Thursday, October 1, 2026
If you ride or work for Long Island Bus, changes are coming your way.
Details of the contract between Nassau County and Veolia Transportation Inc., which the county selected on June 10 to operate its bus system, will be finalized in about a month. If they are approved by the County Legislature and the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, and County Executive Ed Mangano gives his go-ahead, the county will have a privately operated bus system.
What does this mean for the 100,000 or so daily riders and hundreds of LI Bus employees, including many Baldwin residents? At first it won’t mean much. Veolia will take over the system, currently run by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, next Jan. 1 — the day after the county’s contract with the MTA expires. Fares, currently $2.25, and bus routes will remain unchanged throughout 2011, but will be subject to change next year pending ongoing contract negotiations.
Announcing that they had selected Veolia for the public-private partnership, county officials said that any service cuts would be considered as a “last resort” and would require public hearings.
Long Island Bus employees, who technically work for the MTA, will be out of jobs come Dec. 31. But the MTA said it would consider some of them for other job openings in the agency, and Veolia officials said that the company expects to hire some drivers and mechanics that currently work for LI Bus under different terms and wages.
According to county officials, it will cost about $106 million to fund the new transportation system. The Long Island Bus budget is currently $141 million. Funding would come from fare revenue and state and federal aid. While the county will contribute between $2.5 million and $4 million to the budget, Veolia expects to attract new riders and raise more revenue through fares. But some opponents of the public-private partnership — including Nassau County Comptroller George Maragos and Patricia Bowden, president of the Transportation Workers Union Local 252 — say they fear that Veolia will raise fares or cut service in order to cover costs or make a profit.
