Nassau Inter-County Express
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A Nassau Inter-County Express westbound n4 bus departs the Freeport Railroad Station.
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| Parent | Nassau County, New York (fleet ownership) |
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| Founded | 1973 (MSBA) 2012 (NICE) |
| Defunct | 2011 (MSBA) |
| Headquarters | 700 Commercial Avenue Garden City, NY |
| Locale | Nassau County, New York |
| Service area | Most of Nassau County, except for northern Town of Oyster Bay, Parts of Queens County and Suffolk County |
| Service type | Local bus |
| Routes | 41 (plus five shuttle routes) |
| Hubs | 4 major bus hubs, 48 LIRR stations, and 5 New York City Subway stations |
| Fleet | 350 fixed-route, 122 Able Ride |
| Daily ridership | 95,854 (weekday 2013) |
| Fuel type |
CNG (fixed-route) Diesel (Able-Ride) |
| Operator | Transdev |
| Chief executive | Michael Setzer |
| Website | nicebus.com |
The Nassau Inter-County Express (NICE or NICE Bus) is the local bus system serving Nassau County, New York. It also serves parts of western Suffolk County, New York as well as eastern portions of the New York City borough of Queens. It was formerly operated under the name of MTA Long Island Bus, the trading name of the Metropolitan Suburban Bus Authority, a division of MTA Regional Bus Operations. In 2011, the owner, Nassau County, decided to outsource the system to a private operator, the French multinational corporation, Veolia Transportation (now called Transdev), due to a funding dispute with the MTA.
The MTA began operating Nassau County bus service in 1973 under the name Metropolitan Suburban Bus Authority, through the merging of 11 private operators (routes in italics have been discontinued):
(*) denotes original bus routes that are now active shuttles as of September 6, 2016
In the 1980s, the N28 (now discontinued), N46 (also discontinued), N50 (also discontinued), and N70 (as an N72 branch) were instituted as new routes, with the N20 extended to Hicksville. The 1990s saw the creation of a shuttle around Roosevelt Field (N93, now discontinued), two shuttles designed to take customers from train stations to work sites (the N94 and N95, both discontinued), and a service connecting Nassau County to JFK Airport (the N91, now discontinued), with the 2000s seeing a Merrick shuttle (now discontinued) and the N8 (now discontinued) and N43 routes being created.
In 2007, Long Island Bus averaged over 109,000 weekday riders, many of which include customers connecting to other MTA services in the region. By 2011, the MTA had averaged 101,981 weekday riders by the time of the agency's exit from operating the service.
In 2010, the future of MTA Long Island Bus became uncertain, as the MTA threatened drastic cuts due to Nassau County's disproportionately small contributions to the operation. For the past decade, the MTA has provided a unique subsidy (of $24 million in 2011 and over $140 million since 2000) to the Nassau County bus system that the other New York City suburban county bus systems have not received. The county's contribution was $9.1 million per year out of a total budget of $133.1 million, and the MTA desired that this contribution increase to $26 million. Critics have noted that Westchester County subsidized its similarly-sized Bee-Line Bus System service by $33 million/year, and that Suffolk subsidizes its substantially smaller Suffolk County Transit system by $24 million/year. The county hoped to reduce its contribution from $9.1 million to $4.1 million by using a private contractor; the planned county contribution was later decreased to $2.5 million/year.
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