Frances Errante starts her commute before 7 a.m., driving from her Staten Island home in Woodrow.

“There are no buses that take me downtown to where I need to head to for work,” she said. “So, I have to drive to the Eltingville Transit Center and then park and then take the SIM 7.”

Errante says her travel time has not improved since congestion pricing and the SIM 7 is long — 26 stops on Staten Island’s South Shore.

What You Need To Know

  • The MTA says express bus service is faster, but would not give times for routes that travel through Brooklyn and the Hugh Carey Tunnel

  • While many Staten Island commuters say travel times are faster, their buses either bunch up, show up but forget to change the signage, show up late or don’t show up, leaving passengers in the cold for sometimes an hour

  • One commuter who runs a Facebook group dedicated to Staten Island express buses says the service has gotten worse since on depot was closed and the MTA stopped paying overtime to repair buses

“It can take a good 45 to 50 minutes to get to Fingerboard Road,” Errante said.

And on the Gowanus Expressway, the high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane is packed. But the bus flew through the Hugh Carey Tunnel.

The MTA’s data shows travel time is down 18% since congestion pricing started, but would only provide bus speeds for a few Lincoln Tunnel routes, which on average saved 12 minutes.

Rosanna Sarcona-Doherty says she’s saved 15 minutes each way.

“Which, I will gladly take because an extra 30 minutes of my life as a mom to go make dinner, get ready for the next day, make lunches, all that kind of stuff," Sarcona-Doherty said. "Every minute counts."

She takes the SIM 25 through the Lincoln Tunnel. On one particular Wednesday in January, it took 54 minutes. 

“Not bad,” she said.

And posts to a Facebook group mostly dedicated to bus complaints had some positive posts. 

“Congestion pricing definitely has made an impact and a positive impact on the traffic,” Filippa Grisafi, who runs the Facebook page, said. “Now, if we can just get our buses on the road.”

The raves over bus speeds on that page were short-lived; the complaints quickly came back.

“We are losing a lot of service because buses aren’t being fixed,” she said. “They took away the OT for the maintenance, so we have buses that the heat’s not working, the air’s not working, breaking down on the bridge, in the tunnel, on the highway. We can’t have this. And with this weather, people are waiting outside 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour sometimes for a bus.”

Grisafi also says the one depot that ran properly was closed. According to MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber, service is running fine without it.

“There was a bus depot that was a temporary lease because we were building another depot. The lease expired, the new depot was built, we moved out of the leased, and that is saving money,” Lieber said. “Obviously, there are other concerns we’re addressing.”

Grisafi says they’re not addressing it.

“We are not asking for the impossible, we are just asking for the bus service we deserve,” Grisafi said.