it is truly the end of the line for the state's oldest private bus company decamps commuter bus service announced earlier this month it's struggled to retain ridership since the start of the pandemic and now after 153 years of shuttling riders in suburban north Jersey to New York City it's closing down that part of the business senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan has the story DeCamp bus lines making its final commuter runs between the Jersey suburbs in New York City this week the historic company says with ridership averaging just 20 percent or less of pre-pandemic levels it finally had to pull the emergency stop cord I've certainly seen the ridership drop off due to the work from home hybrid situation but again it's a new era and unfortunately to Camp they made for likely business decisions that they have to cut the service it was a quick way to get into the city like I said it's been running since I was a tiny little kid a lot of people that I know are disappointed we have the train as well as the bus in town so we you can use the train but it's not as convenient for me the bus is closer so I do prefer the bus do camps operated for Generations but will cease all commuter operations April 7th making an emergency pivot and a Transit will pick up some of decamp's bus routes the 33 66 and 44 providing morning and evening rush hour service Monday through Friday only it made us extremely happy and that I mean our main goal is to make sure residents have access to New York City Bloomfield Mayor Michael Venezia says he asked the Transit Agency to take over to Camp's bus routes and would offer a town shuttle service if NJ transit's effort falls short I know funding is always an issue and uh there is a little bit of a bus driver shortage right now but we're going to make sure that that we reach out to the governor's office and make sure our legislators do what they need to do to keep the money that NJ Transit needs to uh provide proper service NJ transit's not the only agency stepping up a bus company called boxcar is also going to start offering rides along a DeCamp route we've had 1200 people show interest so far and we've already had 140 make reservations and that's a lot CEO Joe Colangelo tailed it to Camp buses choose an engaging ridership along the Route boxcar will pick up on its new Essex Express run from West Caldwell through Bloomfield and Montclair to Lyndhurst but boxcar will make fewer stops and membership costs 30 bucks a month tickets run nine dollars a ride we are a reservation based service so you have to have a ticket for the exact time of that bus DeCamp will return NJ Transit equipment it used to provide the contracted commuter runs and focus on offering Charter services and casino shuttles it's one of many Prime private bus companies hired by NJ Transit and that raises red flags says Tri-State transportations Renee Reynolds the approach I think to solving this is not playing whack-a-mole how do we provide sustainable service so that this never happens again so that this is not the first Domino to fall with other companies coming after Jonathan DeCamp sixth of his generation to run the family business told us the private carriers were left without a Lifeline during the pandemic and that any new Aid would probably come too late at this point to salvage commuter routes he will have to lay off more than half his 160 workers NJ Transit and boxcar will pick up select to Camp routes starting Monday April 10th in Montclair I'm Brenda Flanagan NJ Spotlight news [Music] [Music]