"I'm excited, you can tell," Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming said about the new Suffolk Transit On-Demand service along Noyac Road from Sag Harbor to Southampton Village. The project has been at the heart of Ms. Fleming's work since her election in 2015, shortly after which eight bus routes were cut from service because of budgetary constraints.
On June 16, Ms. Fleming said she culminated years of working beside the Bellone administration and her Suffolk County Transportation Working Group with an inaugural ride next to the person whose story inspired the project.
Elfriede Neuman of Noyac used to take the 10A from her home to the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor Village. "They have some nice programs at the library, and I was not able to get there. I took several classes, and had to find somebody to take me and then come and pick me up."
Without the 10A and without a car, Ms. Neuman experienced just how much daily life can change without transportation across "one of the most important routes," she said, especially for those with appointments at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, cancer centers, or other doctors along that stretch.
Now, with the Suffolk Transit On-Demand smartphone app, Ms. Neuman can call up a bus and book a ride from home. The app lets her know when she should walk to a nearby corner for pickup, the exact location of which is determined by an algorithm that finds a compromise between the bus and the passenger's location.
"We went to Albany and advocated for additional state funding and got an additional $2 million," Ms. Fleming said. "Our transport working group urged legislation to ensure those additional monies were only spent on public transportation."
As a result, she and her team were granted $400,000 to explore micro-transit in the coverage area of the defunct 10A. Tom Neely, former director of transportation for the Town of Southampton and current member of the working group, said that the money went toward a two-year pilot program that joined Via Transportation, for overall planning, with Hampton Jitney, for overseeing local hiring and operation of the buses.
Since the 10A bus had been expensive to run on its fixed route system in such a big but sparsely populated coverage area, Ms. Fleming was confident that micro-transit would be the golden mean. Paying for the system and making it a permanent fixture is now "on us," she said.
The working group is made up of operators and unions representing drivers, all working on routes and schedules, maintaining bus shelters, and making sure road signs make sense. Ms. Fleming said she put the group together in the first place to bolster government resources here.
"Old formulas" have left Suffolk "shortchanged on support from federal and state governments," she said. "Of course, we have Assemblyman Thiele, who is a huge supporter of public transportation with the South Fork Commuter Connection, but the ability to get in the state budget the equivalent that other communities get, has been difficult over the years."
With current Covid restrictions, a total of four people at a time may now ride the handicapped-accessible buses, which are the same ones used by Suffolk County Accessible Transportation. There are three on the road at present, plus one spare.
The bus will go to wherever the algorithm pushes it within the service area, including Sag Harbor Village (where there's an S92 bus stop), the South Ferry dock on North Haven, Southampton High School, Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, Southampton Town Hall, the Rogers Memorial Library, the Stony Brook Southampton campus, the Shinnecock Health Clinic, the Long Island Rail Road station in Southampton, and the Hampton Jitney terminal there.
Rides cost $2.25, with discounts available for youths, students, people with disabilities, Medicare card holders, Suffolk County veterans, and senior citizens. Ms. Neuman proudly identified among the latter -- the "75-centers! I mean what else are you gonna get for 75 cents," she said.
The first five rides are free, and Ms. Fleming has three left. "I had to go to a dinner engagement, so I took it again on my own and it worked great. I sat at the kitchen table and called it up on the app, waited 19 minutes, and had to walk a block and a half to meet it. . . . There are rare moments in government when you can really deliver something that is very meaningful."
Ms. Neuman said that from time to time she would see Ms. Fleming at various events and check in about the bus situation, always hearing back an exuberant "We're working on it!"
"When it came to fruition it was such a nice surprise," Ms. Neuman said. "When you hear all the political claptrap and you find one that actually follows through -- that's a very rare gem indeed."
