End of MTA taxi service leaves overnight commuters waiting

August 31, 2020 Jose Martinez, THE CITY

Grace Kalmus, 63, starts her commute at 3 a.m. from her home in Sheepshead Bay to a Home Depot in Hempstead, Aug. 27, 2020. Photo: Ben Fractenberg/The CITY

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Grace Kalmus stepped out of her Sheepshead Bay apartment building a few minutes before 3 a.m. Thursday and walked in the darkness toward the green taxi waiting to take her to the Queens-Nassau line.

For more than three months during the pandemic, the ride has been a key part of her daily commute to 178th Street and Hillside Avenue in Jamaica, where she then catches a Nassau Inter-County Express bus to the start of her 6 a.m. shift at a Hempstead Home Depot.

“I’d rather be early than late,” said Kalmus, 63, who works as a cashier. “By 3:30, I’m at the bus stop, because you just don’t know how the bus will be running.”

The first leg of her trip is courtesy of the MTA, which, since May, has spent more than $6 million on for-hire vehicle trips for roughly 1,500 essential workers as a commuting alternative during the nightly 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. subway shutdown.

“It’s been great, but it’s going to end,” Kalmus said, as she settled into the back seat of the taxi. “I’m screwed.”

The Jamaica Center station in Queens is shuttered overnight, Aug. 27, 2020. Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

The temporary program is set to end at 5 a.m. Sunday, a victim of the MTA’s financial misery, which has the agency warning of soaring fare increases, thousands of layoffs and up to 40 percent in transit service cuts without a $12 billion injection of federal emergency aid.

The MTA has said the average per-cost trip on the for-hire vehicles is $49. Approximately 40 percent of those trips, an MTA spokesperson said, begin or end in Manhattan’s central business district.

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For Kalmus, the 3 a.m. trek — which she books days in advance on the MTA “Essential Connector” website — takes her in a distant opposite direction.

Her car ride through Brooklyn and Queens to the city line typically takes 20 minutes, followed by a 35- to 40-minute bus trip into Nassau County.

Prior to the suspension of overnight subway service, Kalmus said she would take the five-block walk to the nearest Q train stop, transfer to the F to Jamaica–179th Street and then catch a bus to Hempstead. The trip typically took about 90 minutes, she said.

“It’s never been the easiest commute,” Kalmus conceded.

Turning to Buses

MTA spokesperson Abbey Collins said the agency expects that several hundred of the 1,500 users of for-hire vehicles will now shift to the three new interborough express bus services that run while the subway is closed.

The new B99 (Midwood, Brooklyn, to Midtown West), Bx99 (Woodlawn, The Bronx, to West Village) and M99 routes (East New York, Brooklyn, to Hell’s Kitchen) were designed using data from commuters who signed up for the for-hire vehicle services.

Long Island-bound buses leave from Jamaica, Queens for early morning commuters, Aug. 27, 2020. Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

“We want to be as responsive as possible to the needs of our customers and worked to tailor service to meet demand based on our analysis of the ridership and travel patterns we are seeing during the overnight,” Collins told THE CITY.

Those routes supplement the overnight bus service that expanded with the May 6 start of the overnight subway suspension.