Little Neck Resident Kicks Off Bid To Revive Q79 Bus Service

Even after the city clears out snow from the many roads, lanes and byways in Little Neck, it still might prove difficult in the new year for residents to travel up and down Little Neck Parkway.

On Dec. 30, a privately-operated group ride program — billed by the city as a replacement for the canceled Q79 bus line — will cease operations. And with the disppearance of this latest substitute to regular MTA bus service, at least one longtime Little Neck resident says she has had enough.

"Our only option now is to continue to pressure the MTA to return our bus," wrote Judy Cohen, president of the North Hills Estates Civic Association, in an email to residents Monday.

The renewed push to resume Q79 bus service between Floral Park and Little Neck Long Island Railroad station comes nearly a year after the transit agency eliminated the route in a spate of budget-tightening measures.

At the time, officials at the agency said the axing of the bus line would save the cash-strapped MTA $700,000 annually.

But former riders of the line, including many elderly residents with few other transit options, said the change prevented caregivers from getting to the sick, kept children from getting to school and everyday Little Neckers from regular trips to the grocers.

"Without the bus ... it is impossible to travel to any of the east-west streets to make connections to other buses that go to subways," Cohen said.

The van service running appoximately over the same route as the Q79 was operated by the city Taxi and Limousine Commission. Only last month, TLC commissioner David Yassky hailed the group ride vans, not as a replacement for MTA bus service, but as a viable transit alternative.

"The MTA bus is the gold standard," Yassky said at a Community Board meeting Nov. 8. "All we are trying to do is create options in places where there aren't enough options."

However, Glen Oaks Association president Bob Friedrich said the van service which began in early September was "doomed to failure."

According to Friedrich, local civic leaders submitted five points they said were crucial to the group ride program's success, including the inclusion of the telephone number of the private van company providing the service on signs at pick-up locations along the route.

"He never got back to us," Friedrich said. "And now thousands of people are virtually prisoners in their own homes, with no transit options."

Long simmering resentment over the elimination of a line which served 650 weekday commuters and 160 Saturday customers among some Little Neck residents seemed to center on a perception that officials paid short-shrift to riders on the periphery of the the city's mainline transit system.

"Of course, there weren't enough riders if the plan wasn't adequately published and checked out reguarly to make sure that the service was working well," Cohen said.