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TROUBLE ON THE HIGHWAY
AND PARKED IN CHINATOWN
Questions about 'Chinatown bus' policies gain urgency after last month's deadly crash. > By I-Ching Ng
City Limits WEEKLY #591
June 11, 2007
Best known for their bargain prices, interstate buses run by Chinese companies have attracted travelers in droves, and helped many Chinese immigrants who can't communicate in English to travel to far-flung parts of the country. But a recent fatal accident involving a New York-bound bus has prompted new calls for the bus industry to step up safety measures.
New York City is the largest hub for these Chinese-run charter buses. The immigrant transportation industry started as an alternative and more affordable means to shuttle Chinese workers to Chinese restaurants in different locations. As the Chinese bus routes expanded rapidly along the East coast and Midwest over the years, commuters including students, artists, budget travelers and immigrants nationwide also caught the cheap fare trend. Currently the Chinese buses travel from New York City to Albany, Boston, Chicago, Providence, Michigan, Washington, D.C. and even as far as Florida for as little as $12 to $20 one way.
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Low costs don’t necessarily mean low conscience, some say. City Councilmember John Liu, chairperson of Council’s transportation committee, said there is no pattern showing charter buses run by the Chinese companies are more accident-prone than those run by big national bus companies. He warned that the public should not stereotype these vehicles. “If an accident happened to a Greyhound or Trailway bus, you won’t say the 'Port Authority Bus' crashed. Likewise, Chinatown is not a company and it’s absurd to say the 'Chinatown buses' are not safe,” Liu said.
Editorial
Chinatown bus chaos
Chinatown's private bus business is booming. That this industry has grown to its current level in a little under 10 years is amazing. The rates are cheap and if one is not too fussy these rides are just the ticket.
Yet, while the busy bus business is good news for Chinatown's economy over all, it also has brought a host of problems that are affecting Chinatown as well as the Lower East Side.
The buses increase traffic, pollution, noise, garbage and even violence, due to the fights that sometimes flare between rival operators in their competition for passengers. Police say it's hard to oversee these problems because the buses are so spread out. And the buses' picking up at the curb at scattered locations means traffic is being impacted in a haphazard, irrational way. Residents, in particular, are feeling the bus invasion's effects.
As The Villager reported last week, the city recently proposed a 30-day pilot program under which all the Chinatown interstate buses would be shunted toward the end of Pike St., with no more than seven dropping off or picking up at any one time. However, neighbors at Knickerbocker Village and the Rutgers Houses opposed the idea and so did Community Board 3.
They come by plane, by boat, by shipping container: Chinese immigrants, smuggled into New York by a thriving underground network. Every year, thousands still risk border patrols, vicious "snakeheads" and criminal kingpins, to seek their fortune on the streets of the city. > By Amy Zimmer
City Limits MAGAZINE
January 2004
He lives in Chinatown and wears a white t-shirt draping down to the knees of his baggy jeans. But Kevin, who's 13, still remembers vividly one particular moment when he was a toddler in Fuzhou. His father bought him a dog, then left for New York.
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Migrants rarely find jobs outside of the restaurant, garment and construction industries--fields that are presently suffering. Kwong observes that U.S. employers who hire Fuzhounese for sub-minimum wages are a critical link in keeping the smuggling system going--without those jobs, migrants would have no way of paying back the smuggling fees. "Because of the pressure of having to pay the debts back as soon as possible, they are willing to get low pay and much more willing to tolerate abusive conditions," he says. As Fuzhounese migration has risen over the past decade, wages in these industries have fallen. Indeed, Fuzhounese have effectively displaced many Cantonese workers from the Chinatown labor market, pushing them to seek work elsewhere. At the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut, 25 percent of the workers are now Chinese, most of them Cantonese
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