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Basically you can't count of NICE Bus to be reliable. The LIRR is far better, and that says alot. Well, remember that old saying, "you get what you pay for", and Nassau dont want to pay much.
I've taken both extensively....LIRR is definitely not worth $11-$17+ for one way peak.
I blame Mangano & Nassau for starving the NICE system to the point of not maintaining the bus
Tonight was quite a riot. My n35 bus came 10 min early and bypassed Roosevelt Field! The driver said they never showed him the route, and he left the map &schedules at the yard.
This is why NICE is cheaper than MTA. MTA properly maintained the buses, and trained drivers. Veolia doesn't do either, thats where the savings comes in.
Mangano didn't want to pay the MTA for their higher standards of service, so we get a lower standard of service as a result (and half the riders leaving the system altogether).
LIB had it's problems but not nearly as bad as NICE. I'm sure everyone waiting for the bus at Roosevelt Field tonight enjoyed their extra 30 min wait for the next bus.
I left Nassau County back in 2011, when NICE was MTA Long Island Bus. LIB had it's problems, but nowhere near as bad as NICE. I've been hearing so many horror stories about NICE Bus that it makes me not want to use it at all if I ever move back to Nassau County or visit anyone in Nassau County. I'm in the process of learning how to drive, so by the end of this year, I won't have to use public transportation at all.
I think MTA will be back eventually, especially as Nassau sees revenues from the bus system are down due to poor service. The condition of the Nassau County bus fleet is quite similar to the condition of the subways in the 70s & early 80s, very dirty, breakdowns all over, poor attitudes from employees. Did you know that the bus washes at both depots (RVC & Mitchell) have been broken for months, so the buses rarely get washed, and when they do, it's by hand! Also a burst water pipe over the winter destroyed the NICE Bus command center. The system is on it's last legs, and the MTA needs to step in.
I can see a similar campaign to the one in the late 80s by the MTA for the subways. We're Coming Back So You Come Back
If you make it amazing more people would use it. Better for lots of things, including need for less parking spots, pollution from all those cars, ect. Manhattan the buses come so often it is great.
Well my bus broke down today, kept stalling out w/ a check engine light. And this was one of the newer buses! I had to take different buses to get home, 45 minutes later than a should have. NICE!
If you're surprised at the way NICE Bus is being operated now, I don't see why. Common Sense had us knowing from the start that the way Nassau County was funding the system was going to cause it to crumble eventually. That was back in 2011 and since then, it's been nothing but biting the entire operation in the ass. It all comes down to the money NICE has, and there isn't much of it. Maintenance on the buses has been cut dramatically where NICE can order so few parts a month and still have enough to pay their staff that it can't keep up with the demand of buses breaking down, and believe me, there are a lot of breakdowns. NICE's fleet is 100% CNG-powered, and CNG buses, while they may be good for fuel efficiency and reliability, get very hot when running for long periods of time and if the cooling system in the buses isn't working to its best ability, the buses overheat and breakdown. Every summer since NICE started operation, there have been many more breakdowns that what was apparent with the MTA because they pumped a lot more money into getting the parts they needed and also knew what they were doing.
The thing with the air conditioning is that in order for the bus to cool itself down in the case the cooling system in the engine isn't operating efficiently, is to turn the air conditioning off. While it's creating and blowing cool air into the interior of the bus, the engine is operating at even more power and getting hotter as it's doing so. With the summer heat and the bad maintenance, this is just asking for a breakdown. Many of the Orion Vs (the older buses still running) have A/C that doesn't work or does but causes the bus to overheat quickly. The Next Generation CNGs (the 1700s and earlier 1800s) are getting close to the point where the A/C can't run without causing an overheat, but at this point, it depends on the maintenance and history of each individual bus.
If your bus shows up late, be happy it showed up. Buses are breaking down left and right and almost half of NICE's fleet sits in the depot daily because they don't have the parts to get the buses running again. Some drivers have such short shifts because there isn't a bus for them to drive. Have you ever been a bus that was beeping the entire ride? That's the bus telling the driver that there's a problem. Any bus that starts up and stays running, NICE sends out on the street, no matter what condition. How would you like to be on a bus that stalls in the middle of an intersection and won't start up? Sounds really safe, right? Management can't do anything about it, nor are they really trying. Drivers who weren't from Long Island Bus weren't trained properly either. Some barely know English and can barely read a map. Who knows where they got their CDL from. Some drivers were trained in a parking lot. There are numerous complaints daily about drivers not knowing their routes, making wrong turns, skipping stops, dropping off in Queens on Eastbound routes, picking up in Queens on Westbound routes, etc. This isn't a professional system anymore, and sure NICE needs drivers because many have left, but who's going to pay them and what are they going to drive? I honestly feel bad for the Orion buses that are suffering under this system. They're the last buses to come off Orion's production line in Canada/NY and they won't last long. Those 3Gs are already breaking down and they're less than two years old.
I noticed some mentions here about the n6. Since April 2012, that route has been destroyed by NICE. I feel bad for anybody that has to rely on that route. It's the busiest route in the system, yet many runs don't show up, buses show up late continuously because the schedules are made incorrectly, and most times, you can't even get a seat if you're not at the beginning of a run. One of the dumbest decisions by NICE was removing that n6 LIMITED. This was a route NICE should not have even touched yet they made a change that basically shooed away ridership. The express is a joke and them adding stops to it piece by piece is not going to solve anything except show that they made a mistake and don't want to admit it.
The MTA left Long Island Bus with more than 101,000 daily weekday riders. At this point, the latest ridership statistics show we're at about 60,000 daily weekday riders. The system crumbling is just causing NICE to lose more and more money, and the mobile app nor the GPS system is going to bring back those riders if buses still aren't showing up and people aren't confident in their driver's ability to operate the bus. Mangano didn't care in 2011, and he doesn't care now. No matter how much the system crumbles and falls apart, he will never care because the majority of Nassau County doesn't want a bus system anymore, and this is what we're left with. Drivers in Nassau County don't respect buses, that's been a problem for years.
You said it better than I ever could have!
Brett thats another reason why I have to move someplace with decent LIRR service. Westbury's hourly service (30 min rush hour) isn't going to cut it, and I need to live along the Babylon Line. At least the LIRR would never get this bad (because people with $$ ride it). Mangano is getting what he wanted, destroy the bus system, lose the ridership, so he wont have to fund buses at all, and there won't even be a system left! And this summer has been very cool, hardly any really hot days. Can you imagine if it was a hot summer? Thats why I got to get myself out of Westbury too, I'm going to need that Babylon line service since there won't be much of any bus service left. With most trains skipping Westbury & Post Ave unsafe in summer with the vagrants, I must be out by next summer.
I feel for all the folks who are stuck relying on NICE and dont even have any train nearby, pretty much trapped in their homes. Ed Mangano is a hustler, and he threw us all under the bus. But no one here cares, the media, everyone doesn't see it as they drive on by a bus stuck at the side of the road and complain about the traffic jam it's causing.
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