For several years City Island residents have been forced to live with a Bx29 bus that is unreliable. It is not uncommon for the bus to run entirely off schedule by or not to show at all. For people who must be at work off the Island at a specific time, this inconsistency has wreaked havoc and in some cases threatened their employment.

To make matters worse, City Island's service stops at 12:12 a.m. and does not start up again until 4:58 a.m. Many people in our neighborhood work non-traditional hours so that public transportation is not a viable option for them. Also, those who live off the island but work late hours at the restaurants must resort to taxis or other forms of transportation to get home.



The City Island Civic Association hosted a meeting with representatives of the MTA in July and 40 people attended. The dialogue was encouraging, but there is still a great deal of room for improvement. We still do not know what is driving these delays, many of which occur during off-peak traffic hours on weekdays. We can only speculate that the demand being generated at Bay Plaza, which shares the Bx29, is leading to transit delays.



We ask the MTA to respond to the following requests:

1.) Conduct a thorough review of the Bx29 route and present the data and information, along with a list of planned improvements, at an upcoming meeting of the City Island Civic Association.



2.) Expand the service to at least once an hour between 1 and 5 a.m., especially on weekend evenings where restaurant workers and patrons are left without affordable transit options.



3.) Explore the possibility of separating the Bx29 route from the route to Co-Op City and enable it to travel exclusively between City Island and Pelham Bay Station. Commuters wishing to go to Co-op City can then transfer at the station.