Thursday, October 1, 2026
Wantagh residents who live west of the Wantagh Parkway can receive free “Uber-like” on-demand bus rides — in a new, smaller, wheelchair-accessible shuttle — during a Nassau Inter-County Express bus pilot program from Aug. 20 to 31.
NICE Link is piloting the door-to-door shared rides to locations in Merrick, Bellmore, East Meadow and parts of Wantagh within these boundaries: Hempstead Turnpike to Merrick Road (north-south) and Meadowbrook Parkway to Wantagh Parkway (east-west). Link will also serve the Freeport, Merrick and Bellmore Long Island Rail Road stations.
On weekdays, from 6:30 to 9:30 a.m. and 2:30 to 7 p.m., residents can order NICE Link to pick them up and take them to areas that are within the service zone. Riders can order the ride through NICE’s bus transit app, GoMobile, which will automatically access the user’s GPS coordinates. The app will schedule the rides.
After the pilot program, riders will be able to use GoMobile to book and pay for NICE link trips and get ride information. During the promotion, riders should click on the cash payment option, and the driver will not collect a fare.
Those who may not have access to the app can call (516) 228-4171.
Link is also available to Able-Ride paratransit customers. NICE officials say this is more flexible than the Able-Ride service, which re-quires a 24-hour advance reservation. Link’s small buses have 14 seats, three wheelchair stations and a wheelchair lift.
After the two-week free service promotion, the regular fare will be $4.50 anywhere in the Link zone — more expensive than a regular NICE bus trip but less expensive than Uber.
GoMobile for iPhone is available free at the App Store and for Android at Google Play Store.
A NICE Bus news release about the Link program states that “in its continuing efforts to adopt transit solutions that marry technology with best practices, [it] is this week testing new service innovations designed to create a more flexible, responsive and cost-efficient bus transit system in Nassau County.”
NICE Link does away with fixed routes, schedules, pre-set bus stops and big buses, and instead offers address-to-address service, smaller vehicles and a reservation and payment feature on NICE’s existing GoMobile transit app for smartphones. NICE is one of a few public transit systems to offer this type of on-demand service, according to the news release.
NICE Chief Executive Officer Michael Setzer said the county’s investments in NICE technology and its focus on system planning have driven innovation that is improving service in response to customer needs.
“Communities across the U.S. are increasingly reinventing and expanding their investment in public transportation with further innovation and investment,” Setzer said.
NICE is also testing “schedule-less” service on its n/40-41 bus route, be-tween Mineola and Freeport, which is designed to improve reliability and regularity. With a new “frequency-based” approach, buses arrive every 10 minutes during peak time versus on a fixed schedule. The n40/41 route changes rely on GPS technology, which was installed on NICE buses during a recently completed system-wide technology upgrade to maintain the regularity of bus arrivals. Night service has been also been added on the n40/41.
“NICE is essential to the region’s economic vitality, and with further innovation and investment, the benefit to the greater community, as well as riders, can be significantly increased,” Nassau County Executive Laura Curran said in the release.
Curran added that NICE, the county’s public bus transit system, is “integral to the everyday lives of tens of thousands of residents and that increasing connectivity to the broader regional transit network is especially important to build stronger, more vibrant communities.”
This pilot program is funded by Transdev, the operator of the county’s public bus system, and is operated with three, 26-foot “cutaway-style” mini-bus, shuttle-type vehicles.
