Nassau’s bus cuts impact longtime Oceanside resident

Longtime Oceanside resident Joan Lee is blind. Born with a hereditary disease known as retinitis pigmentosa, she first noticed a decline in her vision at age 17, when she was a summer camp counselor.

Lee, now 73, rarely mourns the loss of her sight — her 9-year-old guide dog, Iggy, allows her to live independently — but she is upset that the Nassau Inter-County Express N36 bus she took daily for almost 40 years — her “lifeline,” as she called it — was part of the NICE service cuts that started on April 9.

She remembers her last day on the bus. It was a Saturday, and she had gone to McDonald’s for breakfast, “like I always did,” she recalled. Then she went shopping for her daughter, who had a broken leg.

“It was very emotional for me,” said Lee, who has relied on public buses for most of her life. She took the N36, she said, which stopped around the corner from her home on Riverside Avenue, all over the South Shore: from Freeport and Lynbrook to the Five Towns, Long Beach and even Massapequa.

Flanked by Iggy at an Oceanside Library forum with State Assemblywoman Melissa Miller on April 18, Lee said the cuts were partially the result of the confusing multi-layered configuration of governments on Long Island.

“It’s not even a matter of complaining, because you don’t even know who to complain to,” she said. The buses are owned by Nassau County but are operated by NICE, which is a private corporation. She acknowledged that ridership on her line was low and that, as a business, NICE needs to turn a profit, but she said that a more reasonable solution would have been to replace the full-sized N36 bus with a van or minibus.

Because the Nassau County Bus Transit Committee approved NICE’s plan on Feb. 16 to cut 10 bus routes, including the N36 — one of two that run through Oceanside — Lee had to rely on NICE Able Ride as an alternative, but it requires advanced scheduling and, in her experience, reliability varies, depending on the driver.

At a February public hearing in Garden City, the committee voted, 5-2, in favor of the cuts, which also eliminated shuttles in Freeport, Hicksville and Wantagh; the N19 Freeport bus to Sunrise Mall; and the DeMott Avenue/Long Beach Road bus in Rockville Centre. The reductions have affected about 5,400 Nassau County residents, NICE spokesman Andy Krause said in a statement.

The cuts were necessary, NICE Chief Executive Officer Michael Setzer said at the hearing, because the county reduced funding by $6.8 million. In a Feb. 17 letter to riders, Setzer wrote that NICE relies on the county for 5 percent of its operating budget, which was $131 million in 2016.

The 2017 Nassau County budget contained only a $2.5 million subsidy to NICE, the minimum necessary for the bus system to continue receiving $67 million in state transit aid from New York State Operating Assistance, according to Krause. This funding helps transit agencies in New York cover operating costs based on mileage and passenger revenue.

“We should be, could be, and would be putting more service on the street to serve our customers if we could,” Setzer said, “but we’re stuck with the revenues available to the county.”

Lee suggested that every local elected official take a ride on a public bus. “It would give them a deeper concern for the needs of people who take them every day,” she said.

She also said she wished public and NICE officials would advertise bus service more, especially to different demographics such as teenagers. “We missed an opportunity to invite high school students, who would have gotten a half fare for their rides,” Lee said, noting that the N36 stopped near Oceanside High School. She is also sympathetic to her fellow riders who she said were low-income caregivers.

Lee still has transportation options, but appreciated the bus’s availability, she explained. She is hesitant to rely on her husband, a concert pianist, since he is aging, and she wants to be independent.

The irony for Lee is the cuts come as she is doing additional traveling as a speaker for the Guide Dog Foundation — a nonprofit group that provides guide dogs for the blind. “This is the time in my life I have to rely on the buses even more,” she lamented.

“The buses were always predictable [and] reliable, and the number to call if you had trouble was always there,” she said. “There was always a person available on the [phone] line to help, even on Long Island. I knew him. His name was Roger.”