Dollar vans in the New York metropolitan area
However, dollar vans also provide competition to licensed drivers, which cannot pick up passengers at MTA bus stops, and are generally more flexible in operations.
While permits are available via application through New York City's government, intense licensing requirements and an especially high cost of insurance results in many drivers staying unlicensed and unregulated.
[3][4] Dollar vans and other jitneys mainly serve low-income, immigrant communities in transit deserts, which lack sufficient bus and subway service.
The dollar vans, which take about half as long to travel as the subway does between the same two points, allow Chinese communities in New York City to be closely connected to each other.
The Jamaica Center-based vans provide an alternative mode of transportation to bus routes such as the Q4 to Cambria Heights, the Q113 to Far Rockaway, and the Q5 and Q85 to Green Acres Mall.
[13] In Edenwald, Bronx, a van takes passengers 1 mile (1.6 km) to the subway at 233rd Street for $2; the fare is halved for school-age kids.
For an additional 25 cents, van drivers drop riders off directly at their homes; help older passengers to their doorways; and assist patrons in carrying packages.
[2] Denser urban areas of northern New Jersey, such as Hudson, Bergen and Passaic County, are also served by dollar vans,[2][14][15] which are commonly known as jitneys or guaguas, and most of which are run by Spanish Transportation and Community Line, Inc.[16] Nungessers, along the Anderson Avenue-Bergenline Avenue transit corridor is a major origination/termination point, as are 42nd Street in Manhattan, Newport Mall and Five Corners in Jersey City, and GWB Plaza in Fort Lee.
[6][18] Others choose buses because, they claim, jitney drivers are less safe, and are prone to using cell phones and playing loud music while driving.
[2] In 2006, the New York City Council began debate on greater industry regulation, including requiring all dollar vans to be painted in a specific color to make them easier to recognize, similar to the public light buses in Hong Kong.
[19][20] Over the course of the 2000s, surprise inspections in Hudson County have been imposed on jitney operators, whose lack of regulation, licensing or regular scheduling has been cited as the cause for numerous fines.
A series of such inspections of the vans on Bergenline Avenue in June 2010 resulted in 285 citation violations, including problems involving brake lights, bald tires, steering wheels, suspensions, exhaust pipes, and emergency doors welded shut.
[22] Drivers of these vans have also developed a reputation for ignoring traffic laws in the course of competing for fares, picking up and dropping off passengers at random locations, and driving recklessly.
[23] On July 30, 2013, an accident occurred at 56th Street and Boulevard East in West New York, New Jersey, in which Angelie Paredes, an 8-month-old North Bergen resident, was killed in her stroller when a full-sized[24] jitney bus belonging to the New York-based Sphinx company toppled a light pole.
[24] At an August 6 press conference, legislators including U.S. Representative Albio Sires, New Jersey State Senator Nicholas Sacco, State Assembly members Vincent Prieto, Charles Mainor and Angelica Jimenez, West New York Mayor Felix Roque, Weehawken Mayor Richard Turner, Guttenberg Mayor Gerald Drasheff, Freeholder Junior Maldonado and Hudson County Sheriff Frank Schillari, noted that problems with jitneys existed since the 1980s, and called for stricter regulations for drivers and bus companies.
This included increased monitoring and enforcement, and heightened participation by the public in identifying poor drivers,[27] as jitneys had been exempt from regulations imposed on buses and other forms of transportation.
