HITTING A FEW BUMPS
Riders frustrated, leaders urge patience as UCAT takes over bus routes in city
Riders expressed confusion and frustration and trips took longer than scheduled Monday as Ulster County Area Transit began operating former Citibus routes in Kingston. County and city officials, though, said the problems merely were the result of growing pains and the need for passengers and drivers to acclimate themselves to the new routine.
The old Citibus routes are now named for colors (red, blue, yellow) instead of letters (A, B, C), and though the buses traveling around Kingston are the same vehicles as before, the word “Citibus” has been removed from them, and they now bear the words “Operator UCAT.”
Outside the Hannaford supermarket at Kingston Plaza, a de facto hub for city and county buses, passengers expressed confusion about the new Kingston routes Monday morning and asked each other and drivers which buses they needed to take to get to their destinations.
Among them was Catharine Foster, who needed to get from
the plaza to the Colonial Gardens apartment complex on Flatbush Avenue.
“I used to take one route, now I have to take two (blue and yellow),” she said.
“They shouldn’t have done it,” Foster said on the UCAT-Citibus merger. “It’s going to affect a lot of people.”
The blue route, which goes from the plaza to the city’s Rondout district and back, is supposed to need 30 minutes for its round trip but was behind schedule Monday morning.
The blue route bus that was scheduled to leave the plaza at 10:30 a.m. didn’t pull out until 10 minutes later, but it completed the leg to the YMCA on Broadway in the scheduled six minutes. After picking up one passenger at the Y, the bus reached the Kingston police station, at Broadway and Garraghan Drive, 17 minutes after leaving the plaza, two minutes longer than planned even though it stayed on Broadway and skipped a stop at Wurts and Abeel streets due to construction in that area.
The return trip also ran behind schedule, mainly due to the bus holding at the transfer point on Jansen Avenue to wait for a yellow route bus that was about five minutes late. (The yellow route starts and ends at the Ulster County Department of Social Services in the town of Ulster and makes stops at the Colonial Gardens and Stuyvesant Charter apartments, HealthAlliance Hospital’s Broadway Campus and the hamlet of Port Ewen.)
The third city route, the red, goes from Kingston Plaza to the Golden Hill complex, and then to the Ulster County Law Enforcement Center, before returning to the plaza via Wall Street, North Front Street, Frog Alley and Schwenk Drive.
Fawn McGowan, who came to Kingston Plaza from Colonial Gardens on Monday, was another passenger expressing frustration.
McGowan said she used to take one Citibus to Kingston Plaza, then a UCAT bus to her job in the Target store at Hudson Valley Mall in the town of Ulster. But now the trip requires her to take three buses — yellow and blue in the city, then the UCAT bus to Ulster.
“It was not a good move,” McGowan said of the merger.
Susan Berger, who splits her time between New York City and Kingston and relies on buses when she’s in Kingston, also expressed frustration about the new routes and blamed Kingston Mayor Steve Noble among other elected officials.
“He doesn’t Berger said.
At Kingston Plaza on Monday, Berger said she was confused about the new system and which bus she needed to take.
“It’s not clear which bus is which,” she said.
Noble, in a statement emailed to the Freeman, said: “Obviously it is going to take some time for both the drivers and the passengers to get used to the new system. Today is the first day of the changeover, so there will be a learning curve, but along with the changes will be many new amenities and improvements, like dispatching services, [free on-board] WiFi, more frequent buses and transfers that actually align with one another.”
Noble and Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan rode a bus together Monday, and Ryan said in a prepared statement that the care,” “partnership between Ulster County and the city of Kingston is good for bus riders and good for taxpayers.”
“These new routes will cut time and better serve all residents,” Ryan said.
All rides in Kingston are free until the end of the year.
Dan Torres, an assistant to Ryan, rode the bus with Ryan and Noble and said midday Monday that growing pains are to be expected.
“It’s a significant change,” but “it’s a good change,” Torres said.
Regarding confusion about which buses to take in Kingston, Torres said the schedule is posted online (bit.ly/2KFvyev), bus drivers are giving them to passengers when they board, and they will be posted at the Kingston Plaza stop.
Riders also can download the UCAT app on Apple and Google devices to see schedules, route maps, real-time locations of the buses and estimated arrival times, and receive arrival notifications.
Torres said local officials will continue to reach out to riders and listen to feedback.
“Our ultimate goal is to provide the best service to the most people,” Torres said. “A part of the process is to take information from residents and see what we can do differently. We’re open to hearing that.”
The merger of UCAT and Citibus was approved by the Kingston Common Council in March and the Ulster County Legislature in April.
Under the deal, the city is paying the county $112,500 in 2019, and then will pay $225,000 in each of the following five years. Subsequently, the county will assume full financial responsibility for the merged transit system.