NICE has been looking for ways to cut its $7.5 million budget deficit. Beginning this month, NICE raised its fares by 25 cents, bringing its deficit down to $6.7 million. These cuts save an additional $3.2 million. “That leaves a $3.5 million deficit,” Curran said.

The NICE website said routes were eliminated because of “low ridership and budget deficits,” and affects about 2 percent of the 100,000 riders a day or about 2,294 riders per day.

But Curran said that “those eleven lines are important to people who use those routes – non drivers, the disabled, students.”

The N62 in Freeport, for example, has one of the highest rates of connectivity and transfers to and from the Long Island Rail Road, according to Long Island Vision’s website.

Forty-three percent of N62 riders transfer to or from a train or another bus and over half of all riders depend on NICE bueses for employment purposes, according to the Tri-State Transportation Campaign [TSTC] website. A 2013 study commissioned by TSTC showed that the NICE system contributed more than $191 million to Nassau’s economy.

Meanwhile Curran said she is exploring other ways of finding money to fund the buses. “A few years ago the legislature instituted license fees of $1.62 million collected through the Office of Consumer Affairs,” Curran said. “Perhaps that money could go be used for the buses. We’ll have to see.”