Buses Packed As DeCamp Resumes Service On Wednesday

There was some frustration when the 6:45 a.m. bus didn't show up in Upper Montclair as scheduled. But the DeCamp bus service's dispatcher said that it was the only bus not running on Wednesday.

The rest were on schedule and even a few minutes early. And it was standing-room-only on most of them.

"I'm so glad buses are going again because I get home so late when I take the train that I barely get to see my family," said Aaron Jennings, a commuter. "The train is comfortable but the bus is just so much faster that the last several days have been really miserable for me."

New Jersey Assemblyman Thomas Giblin mediated over the weekend what was essentially a cease-fire agreement between striking union workers and DeCamp management.  

The good news was that bus service was back up and running on Wednesday. The bad news was that the resolution is a fragile one.  

"An agreement was not necessarily reached," Giblin said on Sunday. "The two sides have agreed to a cooling-off period more than a settlement."

What that means is that DeCamp maintenance crews and mechanics returned to work on Monday and bus drivers will resume their regular routes on Wednesday. As for when further contract negotiations will resume, Giblin says, "I'm not really certain of a timetable. Maybe in about a week."

DeCamp said that all tickets that were valid on September 2, 2010 will have their expiration dates extended for fourteen days. This applies to all commutation and one-way tickets.