Coach USA, which operates the low-cost interstate MegaBus service and commuter buses in New Jersey, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection but officials assured riders it’s business as usual for the Paramus based company.
“It was done first and foremost to preserve thousands of jobs and allow us to focus on how to best move forward in an environment in which ridership is down significantly due to the pandemic and work from home,” said Dan Rodriguez, Coach USA vice president of public affairs.
The routes in New Jersey are done by the company’s Rockland Coaches, Community and Suburban lines, Rodriguez said.
“We will continue to operate in an uninterrupted manner to providing safe and affordable service to our customers by our highly dedicated employees,” he said.
Filing for Chapter 11 allows a company to use a reorganization plan to keep its business alive and pay creditors over time, according to the U.S. Courts.
Coach USA operates five Suburban Transit commuter bus routes between Middlesex County towns, including New Brunswick, and New York, two Bergen County to New York routes under the Rockland Coaches brand, Essex county routes under the Community Coach brand, and a Somerset County route.
Coach also operates 35 local bus routes for NJ Transit in Bergen, Hudson, Middlesex, Passaic and Union counties, according a spokesperson. That will soon have one exception, the Passaic County routes which Academy Bus bid on recently and won in May, Rodriguez said. Hoboken based Academy Express, LLC was the sole bid. Academy takes those routes over on Sept. 1.
Private bus companies have not seen ridership return as robustly as NJ Transit’s bus operations which increased by 12.9 million riders between April 2024 and 2023, the latest available figures.
That sluggish ridership return has been blamed for the decision of three carriers, DeCamp and A&C to end all commuter bus service in 2023.
Last October, Coach USA’s O.N.E. Bus discontinued three routes serving Newark and Essex County after the average weekday ridership was under 6,000 passengers for all three.
NJ Transit bus operations came to the rescue, extending some of its existing routes to pick up former DeCamp riders, taking over A&C’s Jersey City routes and applying a similar strategy for the O.N.E. bus routes including a critical route to Jersey Garden mall used by employees. That came with a $40 million price tag.
“NJ Transit does not have the resources to take over these routes,’ said Jim Smith, an agency spokesperson.
Coach USA filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court on June 12, was first reported by Reuters and CNN. It allows the sale of certain assets including the Megabus discount interstate bus to Renco Group, Incorporated’s Bus Company Holdings US, LLC, according to a statement from Coach. U.S. Megabus operations will continue while the “company pursues an ongoing transition to the existing partnership business model.”
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Larry Higgs may be reached at lhiggs@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on X @CommutingLarry
