After restarting the Downtown Connection shuttle bus program on Monday, the Downtown Alliance (which operates the service) sent a representative to the Wednesday meeting of the Battery Park City Committee of Community Board 1 (CB1) to offer background on why it had been on hiatus.
Taina Prado, the Alliance’s chief of staff, began with some history. “I thought I would start with a brief recap of what happened with the bus before the disruption of service,” she began. “Following the height of COVID, our original bus operator, Golden Touch went out of business. They just couldn’t survive the pandemic.”
“With a little bit of advance notice, we ended up getting another operator, American Tour and Travel,” she continued. “At that time, we didn’t have to disrupt service. We were with them about ten months or so.”
“In September, as many people noticed, the buses switched from red to the white,” Ms. Prado recounted. “This was because American Tour and Travel informed us that they were having difficulty securing proper vehicle insurance for the red buses. So they came to us and said, ‘we’re having this problem with the insurance, but we don’t want to leave you with no buses, so we’re going to provide these alternatives to avoid any disruption of service, and continue the route working. And, as you know, these white buses, unfortunately, were not compliant,” with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
She noted that American Tour and Travel represented that it would taken them a few weeks to secure the necessary insurance. “They told us it was related to COVID,” she recalled, “and there were delays with the Department of Transportation. We thought it was going to be short amount of time. But it just kept on getting delayed through September and October.”
“And then, just before Thanksgiving, we learned on our own that the insurance for the white buses was about to lapse,” Ms. Prado noted. “That was a serious safety concern for the riders and for the for the drivers. So obviously, we were never going to run the service without proper insurance.”
“They kept on telling us, ‘we’re going to get it to you before it expires,’” she recalled. “They still thought they would convince us. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out. They weren’t able to get the the proper level of insurance that we felt comfortable with. We very soon realized that they were not professional, and they were not somebody that we wanted to be in business with anymore. And we made the hard decision to just discontinue service. So, regretfully, we had to stop the service on November 23rd.”
At that point, the Alliance quickly issued a request for proposals to recruit a replacement operator for the service. “Finding a reputable operator to run such a small route in a very specific area, for the amount of money that we can afford to pay was very challenging,” Ms. Prado said.
It took several weeks of frenetic activity to review the proposals and vet all the respondents. Shortly before the end of the year, the Alliance’s board approved a contract with D and J Ambulette Service to be the new operator. The Alliance’s staff initially projected that it would take until January 15 to relaunch the Downtown Connection, but an accelerated transition and training schedule make it possible to compress this schedule, and instead resume the service on Monday, January 3.
“The new operator has the red buses, which are ADA-compliant” Ms. Prado said. “And the NextBus tracker is working both on our website and the app.”
Maryanne Braverman, a leader of the Battery Park City Seniors group, noted the hardship that the hiatus of the Downtown Connection service imposed on elderly residents, who rely on it for local transport, and for whom the handicapped lift is a vital resource.
Committee chair Justine Cuccia concluded the discussion by thanking the Alliance for returning the shuttle to service two weeks earlier than initially planned, but added that, “I would love to know what we can do to make sure this never happens again.”
For nearly 20 years, the Downtown Alliance has provided the free Downtown Connection shuttle, which is offered in partnership with the Battery Park City Authority. The service ferries passengers between 37 stops around the perimeter of Lower Manhattan, linking Battery Park City, Tribeca, the Financial District, and the South Street Seaport, starting at 10:00 am and continuing through a final run at 7:30 p.m. Arrival times average ten-minute intervals on weekdays, with 15 minutes between buses on weekends (depending on traffic conditions).
Matthew Fenton
