Thursday, October 1, 2026
For 30 years, Phyliss Wagner, a West Beech Street resident, has relied on Long Island Bus for transportation, counting on the service to get to her job in Rockville Centre each day.
“Over 100,000 people a day ride LI bus — workers mostly, low-paid workers,” Wagner said. “And a lot of them live here in Long Beach or work here in Long Beach, they come from other places. I’m one of those people.”
Long Island Bus operates two lines in Long Beach, the N15 and N33.
Last week, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced that half of its LI Bus routes, including the N33, which runs through Atlantic Beach to Far Rockaway and St. John’s Episcopal Hospital, would be discontinued. The MTA said that Nassau County’s funding falls $24 million short of what is needed to operate current local bus and Able-Ride services.
Riders like Wagner said that the cuts would have a tremendous impact on their daily lives. “They can find millions of dollars for other things, [but] they can’t find a penny for the people who take LI Bus,” she told the Long Beach City Council at its March 1 meeting, calling on officials to pressure the MTA and the county to reach an agreement.
According to the MTA — which has scheduled a public hearing on March 23 from 3 to 9 p.m. at Hofstra University to discuss the proposed cuts — Nassau County, unlike other counties, has refused to fund the full amount necessary to operate LI Bus after fares and state grants are collected.
For nearly 40 years, the bus system has operated under an MTA contract with Nassau County. Since 2000, the MTA says, it has contributed $140 million to subsidize the service, but can no longer afford to do so.
The MTA contributes about $36 million per year to LI Bus’s $133 million budget, while the county, which owns the 47-line system, pays $9.1 million and the state pays $44 million. Fare-paying customers make up the difference. Facing an $800 million deficit in July, the MTA announced that it wanted to stop subsidizing the system altogether and threatened to cease operations this year unless the county quadrupled its subsidy from $9.1 million to $36.1 million. But County Executive Edward Mangano said the county could not increase its subsidy and would explore privatizing LI Bus.
