By Walter Elliott
MONTCLAIR – DeCamp Bus Lines’ riders had an especially blue Monday here March 20 when they learned that the private bus carrier has decided to get out of the commuter business.
Company vice president and CEO Jonathan DeCamp announced at 9 a.m. on its Twitter account that all services on the Nos. 33, 44, 66/66R and 99 routes will cease with their last scheduled bus runs on April 7.
Riders in Montclair, West Orange, Glen Ridge, Bloomfield, Belleville, Nutley and North Newark – along with those in 10 other West Essex, Bergen, Passaic and Hudson county towns – will have to find other ways to enter New York City’s Port Authority Bus Terminal.
The above said four routes will join the 32 Nutley-New York, the 88 Orange / East Orange-NY and the 100 “North Jersey” routes that were never reactivated after March 24, 2020.
March 24, 2020 was when DeCamp, among most other private bus carriers, suspended service on all eight routes due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. DeCamp suspended its entire operation, including charter and casino services, Aug. 8, 2020.
DeCamp first resumed limited weekday rush hour service on June 1, 2020 but resuspended it due to low ridership on Aug. 7, 2020. It resumed in stages May 6, 2021 and Jan. 30, 2022 to its current average 80 daily trips.
Jonathan Decamp, however, indicated that the average ridership is now 20 percent of pre-pandemic levels. His buses went from carrying 6,500 daily riders in 2019 to around 1,775 lately.
“As we pass the three-year mark of the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic, DeCamp Bus Lines has struggled to recapture daily commuter passengers as work-from-home, telecommuting and flex schedules severely reduced daily commuting to New York City,” said Jonathan DeCamp. “DeCamp has sustained commuter service up to this point, thanks to the various federal and state assistance programs. But, without further assistance on the horizon, the economic losses of the continued operation of the commuter services are too much to bear.”
DeCamp was referring to the federal transit subsidy funds that Congress gave out during the pandemic’s height. Other private carriers plus public carriers like NJTransit, PATH and New York’s MTA have been beneficiaries, allowing them to preserve services and fare levels.
Waiting for their subsidy to come through in 2020, however, had led to DeCamp putting their commuter services on an Aug. 2020- May 2021 hiatus. Other federal and state subsidies and moratoria, from TANF Food Stamps to rent, have indeed been receding this past year.
PATH daily ridership, reports its Port Authority of NY and NJ parent, is up to 52 percent of its 2019 level of 270,000. (Newark, from 2020 Census data has a population of over 280,000.)
NJTransit has recently said that its commuter rail ridership is 75 percent of its 89,000 2019 non-Amtrak riders on its nine lines. Its bus and light rail ridership is said to be “holding steady.”
Likening DeCamp to NJTransit and PATH, however, is more of a David-versus-Goliath contrast than an apples-to-apples comparison. PATH/PA is a public authority. NJTransit is the nation’s third-largest public carrier – and the largest statewide carrier.
“NJTransit can go to the taxpayer,” said DeCamp then-VP Gary Pard in 2000. “We have to watch every penny.”
Pard was quoted while he watched NJTransit complete its Montclair Connection practically down the street from DeCamp’s garage and headquarters. The Montclair Connection, completed Sept. 20-22, 2002, consolidated the former Boonton Line and Montclair Branch for decades-desired one-seat service to New York Penn Station.
NJTransit’s opening the Montclair Connection, the Kearny Connection in 1996 and the Secaucus Junction station in 2003 busted ridership and real estate values – at private carriers’ expense.
DeCamp, Community Coach 77 and Lakeland Bus lines reported ridership declines. DeCamp cut a third of its drivers and bus runs.
It is not known whether DeCamp will have to return its leased commuter buses to NJDOT. NJDOT has been leasing each bus to private and public carriers for $1 each since the 1980s.
It is unknown whether DeCamp will sell any of its commuter lines to another company or return their charters to NJDOT/NJTransit.
It had sold its Livingston-Newark and West Caldwell-Newark routes around 1980 to NJTransit, which renumbered them as 73 and 71. It sold its No. 22 Bloomfield-Jersey City Journal Square route in 1930 to another private company.
Boxcar president Joe Colangelo said on March 20 that he is reaching out to the towns along DeCamp’s routes about alternative services. Boxcar runs premium buses to Midtown Manhattan from central Bergen and Morris and northern/central Union counties.
OurBus may also be approached by DeCamp commuters. The New York outfit, featuring advanced electronic fare payment, currently runs express service from Newark’s Peter Francisco Park east of Newark Penn Station to Clifton, New Brunswick, Hamilton, Baltimore and Washington, DC. It had tried out a parallel Morristown-NYC route for dissatisfied Community Coach 77 riders.
NJTransit spokesman Jim Smith, Monday night, said that the carrier is “assessing impacts on the existing bus, rail and light rail service.” What alternative service it can make available “will be announced in advance of April 7.”
There is no indication of whether NJTransit will buy or adopt DeCamp routes.
Sally Jane Gellert, Chairperson of the Millburn-based Lackawanna Coalition railroad advocacy group, however, favors NJTransit taking over the routes.
“When such a hole is created in transportation service, NJTransit, as the public agency, has a moral – if not legal – obligation to step in,” Gellert told “Local Talk” March 21. “The agency has taken over abandoned routes before and should probably do so again – if not duplicating the service, then being sure existing routes cover the same areas or setting up short routes to connect major transit points.”
South Orange rider advocate and Coalition Chairman Emeritus David Peter Alan, suggests that NJTransit can start filling in DeCamp’s gap by adding more Montclair-Boonton Line train runs.
“It’s never good for riders when any carrier goes out of business like this,” said Alan Tuesday. “It would also help if there could be more trains to Bloomfield, Glen Ridge and Montclair – particularly much-needed hourly service on weekends; every two hours is not enough.”
Coalition members and representatives, said Gellert, are reaching out to the affected municipalities.
DeCamp has asked its riders to stay tuned for any alternative service announcements. It is presumed that DeCamp’s PABT departure gates will go with its designated routes.
New Jersey’s oldest bus company, founded in Livingston in 1870, will focus on its charter and casino bus business.
Unused and unexpired tickets and ticket books may be mailed back for a refund to DeCamp Bus Lines, Attn: Refunds, PO Box 581, Montclair, NJ 07042. Refund requestors are asked to enclose self-addressed stamped envelopes.
