You paid for a seat but you’re standing in the aisle…
if you got on the bus at all.
Every weekday morning on Teaneck Road, full bus after full bus rolls past people who need to get to work. Every evening, the boarding lines at Port Authority wind from floor to floor. The system is overwhelmed — and we’re done pretending it’s normal.
It takes 30 seconds. No cost, no meeting — just your name on the record.
The problem
There aren’t enough buses. It’s that simple.
If you commute by bus from Teaneck — the 167, the 165, the 166, or any of the lines that feed the Lincoln Tunnel — you already know the drill. You get to the stop early. You watch one bus go by with every seat taken and people packed down the aisle. Then another. If you finally squeeze onto the third or fourth, you ride into Manhattan standing, braced against a stranger, having paid full fare for the privilege.
Neighbors have started driving to earlier stops in other towns just to get a seat before the bus fills. That’s not a commute. That’s a workaround for a service that isn’t delivering.
The afternoon is its own ordeal. At the Port Authority Bus Terminal — the busiest bus terminal on the planet — the gate lines for New Jersey routes snake back on themselves, up ramps and escalators, level to level, while people who just want to go home stand in a concrete corridor for 30, 40, 50 minutes.
This isn’t a bad week. It’s the baseline. And it has been for years.
The evidence
This is a capacity crisis, and the numbers say so
Every figure below is public. We link the source on each card so you can check it yourself — and so can the officials we’re asking to act.
See every claim and citation on the sources page.
Why it hasn’t been fixed
The bottleneck isn’t bad luck. It’s unmade decisions.
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The terminal is full
Port Authority Bus Terminal was built for a 1950 city and last expanded in 1979. At peak hours there is no room for another bus on the ramps or at the gates. Fixing that is the whole point of the $10B rebuild — which isn’t done for years.
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NJ Transit is running on fumes
Federal pandemic aid ran out in 2025. The agency now faces a roughly billion-dollar structural gap and has raised fares three years running to help close it. Adding peak service costs money the agency says it doesn’t have.
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NJ Transit absorbed routes it never planned for
When private carriers walked away from their routes, NJ Transit picked them up as emergency service — tens of millions in unbudgeted cost, spreading the same drivers and buses thinner.
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There is no public plan for the years in between
Nobody has published a concrete plan for how Bergen County riders get to and from Manhattan — with a seat — between now and 2032. “Wait for the new terminal” is not a plan.
The ask
Start local. Make our own officials carry this.
We’re not waiting for NJ Transit to notice. We’re asking the people who answer to us — the Teaneck Township Council, our Bergen County commissioners, and our State Senator and Assembly members in Legislative District 37 — to take three concrete steps.
- Demand a peak-capacity plan. Formally call on NJ Transit to publish, in writing, how many seats it will run on the Bergen → Port Authority corridor at peak, and how it closes the gap between that number and actual demand — every year until the new terminal opens.
- Press the Port Authority on the interim. Push for every throughput gain the current terminal and the new Dyer Avenue staging can deliver before 2032 — more gate turns, better bus staging, faster boarding — and report the results publicly.
- Hold a hearing where riders testify. A public meeting, at a time commuters can actually attend, where NJ Transit and Port Authority representatives hear directly from the people standing in the aisle and the PABT lines.
When you add your name below, you’re signing onto exactly this. We’ll deliver the list — and your stories — to those officials.
Join in
Two things, right now
1. Add my name
Sign onto the three asks above, in solidarity with every rider on this corridor. Your name goes on the list we hand to local officials.
You’ll be asked for:
- Your name and town
- Your bus route(s)
- An email, so we can tell you what happens next
- Whether we can show your first name on the wall, and whether you’d come to a hearing
Opens a Google Form in a new tab. We use your email only for this campaign — never sold, never shared.
2. Share the mess
A photo of the line. The bus that passed you. The morning you gave up and drove. First-hand accounts are what move officials — everything is reviewed before it appears publicly.
You’ll be asked for:
- What happened, and when and where
- A photo, or a link to a photo or video (Google Photos, Instagram, Dropbox…)
- How you’d like to be credited — first name or anonymous
Opens a Google Form in a new tab.
The wall
We are not a few cranks. We are the commute.
Be one of the first. Add your name above, and share what your commute actually looks like — approved accounts, photos, and video will be posted here as the campaign grows.