DATTCO, a privately-owned bus company, announced that it will stop running its daily service connecting Boston to Taunton, Dartmouth, New Bedford and Fairhaven, effective April 16.
James Lyons, a vice president at the company, said DATTCO has been operating its bus route to New Bedford at a deficit for several years now.
“But we sort of felt an obligation,” Lyons said. “We know we’ve got some essential workers riding with us, and through the pandemic we just didn’t feel that was time to eliminate the service altogether.”
Since 2004, DATTCO has offered a direct ride to and from Boston’s South Station for a round trip price of $31. It isn’t cheap, but it is still the most affordable way for people on the South Coast to reach Boston without a car.
The upcoming closure of DATTCO’s bus routes in the New Bedford area will send dozens of riders scrambling for another way to reach Boston for work, flights, hospital appointments, and other business and social visits. The move follows similar cancellations of private bus service for commuters throughout the South Coast.
“Peter Pan Bus Lines stopped their Fall River service during the pandemic. Bloom Bus Lines stopped their service out of Taunton during the pandemic largely for the same reasons,” Lyons said. “It’s just the ridership has deteriorated to the point that the businesses can’t make money.”
Lyons said DATTCO’s ridership in New Bedford has fallen to less than half of its pre-pandemic levels. Today, he said his company is lucky to collect fares from 90 riders on a given weekday.
“We ultimately came back from the pandemic and decided we just can’t do it anymore,” Lyons said.
New Bedford’s mayor, Jon Mitchell, said on Tuesday that his administration has contacted Massachusetts’ Secretary of Transportation Gina Fiandaca in an effort to “rectify the situation.”
“I am troubled by the decision of the DATTCO bus company to cancel, with little warning, its bus service between New Bedford and Boston,” Mitchell said in a statement. “Equally inexcusable is DATTCO’s lack of any engagement with the City, which would have been open to discussions regarding the possible takeover of affected routes by another carrier in a way that provides for a seamless transition.”
Lyons said DATTCO notified state transportation officials of its plans months in advance and tried to secure state funding to keep buses rolling until the MBTA finishes its expansion of commuter rail service to New Bedford, Fall River and Taunton next winter.
“We had indicated back in the late fall that we didn’t think we could continue running the service,” Lyons said. “MassDOT took a look at it to see if it was possible to get a funding source, but ultimately they came back a few weeks ago and told us it was not.”
Once DATTCO’s buses stop rolling on April 16, the next closest mass transit link to Boston will be the MBTA’s Commuter Rail in Lakeville, a 25-minute drive from downtown New Bedford.
Ben Berke is the South Coast Bureau Reporter for The Public’s Radio. He can be reached at bberke@thepublicsradio.org. Follow him on Twitter @BenBerke6.
