mac5689

Why would anyone want to go to SCT headquarters, I mean its barley that, Its HQ is actually the DPW buliding, which is serverly understaffed. My bet is that its just a office that has nobosy there most of the time. (Proof is that I personally know someone that tried to call SCT after 9:00 AM and nobody answered) Second how would a bus to Hicksville be better when train service to Hicksville is probably better then Train service out east?, Also it's not up to Suffolk to provide service deep into Nassau. (Especially when Nassau doesn't provide service that deep into Suffolk) Suffolk can't afford a discount on fares, The last fare increase was to help fill a then $100 Million budget gap. That said budget gap has gotten larger and the County is in near crises, I mean with the June layoffs the DPW is near depleted, same with some other departments. I mean they nearly increased the fares for SCAT riders. Suffolk also had to change the way they bidded out SCT routes, which caused two operators to lose their contracts and another two companies to join forces and create a company so that they could keep the routes they were operating. The county is even thinking about cutting training time for the county's volunteer Firefighters at the Fire Academy. My sister drove to College from where she lives for almost a whole semester and a half, and esitmated that even though she drove to college she had spent the same amount of money even if she had taken the bus. (And that is counting the fact that she didn't have clases everyday) and before you ask yes there was a bus she could have taken, and yes she took the bus before she got her car.

I thought about it, and the only answer I can come up with is no they wouldn't, for many reasons, but I wonder what qjtransitmaster thinks?

Actucally there have been said that some years SCT ridership has gone up. Now I can't say how many people take SCT to catch the LIRR, though if I had to take a guess I'd say not many. I mean SCT is a system that the "poorest of the poor" take, and I'm sure not that many poor people can afford to travel to trvel to the city. Its not being a brat if you are paying a tax to someone and your not really reciving anything from it, however if you didn't notice Suffolk was willing to alow the MTA to takeover SCT UNTIL the Payroll tax started to hurt School District and compaines, and the Governments. (Kind of hard to not hate someone who was causing School District to raise their Budgets which causes tax bills to raise, which causes the tax payer to get mad, and a mad taxpayer means a mad voter which could cause a person not to be reelected; and if you haven't notice Politicans only care about being reelected) My guess is that HART played ball since they run to routes in the AM and PM for commuters that take the LIRR, so it would it would be seen as mean to offer said service and not to offer some sort of Uniticket if offered. Though its not suprising that they are doing something diffrent then SCT, seeing as HART was asked if they wanted to merge their system with SCT back in 1980/81 when SCT was created and they said no.

I would think that it probably would be, either that or probably in the 70's or 80's (So they could say that they have a bus route in at least every number range) Souffolk Officals seem to have a love hate relationship with the MTA. Currently I believe its still in hate mode over the Payroll tax a few years ago, and the lack of service to the East End with the LIRR.

That sounds like a good plan, but if there is going to be a lose of a lane for other traffic then I would bet that either the State or county would ask for 110 to be widen to add a lane for the lost one. My guess would be that during the rush hours one lane in each direction would be for buses only, either just for the BRT route or for both BRT and Local. I mean the loss of one lane is better then the loss of up to three lanes. The BRT projects probably won't be done for years yet, since there are so many things to study. Like Traffic patterns and planning. Both NYS 110 and CR 97 are busy roads, and the loss of even one lane would probably make traffic worse. Besides both are pretty dangerous roads, with probably at least one accident happening somewhere along the roadway a day. I mean Suffolk had to reconfigure the intersection on CR 97 that the S58 and S71 use to use to get from College Road to CR 97, now the two routes have to use Portion Road to get onto CR 97, because of the high amount of accidents that happened at that intersection.

I was taking a guess based on the schedules, I've never seen EBT before so I have no idea how they run things. Normally the drivers need to be trained on the buses before they can drive them. EBT's union I believe is the same one that some bus company out in Staten Island, that got in trouble a few years ago, had. I didn't mean to say that it was right to have the 6:15 sitting there if the 6:00 is late, But if the 6:00 driver has to do a school bus run, having them do the 6:15 when they finally arrive, may not work out for them. If EBT though has it worked so a driver can do a transit run then a School Bus run and back to transit then thats something, and probably the only operator that does that. I know Suffolk Bus Corp allows the drivers of the 6A, who doesn't make full time I gather, the ablity to pick up a Mini bus run through their sister company Suffolk Transportation Service. I don't know anything else other then Suffolk is working on it, though that would be the likely guess.

They can't run the 6:15 on the 6:00 if the 6:00 is late because they probably, like every other company, have all the drivers schedules planed out in advance for the picks, The 6:15 is there ahead of the 6:00 because I have the feeling that the 6:00 S1 from Amityville does the first run on the 1A which has the first run arriving at Amityville at 6:00, but the 6:15 just starts off there. If the 6:00 does do the 1A before the S1 it does make sense to have them run the 6:15 S1 instead of the 6:00.

The county is said to be working on a BRT program for the 110 Corridor, as well as one for Nicholls road which would allow a bus to run from Patchouge to Stony Brook Via SCCC Selden.

Where was I flawed, I did not make one incorrect statement in that post, I've ridden Suffolk Transit since I was born, to say that that some how that I am flawed in talking about something that has been apart of my life for over twenty years is a insult to me and shows your total lack of respect that you have for those who have depended on SCT for longer they you have probably known it existed. The propasals that I have heard from you don't seem cost effective to me. You can't expand routes or add them and say that it will be cost effective, there is no way in heck that could happen. Any logical person will tell you that. I mean the whole reason the cost to run SCT went up in 2004 was because of all the expenses the bus companies needed; Gas Prices went up, Inserance Prices went up. Companies created 401k Plans, Drivers Wages went up. All that was documented by Suffolk Transit so I'm not lieing nor flawed. You and everyone else are saying how easy it is to do this and that, and yet, its a shock that with how much the cost rised in 2004 that the county was even able to fund what service there is now. You can't go changing something just because you bloody well want to. Now I'm done with this subject completely. You can say that I'm some how flawed, but I know that I'm not, and for you are anyone else to say otherwise just shows that you don't understand. The Route lettering is fine just the way it is, I mean even the 2009 Study thought so, I mean heck they even made routes (some I say does make some sence) using the Number and Letter that the Feeder routes use. Also the county is under no obligation to align bus schudules to Trains as the Trains aren't run by the county. Stop trying to extend the S68, extending the S68 does nothing except causing that to become like the S90, unreliable. Which was the whole reason the S66 was expanded to Riverhead in the first damn place. Sencondly if there are very little people traveling between those areas on the S90 currently, then why do you think it would be a good idea to extend the S68 that way?

Most SCT routes BEFORE 8AM. The system on a majority of buses end at 8PM, which although early isn't what I'd call very early. Suffolk County is nearly broke, hence the fare increase for SCT, you can't do anything without money and if you know SCT as I do you'd know that that is something that there hasn't been a lot of in its history. Some Schedules aren't useless, the S40 runs every 30 minutes, the S1 runs nearly every 15 or so minutes, the S61 runs every half hour during the morning and afternoon rushes. Just because most of the routes run every hour doesn't mean that something is ineffective. I mean I've never heard of large complaints that the schedules are the problem for riders, most of the quips from riders is that there is no Sunday Service or that a certain place doesn't have a bus stop (Like Tanger in Riverhead). I am sick and tired of hearing from people who don't live in Suffolk or who doesn't relay in it everyday telling me how it should be run. I can probably sit here right now and tell you with near 100% certainty what the traffic pattern for nearly half the major roads in the county are at a given time, but does that matter to any one no, All you idiots care about is spending money that nobody has to put buses out there just because the city or some other place runs buses every half hour. Now I know SCT isn't perfect, but nothing in this world is perfect. You all need to get off your high horses and except if you try and change something the more damage you do to the thing and the more you would be unable to change things back to the way they were.

I highly doubt you can predict the travel patterns of other people, also I assume you mean riders, since most residents of the county probably don't ride a bus. The county can't afford it, besides I don't see them even considering such a thing, because as the Shelter Island Ferry said on its site Commercial Buses can't ride during extreme High and Low Tide, the tides are unpredictable because the change day to day. For example (Now I'm no expert in tides) lets say a bus is schedule to get on the Ferry at 9:00 AM heading to Greenport, the bus gets on as schedule say on a Monday, but Tuesday the tide is schedule to come in at 9:00. That means the bus would have wait at the dock for the next ferry when its fine for the bus to cross. Say it take a half hour for that to happen, you's have the riders waiting a half hour and causing that bus to then be a half hour late and unless it can make a quick turn around and get back on the ferry, it may have to wait another half hour (Assuming the ferry runs every half hour) That would mean that the bus would end up being a full hour late just because of the tide. Now however the Ferry Company didn't say that a bus could pass during rough seas, which I would assume that since it can't pass at extreme High or Low Tides it probably wouldn't be able to pass during rough seas. Now say a storm come up and causes very rough seas and the buses aren't allowed on the ferry at all, how are the passengers suppose to get to Green Port then? The plan is flawed, and anyone with common sense should see it.

No offence but it would be simple to keep the orignal routing number (for the 3C and just make a new route #3E or so for a new route. or in the way of combinging like the 3A and 3B keep one route # since as you say you want make the route a loop). Also with the 3A and 3B you can make a loop by having the 3A the Hauppauge-Bay Shore portion and the 3B the Bay Shore-Hauppauge portion, and before you say that it shouldn't be done because the route change would be done with riders onboard, I would like to point out that the S69 driver has to change the routes sign twice when passengers are onboard the bus. I also don't like your idea of renumbering all the routes, I mean if you try and simplify things to much you won't be creating better transportation but promoting laziness and stupidity.

What was the point of putting the S23 on there, it doen't look like you made any changes to it. You know that the point of numbering the 3A, 3B, and 3C the way they are is because all three intersect at The South Shore Mall right, You seemingly want to renumber them just because you have a problem with routes ending with a Letter?

Yeah but that depends on what they classify a Transit bus as, if they classify it as a Commercial Coach then it can't cross during "extreme high or low tides which would mean that the bus can't cross possible twice a day 9Depending when the tide comes in and out) and also not at a set time table. The time for the tides change from day to day. Besides it could cost $70.00 for the bus, that would be 100.00+ a day depending on how many trips there are. The County doesn't have that much money laying around, I mean the department which runs Suffolk Transit (The DPW) is going to let more workers go in June because of the budget problems, and if they almost had not enough people to answer the phones before I would think they would have almost nobody after.

The 5A operated from Miller Place to Middle Island (I have seen the oeiognal 5A schedule, and may still have one in my possession). In 2003 they extened to Port Jefferson Station to give riders a one stop ride to the health care facilities that are near Mather Hospital, though I think it was only done to get more riders to use the route, They also said that they cut part of the route when they made the extention though I have yet to see that on the map. Prior to 2003 the S62 split its time traveling between Port Jefferson Station and Sound Beach via part of the 5A's current (there is a little section that the S62 covered that the 5A doesn't) routing and its current routing via Columbia Ave and NYS 25A

The 2009 Study calls for a extention to Shirley NOT a Merger Buddy. If the extention to Port Jefferson didn't help the 5A, then I doubt a extention to Shirley would help. The 5A should just be sacked or cut back to what it was before its extention and the S62 realigned to cover the 5A's Port Jefferson-Rocky Point route like it had been doing before the 5A was extended.

The way I mapped a S20 and S40 merger The S40 was still able to run every half hour, it just needed an two or so extra buses. The S40 isn't time for the S66, it just happens to work out that way since the S40 is run every half hour and the S66 runs every hour. Yes there is a lot of transferring, though most of the people that transfers from the S40 to the S66 always seem to be on the S40 run that arrives at the same time as the S66.

The county is flat broke, I don't see them making any changes to the system any time in the new future. Besides that study also mapped out when the county should by new buses (which were a few every year starting in 2010), and yet Suffolk brought more then even the study recommended in one year, and that was only because the buses that they replaced were of age and needed to be replaced. The county had the study done to see what changes should be done to improve service, nowhere in that study nor mention of it by the county does it say that they will actually do what was recommended.

The S21 was cut some time in the late 80's I believe, I can't find any info on it (I didn't know it existed except for a post on here that said the route was on the LIB map up until an early 1990's copy). The 1C and 9A were cut in 1990 (they were two of about ten or so routes that were to have been axed), and the S74 I believe in 1997 or 1998.

The only part of their planed S25 I like was up to SUNY Farmingdale. Though seeing as the S1 runs almost every half hour, I can see why they wouldn't want the S25 going on S110 (especially if they use two buses and run every hour) Why cut the S90 from going to Center Moriches if combined with the 10D/E. I mean if such a think happens you could have two buses running which could make the line more reliable and help out the S66. Since most of the bulk of S66 ridership (either way) comes from the Mastic Beach area extending the S68 (which doesn't serve that area) wouldn't help. Also I don't think the S66 is suffering from its own success, I believe that its the fault of those who need the assistance of the government that live in the above mentioned area that is the case. It would have cost for another driver probably, I mean the more drivers a company needs the more benefits its needs which costs them more which in turn leads them to ask for more money from the county. Its the Benifits that Suffolk said was the main cause of why it now takes more to run Suffolk Transit after 2004 then it did before (ICMC at the time started a 401K, and according to the county so did a few other companies). That is partly why Suffolk now has a budget gap, and why they changed their bidding requirements. (although the companies gave the county the right to use competitive bidding with the last contract, I don't think that went the way the companies planned it however). When CBS ran the S58 all but one driver drove the whole day. (The S58 driver that left MI at 5 something in the morning was the only driver that got relieved) I'm not sure however if they will actually have a ownership role, or if it was said that it would be partly run by them because the plan is for passengers to buy tickets in their ticket office. (Or at least thats the plan for the South Shore Location)

Yeah that is the Study, I thought that it said something about the S25 being extended to Walt Whitman Mall, though I remembered it mentioning SUNY Farmingdale. I don't think that its a good idea, since there are already two routes going from Babylon to Walt Whitman Mall. I agree some of the ideas were good, though there are a few that I didn't agree with. However since most of the ideas are about expanding service, where in most cases more buses would be needed, which the county probably will never be able to afford none of the proposed plans will probably never become reality.

A S20 and S40 merger would actually work, I've worked out the numbers and all that, the only problems I see is that both routes are currently operated by two different companies (together both companies operate nearly half the system) and I doubt either would like to lose a route and second you would need about six buses to operate the route verses the four need to operate the current S40 and the one that operates the S20. A 2009 study suggested that the S25 and S35 be merged and the new S25 be extended to SUNY Farmingdale. A 5A and 7D merger doesn't help 7D riders as most just use it to connect to either the S66 or S71, go to Pathmark, or to take it when it switches over to the 7E. A 7D merger with the 7E would better help the area.

Hey just think, if the S90 wasn't such a bad route to start with, a ton more riders would be using it because the S66 wouldn't have been extended to Riverhead.

The S68 wasn't extended to Center Moriches after the S66 was extended to Riverhead. I never said that it would be enough. The Water Taxi will be partly run by Hampton Jitney so you can probably guess that the price will be higher then the Bus fare. 10A: Depending on the weight limit of the ferries used. S69: It runs at night after the 3D stops running (As pointed out by Q23 Central Term and the schedules), and the whole point of the route is to serve the stops that it does. (As show by the driver having to change the S69 sign when it gets to each major stop) Sunrise Coach use to allow its drivers to dead head by using the Shelter Island back before the County took over, So I don't see any reason that buses can't use the ferries now unless of a weight limit.

That would explain why the first S66 bus from Riverhead to Patchouge follows the S68 route. I wonder where they Short turned in Mastic, and why I mean Matic is only a few miles to Center Moriches.