New On-Demand Bus System Has Bumpy Rollout in East Hampton

Mina Ruiz has been riding the Suffolk County Transit buses between her home in Springs and her job in Water Mill since giving up her car — largely because she didn’t like navigating the endless traffic jams on local roads — a little more than a year ago. It can be a long journey, connecting two buses that are both chronically behind schedule by nearly an hour. But she made it work.

Last week, however, she was forced to spend $80 on a taxi to get to her job on time — about half what she would earn for the full day of work, before taxes — because she was unable to get a ride from the new on-demand bus system that the county put into service in East Hampton on April 28.

She wiped a tear from her eye retelling the frustrating story on Tuesday morning, while waiting for the S92 bus that would take her to Water Mill that day.

She had been able to hail one of the on-demand buses that morning, but only after more than two hours of trying through the Suffolk County Transit phone app. On Tuesday, her work schedule was flexible, so she’d been able to wait until she was able to get a bus, a journey that would still take nearly two hours because the S92 was 55 minutes late — almost standard for the infamously delayed buses that boomerang along a traffic-snarled route between East Hampton and Orient Point.

Starting next week, she won’t be so lucky. She’s 60, has lived in East Hampton since 2005, and said she manages to pay her $1,250 a month in rent, plus taxes and, most days, food, because she has a decent job working for a family. After next week, they will be at their home in Water Mill for the summer — and she will have to be at work promptly in the mornings.

“Today, I can be late for my work because my people aren’t coming until the weekend. But, next week, I have to be in Bridgehampton by at least 8 in the morning. So if I can’t get the bus early to come here and get the S92, it’s going to be a problem for me — I’ll have to take a taxi, Uber, whatever,” she said with a deep sigh. “If I can’t get the bus here, I have to pay maybe $35 or $40 for a taxi to get here.”

From Springs to East Hampton Village, that is — $35 or $40, one way.

Last week, Suffolk County and East Hampton Town officials discussed how they were going to spread the word about the new on-demand buses that many think will be a life-changer for residents who don’t drive — offering rides from almost anywhere in Springs into East Hampton Village and out to Montauk for just $2.25.

They can be booked and paid for through a phone app that displays where the bus you have hailed is along its route, so that riders do not have to wait on the roadside for extended periods. And the buses will come down side streets to get closer to a rider’s home, shortening walks to bus stops on main thoroughfares.

But the new system has already been overwhelmed by demand in its first two weeks of operation, leaving riders stymied by an app that tells them frequently that there are no seats available on buses in their area.

The problem seems to be primarily a morning rush-hour issue, between the start of the bus service at 6 a.m. and about 8 a.m., riders said on two mornings this week.

Suffolk County Legislator Ann Welker said that county transportation engineers, the Hampton Jitney — which provides the buses and drivers for the on-demand system — and officials from her office, County Executive Ed Romaine’s office, and the county’s Department of Economic Development and Planning, which is overseeing the on-demand bus system, are aware of the issues and working on solutions.

“We’ve ridden it, we’ve talked to both riders and drivers, and we’ve gotten the calls to my office, and we’re talking with the county almost every day,” Welker said this week.

“It’s only the first two weeks, so there’s some bumps in the road and we’re still figuring it out. It’s a very large area, much larger than the Southampton route. There’s going to be some growing pains, but we’re working on it and I think they’ll get it smoothed out.”

An on-demand bus route between Sag Harbor and Southampton villages launched in 2022 and has doubled the regular ridership from the old fixed-route schedule — a celebrated success for transportation equality, and convenience, on the South Fork.

Welker said that the Southampton route also had problems early on with demand in the mornings, and when the transportation engineers who designed the on-demand system for East Hampton had first proposed it, they acknowledged concerns about the 6-to-9 a.m. time frame. But they also said that the on-demand system using contracted buses could give them more flexibility to adjust service on the fly, whereas the fixed-route systems were more difficult to build fixes into, she said.

Back at the East Hampton train station, Eva Bennett said that for the two weeks of the on-demand system, she has yet to have been able to get a ride on one of the buses from her house in Springs to meet the S92 that takes her to her job in Bridgehampton.

She displayed a screen shot of her phone screen showing the alert on the county app telling her: “We are currently experiencing very high demand and all our seats are currently filled! Please try booking again in a few minutes.”

Each morning she had tried in a few minutes, again and again, without success.

Bennett said that on Tuesday she’d ended up getting a ride into town because she’d been unable to hail a bus and didn’t want to miss her connection with the S92 — even though she knew it would likely be nearly an hour late, she still arrived five minutes before the scheduled time because she didn’t want to risk missing the only bus that stood a chance of getting her to work by 10 a.m.

A few minutes after she arrived at the bus stop, one of the on-demand buses arrived — carrying a single passenger, who had hailed the bus from Montauk.

When the county shifted to the on-demand system, it merged what had been the 10B and 10C routes — the 10B looping out through Springs, then stopping in East Hampton Village before running to the Bridgehampton Commons and back, with a stop in Wainscott; the 10C looping between the village and Montauk. Now, all of the on-demand buses work the entire area east of the village, accepting ride requests from anyone in Springs, Amagansett or Montauk.

On Friday, East Hampton Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez said that the new system could be a godsend for someone trying to get from Springs to a job in Montauk, or to doctors’ offices east of East Hampton, where under the old system they would have had to take one bus into East Hampton and then catch a different one east — both with wildly unreliable schedules.

But Welker surmised on Tuesday that the long run to Montauk could be part of the problem bogging down the system in the mornings — one of the factors that managers will be examining. Whether that would be best served by returning to a compartmentalized system or just adding additional buses to the system for the early hours would be part of the solution, will be up to the transportation experts.

Carl Irace, an attorney and secretary of the Greater East Hampton Chamber of Commerce who rode the new bus with Welker and Burke-Gonzalez last Thursday, May 9, said that he hoped the new bus system would be major boon for people in vulnerable situations or facing new challenges, as well as the workers who populate the stores of downtown East Hampton in the summer.

“In my work, I know plenty of people who don’t or cannot access a car, so this could be a big help to them,” he said. “I want to be able to tell them it’s there.”

Joseph Cristiani, who has been driving for the Jitney since last September and drove the 10B and 10C routes, said that his regular riders had seemingly all embraced the on-demand service and the app it relies on. Other than the difficulties in the mornings and some logistical bumps — he had informed Ruiz on a recent morning that the reason her ride that was supposed to arrive in 20 minutes had never come was because the system had accidentally sent the request to the Sag Harbor-Southampton bus — the on-demand system was generally getting good reviews from riders.

“One of my regulars who I see all the time says every day how great it is that I can drop her right at her driveway instead of having to walk to the road,” Cristiani said.

There are some new routines that take getting used to. Ruiz said that a lot of restaurant workers had ridden that 10B bus from Springs to jobs in Bridgehampton and that the new on-demand system now puts them at the mercy of the S92 and its unreliable timing.

Unlike Ruiz, Bennett was able to chuckle a bit at her own frustration of repeated daily rejections by the on-demand app. She said she hoped the county would get the kinks worked out, but also wondered aloud if the old system was not preferable, as bad as it was.

“The old one, it’s coming late, but he’s coming,” she said with a broad smile and a shake of her head. “An hour late sometimes! But that’s okay, we cannot help with the traffic. But at least you know it’s coming.”