County 'Reimagining' Of Bus Routes Would Replace East Hampton Routes With On Demand

Consultants for Suffolk County have proposed cutting two bus routes that service residential areas in Springs and the hamlets of Amagansett and Montauk in favor of an on-demand bus service that would allow riders to summon rides through a mobile phone app.

The proposal to cut the 10B and 10C routes, as the two local East Hampton routes are known, is still only part of a draft redesign of the county’s entire bus system that is open for comments from the public throughout this month — connectli.org/ReimagineTransit.html — part of broad “re-imagining” of the Suffolk County Transit network intended to optimize the benefits of services provided with the county’s relatively scant transportation budget.

If the cuts were to be made as proposed in the first draft, the two current “fixed” routes, 10B and 10C, would be ended. In their place would be a small fleet of the smaller shuttle buses, that could be summoned or scheduled by riders over the phone or through a mobile phone app very similar to commercial “ride sharing” apps.

The existing S-92 bus route, which makes a 60-mile loop between East Hampton Village and Orient Point, with buses only passing each stop every hour — and often far off schedule — would not be cut, under the preliminary proposal.

The 10B route loops out to the neighborhoods of Springs, to the medical offices on Pantigo Road and to the Bridgehampton Commons, with buses approximately every two hours. The 10C route connects with the S-92 in East Hampton Village — although long waits are sometimes necessary between connections — and carries passengers eastward to Amagansett and to four locations in Montauk.

The 10C bus used to swing out to the Montauk Lighthouse, eight times a day, almost always empty, until a transportation working group led by Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming cut the lighthouse lobe off the route in exchange for adjusting the 10B route to go to the medical offices on Pantigo Road. Doctors had complained that it took some of their patients coming from Springs as much as three hours to get to the medical village by bus because of the infrequency of the Springs loops and the ill-coordinated connections with the eastbound buses from East Hampton Village.

An on-demand bus service is being run currently as a pilot program along what used to be the 10A route, running between Southampton Village and Sag Harbor, five days a week, that would also be made permanent as part of the proposed updates to the bus network countywide.

“The needs of Suffolk for a high-functioning public transit system are very real,” Fleming said during the public comment period of hearings on the consultants reimagining proposal last week. “We need to do everything we can to get people out of their cars. Traffic has become unbearable. All over. Everybody thinks they have the worst. We must recognize as the primary goal making the system more effective. Cutting costs or cutting service to balance out service somewhere else is dangerous.”

Fleming, who said she has reservations about the “urban” approach the consultants are applying, but is an advocate for the expansion of the on-demand bus services, which she uses frequently herself, said that cutting buses should be a last resort and what is really needed is more funding for the county program from the state.

She said she has pressed for the county to increase its transportation budget — which is itself a generator of good jobs for driver and mechanics — from $41 million to $48 million.

Nassau County’s public transit budget is $63 million.

The changes to the eastern South Fork buses are only part of extensive cuts to the bus routes that loop through the less densely populated towns and hamlets of the East End and northern reaches of eastern Suffolk County.

In all, the consultants have proposed nearly halving the total number of fixed bus routes, with the cuts all coming in eastern Suffolk, in favor of expanding service in densely populated areas in hopes of attracting more ridership and improving the efficacy of the bus network in providing residents with opportunities to get to jobs and services on public transportation.

At two public hearings on the overall reimagining effort, consultants presented their plans and reasoning behind them to riders — and got a healthy dose of criticism in return.

Scudder Wagg, one of the engineers working for the consulting firm, Jarrett Walker & Associates, said that the consultants have been trying to find the balance between boosting ridership in densely populated areas by providing more frequent buses, and keeping routes running in inherently low-ridership areas in the east.

With limited resources, if municipalities like Suffolk County asked the consultants to design a network that would provide the most rides to the most number of people they would focus all of the buses in the highest density areas, boosting the frequency of buses and therefore the convenience factor and attracting more riders. But doing that would have to come at the expense of leaving the people in less dense areas with no bus alternative.

Slanting the focus in the other way, to provide the broadest coverage, would mean far less frequent buses, and therefore less ridership, but wouldn’t strand anyone with no options at all.

“It’s a basic geometric trade-off that’s unavoidable,” Wagg said. “Right now, about half of [the county’s] investment is going to high ridership and higher access, and about half is going to wider coverage with fewer riders.”

The consultants said that shifting to about 65 percent of buses being directed to densely populated areas and boosting ridership there by providing more buses running on a 30-minute schedule would drastically increase the convenient access to jobs and services, especially for communities of color, another of the study’s goals.

It would come, however, at the expense of some of the more far flung routes, where buses are already one, two or three hours apart, being cut.

But the use of on-demand services, they said, shows promise for being able to continue providing some service in those areas — perhaps even expanding to seven days a week — while sticking to the substantially lowered dedication of resources to those regions.

Nonetheless, many riders’ advocates were incensed at the proposal being floated.

“These are appalling cuts,” said Brandon Heinrich, a blind St. James resident. “We cannot cut what seems to be 40 line buses down to 21 line buses. We can’t cut to add. When you cut routes, you make it harder for people to get to and from their jobs. How about instead of cutting routes, you make better routes.”

The county hopes to implement the new bus network, in whatever final form it takes, in mid-2023.

“You are going to leave many people stranded,” Marilyn Tucci, a North Shore resident, told the consultants over the phone on Thursday evening, March 31. “I used to be able to take the bus to work for 50 cents each way, $5 a week. I knew the drivers, I knew the other passengers. I can’t do that today. Our roads were never meant to hold this much traffic … is the goal to push out the few people who don’t drive?”