Leave driving to us

Ángel Franco/The New York Times - Bus theft is not common, but it does happen occasionally. In some cases, the thieves have been reported to pick up passengers — and pocket the fares.


A question that doesn’t come up all the time but does come up every now and then is: What do you do once you’ve stolen a bus? It’s not like with cars, which people who disrespect the law are always stealing. You can’t just change the plates or repaint it and drive it around as your vehicle. It’s very hard to park. And even in New York, where pretty much anything goes, people will notice that you’ve got a bus.


The question comes to mind in light of the fact that someone stole a Greyhound bus in Manhattan the other day. Exactly when it was stolen is unclear. The bus was last accounted for very early Sunday morning at the Greyhound maintenance garage at West 30th Street and 12th Avenue. According to the police, a driver from another bus company spied the empty bus about 2:15 Wednesday morning parked on the street in Astoria, Queens, and called a Greyhound dispatcher. This alerted Greyhound that it was short a bus.


Greyhound workers went out to the bus, but could not start it and had to return to the depot. When they came back with a mechanic at 3:45 a.m., they got lost and could not find the bus. The police were not notified until 9 a.m. and located it about 12:30 in the afternoon still parked where it had been. Since the thief remains unidentified and at large, it’s not possible to determine his motive. Was he fond of your larger vehicles? Did he have a big family? Was he tired of waiting for the bus?

Ángel Franco/The New York Times - Karl Besancon, who drives for Martz Trailways, could think of only one motive: “For giggles.”


More bus-theft knowledge might be forthcoming over at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, where big buses chug in and out all day. A few Greyhound drivers were relaxing in the drivers’ lounge but said they were not allowed to talk. They said they did not know much about stolen buses, only that you couldn’t just put one in your garage. Down on the platforms, a Greyhound driver on the Atlantic City route said he did not know anything either, but had an annoying problem of somewhat less magnitude to deal with. Someone had stolen his hat.


Karl Besancon, 56, drives for Martz Trailways, going between New York and Wilkes-Barre, Pa. “In 21 years, I’ve only heard about four stolen in the New York area,” he said.


Why would someone take a bus?


He thought hard before coming up with the only answer that made sense to him: “For giggles.”


The tricky thing is holding on to a stolen bus, Mr. Besancon agreed. A few years ago, however, he said, a bus stolen in Bayonne, N.J., was missing for three weeks. It had about 4,000 miles run up on it, but not a scratch. “The company that owned it said, ‘Hire the guy,’ ” Mr. Besancon recalled. “But they didn’t catch him far as I know.”


On Dec. 19, 2009, a New Jersey Transit bus was snatched from the parking lot of the Livingston Mall in New Jersey. The driver had gone to the bathroom. A half-hour later, it was found abandoned in West Orange.


In January 2007, the tour bus of the country singer Crystal Gayle was swiped in Nashville by a convict who had escaped in South Carolina. He was not caught until he got near the Daytona International Speedway in Florida. Before helping himself to the bus, he had stolen other vehicles to make his way on the cheap. One of them was a Wal-Mart truck.

Now, that a certain kind of talent.

One thing to do with a stolen bus is try to make a few bucks for bail money. That’s what a 15-year-old boy did in October 2006 in Orlando, Fla. After taking a bus from the Central Florida Fairgrounds, he drove it along a conventional bus route, picking up passengers and collecting fares. One of the more keenly observant passengers, though pleased enough with the ride, thought the boy looked youthful for a bus driver and dialed the police.


Peter Pantuso, president of the American Bus Association, the trade group for the private bus industry, said: “I remember a few years ago someone stole a bus out west, and the people operated it in charter service for a couple of weeks. So sometimes it’s a business model.”


Back at the Port Authority, some New Jersey Transit drivers were talking about how it’s one thing to steal a bus. Then you have to drive it. “If you’ve only driven cars, you could drive it,” said Sergio Gomez, 46. “But you’d be wrecking everything, hitting poles and cars and curbs and people. You’d be sticking out like a sore thumb, swerving all over the place.”


Jose Valle, 53, was loading up his bus to head to New Jersey. Given the recent bus theft, the culprit still on the lam, was he keeping a closer eye on his bus so no one took it? He gave a weird look. “No,” he said. “I don’t think anybody will take my bus. It’s really big. Nah, nobody’s going to take my bus.”

Wide range of service cuts

ANother reason to be glad of not having to use public transportation to commute to work. Been there, done that.

M.T.A. Passes Wide Range of Service Cuts

By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

Nearly every bus, subway and commuter rail rider in New York stands to be affected by a punishing slate of service cuts that was approved on Wednesday by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is struggling to fill a sudden financial shortfall of more than $400 million.

The plan, which does not include a fare increase in 2010, strips back some of the advances to New York City’s transit system in the past decade — eliciting outrage from the city’s top elected officials and community leaders, some of whom spoke against the plan at the board meeting on Wednesday before the vote was taken.

The cuts would create more crowding on subways and buses, reduce frequency during weekends, late nights and weekday afternoons, and wholly eliminate two minor subway lines, the W and the Z. Service on dozens of bus lines would be reduced or ended, and disabled riders would find it more difficult to get around.

But the most controversial proposal is a plan to phase out free fares for more than half a million students who currently receive free or discounted rides on the transit system. Half the discount would be erased in September 2010, with the rest swept away by September 2011 — an idea that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has labeled “unconscionable.”

The vote was 12-0; one board member, Norman I. Seabrook, was not present, but indicated in a letter to the board that he would have voted against the plan.

Jay H. Walder, the authority’s recently appointed chairman, laid out a frank assessment of the authority’s shortcomings: “In the two months that I’ve been here, it’s apparent to me that we don’t operate in a way that ensures that every taxpayer dollar that we receive is being used as effectively as possible.”

He pledged to undertake a top-to-bottom review of the agency’s finances. “In short, we need to take the place apart,” he said, adding that he regretted that he could not avoid the cuts. “I wish there was a way to do it fast enough to take the things off the table that we’re talking about today; I don’t think we can.”

The elimination of the student discounts attracted a series of furious speeches on Wednesday morning in the fifth-floor boardroom at the authority’s headquarters on Madison Avenue. “You sit here and bring anxieties to young children,” City Councilman Charles Barron said. “What do you want them to do? Jump the turnstiles and turn them into criminals?”

His remarks were greeted by cheers from dozens of protesters attending the meeting.

The authority is attempting to plug a financial shortfall of nearly $400 million that appeared in startlingly quick fashion. Late last month, state legislators cut $143 million out of the authority’s budget; state accountants then determined that a payroll tax dedicated to mass transit financing would produce $100 million less revenue than initially thought. Finally, late last week, a court ruled that the authority must pay significant raises to transit workers, adding tens of millions of dollars in expenses.

Jeffrey A. Kay, a mayoral appointee to the board, denounced state legislators for “pulling out the rug” from the transportation authority.

“They were the ones who put together a deal and said you are fine for the next two years; it was their deal that fell apart,” Mr. Kay said in an angry speech. “The politics has to stop. The public and the riders have to go through this, and they’re caught in the middle of it.”

None of the cuts would take effect until June at the earliest. A fare increase of 7.5 percent is already scheduled for 2011.

Buses May Aid Climate Battle

Bogotá, Colombia, has implemented a bus rapid transit system, which improves traffic flow and reduces smog at a fraction of the cost of building a subway.



More Photos >



Like most thoroughfares in booming cities of the developing world, Bogotá’s Seventh Avenue resembles a noisy, exhaust-coated parking lot — a gluey tangle of cars and the rickety, smoke-puffing private minibuses that have long provided transportation for the masses.

Carrera Séptima; we lived on it. And I remember those microbuses, VW vans.

But a few blocks away, sleek red vehicles full of commuters speed down the four center lanes of Avenida de las Américas. The long, segmented, low-emission buses are part of a novel public transportation system called bus rapid transit, or B.R.T. It is more like an above-ground subway than a collection of bus routes, with seven intersecting lines, enclosed stations that are entered through turnstiles with the swipe of a fare card and coaches that feel like trams inside.

rapid transit systems like Bogotá’s, called TransMilenio, might hold an answer. Now used for an average of 1.6 million trips each day, TransMilenio has allowed the city to remove 7,000 small private buses from its roads, reducing the use of bus fuel — and associated emissions — by more than 59 percent since it opened its first line in 2001, according to city officials. In recognition of this feat, TransMilenio last year became the only large transportation project approved by the United Nations to generate and sell carbon credits.

Fascinating.