Buses run to AC casinos again

John Curran

Monday, Aug. 18, 2003 | 9:42 a.m.

ATLANTIC CITY -- Buses ferrying New York City-area gamblers to and from casinos were back in business Friday, a day after the blackout canceled some service, stranding many people.

The impact of the blackout was still felt, though, with passenger counts down on some casino-bound charters and other buses canceled.

"This morning, loadings of passengers are very low," Roger Bowker, senior vice president of Coach USA tour bus company, said Friday. Coach USA runs 100 trips a day to Atlantic City from northern New Jersey and metropolitan New York.

"People are concerned about having a tough night," he said Friday.

New Jersey casinos rely heavily on tour buses for bringing in gamblers, with about 900 a day rolling into the city's 12 casinos. But the blackout, which made access to Manhattan impossible, forced Academy Bus Lines, Greyhound and others that serve the casinos to cancel return trips, stranding hundreds of gamblers at casinos Thursday night.

Academy buses began rolling about 9 p.m. Thursday, but Greyhound's Atlantic City-to-New York City "Lucky Strike" line didn't resume until after dawn Friday, said Greyhound spokeswoman Lynn Brown in Dallas.

"We got the service up and running as quickly as we could and tried to make sure our customers were not inconvenienced and were kept safe. We started running buses (Friday) as quickly as we could," she said.

Greyhound normally runs 36 trips daily to Atlantic City from the Port Authority terminal in Manhattan.

Coach USA, faced with sparse passenger counts on Atlantic City-bound buses Friday, canceled some trips and combined routes, according to Bowker.

"There's a lot of cancellations by the inbound passengers that would be coming in today," said Gary Israel, a spokesman for the South Jersey Transportation Authority, which maintains the Atlantic City Expressway.

Showboat Casino-Hotel spokeswoman Susan Kotzen said several buses headed to that casino from New York were canceled because of bus company systems still affected by the power outages.

Park Place Entertainment Corp. of Las Vegas, which owns three Atlantic City casinos, said business volume was normal.