The Record is reporting that NJ Transit retracted a winning bid by Saddle River Tours for a seven year contract to operate eight Bergen County local bus routes. Coach USA's Community Coach lines has been operating the 751,752,753,755,756,762,772, and 780 routes under contract for the past seven years. These routes carried almost a million passengers in 2016 according to NJT. Saddle River actually submitted a lower bid than the incumbent Community Coach, and thought it had won the contract back in September. However, it was recently notified that the bid was retracted on a technicality - because Community didn't have an opportunity to make the required oral presentation for the bid. Community is maintaining the contract for another year - at a contract rate that is $720,000 MORE than Saddle River Tours' bid for the year. That is an additional $720,000 that will be paid by New Jersey taxpayers at a time when transit funding is scarce.
In 2014, Saddle River took over Coach USA's 11C and 20/84 routes that run through Bergen County to the George Washington Bridge when Rockland Coaches abandoned them. They were the only company to step in to provide the GWB service with the hope of expanding operations in Bergen and other counties.
NJT Board minutes call the contracting process a "competitive procurement process." We don't see it. The losing bid came in $720,000 lower than the winning bid for this year. How is that competitive? Coach USA likewise has a history of cutting bus service in Bergen County, yet is mysteriously awarded another year on the Bergen contract despite being outbid by Saddle River. We call shenanigans on the NJT Board.
We hope SRT can either successfully mount a legal challenge, or win the contract when it is up for bid in 2018. This will be a lot tougher now that Coach USA knows its bidding strategy.
