Yesterday, LI Bus-now Nice Bus since it was privatized in January-made it's much ballyhooed schedule changes. Although they claim that there have been many improvements to routes and scheduling I'll leave it to the people who actually saw the changes as improvements to tell you about it. Not saying these people don't exist just that I haven't spoken to them.
I myself for the most part haven't been hurt by the changes at least during the week. I checked the update schedule and saw no change to the 9:15 pm bus I take out to Hicksville every night to my job in Jericho from Hempstead bus terminal which was my main worry.
I didn't bother to check out the Sunday schedules-on Sunday morning I got to take the bus back home after working 12-8 Sunday morning as I do every morning from Weds to Sun. As the 49 doesn't come out to the Jericho Quad on Sunday mornings-which is only 5 minutes from my job doing security at a gated community I had to walk back to North Broadway. Usually then on Saturdays and Sundays from tehre I take the N20 to the Hicksville Railroad station to catch the 49 from there.
I always leave in time to catch the 9:37 N20, however on Sunday the first day of the new changes, the bus whizzed by me at 9:30 as I was walking up. Hmm. Evidently the N20 changes it's schedule or otherwise the guy is very early-which of course if so he really shouldn't be.
So I walked up the Hicksville railroad station on foot and went in and sat down waiting for the 11:03 to Hempstead-which it turns out had been rescheduled to 10:48. When I was outside looking at the new schedule this guy from Newsday interviewed me. I had a feeling he might use my interview as I gave him a lot of good copy.
You can read about my comments either at http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/bus-riders-adjust-as-nice-system-changes-1.3649524
If you are near a Newsday paper, you can also read them on pg. A10. My friend Monica Luna was absolutely gushing when she heard I was in the paper. I had to point out that they aren't actually mentioning Diary of a Republican Hater in a piece-she is a big fan of my blog and always says that if just the right person could read it an mention it in the right place it would really put me on the map. She's right, if my blog had been mentioned in the article it would have put me very high on the radar especially with a name like Diary of a Republican Hater. It's great to have a friend believe in me this much though.
I did think after maybe I should have mentioned it-but after all he may not have wanted to promote this or get into politics. Whatever. You got to start somewhere. He spelled my name right. I have gotten my name in at some places, once even at Delong's twitterstorm-though he needs to do so again and Krugman should mention me in print some time-I think. LOL
Probably a lot of people were confused yesterday. I myself though I was inconvenienced by not being aware of the new changes on the weekend won't be too negatively impacted. I suspect there are some who will be. Again, if anyone has really honestly benefited please come forward and tell us about it. I want to believe, but am skeptical.
Besides these changes what will really be interesting and telling is when August runs around. As part of their negotiations with Nassau, Veolia had agreed not raise bus fares for a year. The kicker though is that the year begun on the day of agreement-last August rather than the day they started operating LI Bus in January. So in reality it will only be about nine months till they can raise prices-they do have to get that cleared before doing it.
Fact is that LI Bus is for those of us with modest income. If they have too steep a rise in prices it will be priced out for us. Last thing we need is for them to start charging prestige item prices for this. So that will be interesting to see where this might be going. Again, I'm a privatization skeptic about something like this but we'll see.
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