Nearly six million upstate New York residents depend on four regional bus systems to get to work, appointments and daily errands, but a new report from the state comptroller’s office finds those systems are not always delivering on time, and in some cases, are not publicly tracking whether they do at all.
The report examines on-time performance across the Capital District Transportation Authority, the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, the Central New York Regional Transportation Authority and the Rochester-Genesee Regional Transportation Authority, offering what officials call the clearest public accounting yet of how each agency measures up.
“We found out that their performance was different depending on the authority,” said Matthew Golden, assistant comptroller at the New York state comptroller’s office. “Some of them are doing great. Some of them are not meeting their goals. And some of them don’t have public goals at all.”
Rochester leads the pack
Of the four systems, Rochester’s Regional Transit Service under RGRTA stands out as the top performer. The agency sets an on-time goal of 88% — the highest among the four — and has maintained consistent results over a decade of tracked data.
Buffalo struggling to meet its own bar
Buffalo’s NFTA operates with a lower on-time target of 84%, but has had difficulty meeting even that threshold, according to the report. Riders say the gap is noticeable…