“Having a set of eyes up on top … is absolutely essential for rider safety,” Berg said. In some instances, he recalled, customers needed medical attention.
Nyc double decker buses drivers#
There are rules in place for customer safety, he noted, but in the excitement or due to language barriers, many customers don’t follow them.Īccording to Ira Berg, a former tour guide who was laid off by Big Bus at the start of the pandemic, there have been numerous incidents in which drivers were involved in crashes, or riders on the top level of a double-decker vehicle were struck by traffic lights, scaffolding or tree branches. “Every day I would come back with some crazy story: ‘If I had not been there, this could have been a problem,’” Stewart said. Paul Stewart, who was a Big Bus guide before the pandemic began and worked for four months at Gray Line in 2014, told Crain’s he handled a number of rider issues. The workers also played a role in ensuring passenger safety, some say. For all of them, tour guides were an essential part of the experience before the pandemic. The city currently has three registered double-decker hop-on, hop-off operators: Big Bus Tours, Gray Line and TopView. But General Manager Charles Nolen said during a public meeting last year that ridership had declined by as much as 95%. Before 2020 it provided more than a million rides per year in the New York market. The company operates in 23 cities total, eight of them in the U.S. Beginning in Times Square, the double-decker buses usher tourists to the Empire State Building, Central Park and other major attractions.īig Bus was moving along “swimmingly” until Covid-19 entered the city, said Julia Conway, its executive vice president for North America.
Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” plays through maroon headphones given out at the start of every Big Bus tour.
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