Following Ulster County Area Transit’s precipitous declaration of systemwide route changes, transit riders have been trying to make sense of how old routes will be affected within the new transit landscape.
Beginning Sep. 15, the most important detail for the largest number of riders is that the central transfer hub for most buses in Ulster County will be moved from Kingston Plaza to Development Court on Ulster Avenue.
Thus, any riders purposefully coming in from outside Kingston aiming for uptown and disembusing by the Hannaford Supermarket will now have to acclimate to finding themselves two miles off course, disembusing under the facades of the Family Court and Department of Social Services buildings while they figure out another approach. The KS route will do in a pinch for getting back uptown.
Beyond the central hub transfer, numerous routes have either dropped or added stops—the new routes can be examined on the UCAT webpage.
The hastily announced changes are reportedly the result of Kingstonian Brad Jordan, the owner of the Kingston Plaza—the parking lot currently serving as the countywide transfer hub—becoming disenchanted with the behavior and increased numbers of the ridership.
Though the county utilized the parking lot for years, toilets and sinks were never built.
Announced ahead of the completion of its yearslong route optimization study, it now appears that some riders will be hit by the changes worse than others.
Like riders in Port Ewen. Under the new routes, the Yellow Line is moving on from Port Ewen altogether. Service in Port Ewen will now be handled by the KPL. As a result, Port Ewen will lose five separate hours of stops—8 a.m., 11 a.m., 2 p.m., 7 p.m. and 8 p.m.—creating vast, two-hour windows of time where no bus will be coming through Port Ewen at all.
Between 7:10 a.m. and 9:55 a.m., no bus. Between 9:55 a.m. and 12:55 p.m., no bus. Between 12:55 p.m. and 3:15 p.m., no bus. Between 3:15 p.m. and 5:55 p.m., no bus. Between 5:55 p.m. and 8:55 p.m., no bus.
Mercifully, served by the KPL, Port Ewen riders retain their ability to get down to the train station in Poughkeepsie and then down to Grand Central Station in New York City on the Metro-North, with no change to service.
Unmercifully, existing service means the KPL bus makes its last stop in Poughkeepsie at 7:20 p.m., making it extremely challenging for anyone in Port Ewen to consider a day job in New York City without private transportation to get to the train station and back.
Discontinuation of loop bus spells big changes for some New Paltz residents
The trip from Grand Central to Poughkeepsie is commonly two hours. Assuming someone gets out of the office or finishes their shift at 5 p.m. on the dot, makes it to Grand Central and boards a Hudson Line Metro-North train by 5:32, train schedules show they’ll have just two minutes to get from the train to the last KPL bus. A train running a few minutes late could spell disaster.
Which highlights the disingenuousness of the transit authority’s claim that their buses operate until 11 p.m. on weekdays and 7 p.m. on weekends.
As far as Port Ewen is concerned, for the KPL line picking up from the city, they operate until 7:20 p.m. on weekdays, 5 p.m. on Saturday and not at all on Sunday, getting residents back home at 8:55 p.m. on weekdays, 5:25 p.m. on Saturday and not at all on Sundays.
(On Sundays, the UPL line takes over for the KPL, so Port Ewen riders shouldn’t notice the difference, but 5:25 is still the last bus from Poughkeepsie.)
Unless they can afford a cab, day-trippers from Port Ewen interested in a dinner and a movie down in the city will have to pass. Otherwise, they’d be left standing in a dark parking lot with no way home.
Still, riders in Port Ewen experience better transit conditions than bus riders farther down the 9W in Milton and Marlboro. They have none.
Day-trippers from Kingston looking to stay later in New York City do have a workaround. New Paltz’s primary bus route to Poughkeepsie—the UPL—runs a last bus from the train station at 9:50 p.m. Because of the way the tail of the route is constructed, the UPL begins and ends at the Golden Hill bus stop off Route 32 in Kingston.
Catching the last bus from the train station returns riders in Kingston at 10:40 p.m., allowing for a more civilized timeline for a trip back.
But setting aside travel for reasons of pleasure, this situation underlines the complaint that a lack of car ownership in Ulster County leads to less economic opportunity.
For anyone, anywhere in Ulster County who owns a car, they can simply drive down to the Poughkeepsie train station whenever it’s convenient—or even across to catch the Amtrak train in Rhinecliff—to pay for what is regularly the most expensive ticket into the city if purchased at the last minute. (I’ve seen as high as $86 for coach.)
Of course, the Trailways bus out of Albany, which passes through a corner parking lot near Dietz Stadium in the city of Kingston, provides hourly service to New York City every day beginning at 4:30 in the morning, but the price—$32 to start—is also steeper than what Metro-North charges: $20 off-peak, $27 peak.
One ominous change to the KPL route that UCAT acknowledges on its webpage is that there will be “alternating service to the Kingston Plaza and Development Court.”
It’s unclear just what UCAT means to say, but if “alternating” means “switching between the two,” then it sounds like anyone trying to get to Poughkeepsie or Port Ewen from the Kingston Plaza on the one hand, or an easy walk to the Trailways bus terminal on the other, just saw their number of available bus rides cut in half.
Visit ucat.ulstercountyny.gov/routes for the latest route information.
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