NEW YORK CITY — When a double-decker sightseeing bus driver ran a red light and smashed into an MTA bus July 6, injuring 67 people, longtime licensed tour guide Brendan Rothman-Hicks wasn’t surprised, he told Patch.
“It could have happened on a tour I was on,” he said. “To be perfectly honest, I think some of the drivers were just reckless.”
Rothman-Hicks recalled the “countless times” that bus drivers ran one or more red lights during tours when he worked for a double-decker sightseeing company.
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He’s not alone in his concerns.
Multiple tour guides who spoke to Patch roundly criticized the three companies running New York City’s double-decker sightseeing buses for a poor focus on safety.
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Their concerns are echoed by lawmakers and advocates pushing legislation to mandate staffing on upper levels of the buses.
And tourists themselves have flooded sites such as Tripadvisor with bad and “scary” reviews.
One reviewer wrote a double-decker driver threw them off the bus after her 8-year-old boy checked for seats on the top level because there was no air conditioning.
“He yelled and made threats while edging closer to strike us,” the reviewer wrote.
“STAY FAR AWAY!” another wrote after recounting an experience in which a bus hit a car.
A ‘Parasitic’ Relationship
Fred Pflantzer knew double-decker tour companies were trouble even before he learned bathroom break cuts had drivers sometimes urinating in a hole in the back of buses.
A longtime city sightseeing guide who now owns NY See Tours, Pflantzer said his stint working for double-decker companies showed the experience leaves much to be desired, for passengers and guides alike.
Double-decker buses are notorious for not having heat in winter, or air conditioning in summer, he said. Employees couldn’t take bathroom breaks, forcing some drivers to do their business into a hole near the engine in back, he said.
“They were just tremendously abusive to all their employees,” Pflantzer said. “And they had absolutely no concern for the guests on the bus.”
The double-decker sightseeing niche in New York City tourism has traditionally been carved out by three companies: Big Bus, Gray Line and TopView, which all failed to return Patch’s requests for comment.
Their pitches to tourists are all similar: see all of New York City’s biggest attractions from a bus that’s an experience in itself for $49 on up.
“TopView offers the best New York sightseeing bus tours led by local experts so you won’t miss the most important attractions,” reads that company’s website.
But there’s a broad gulf between those promises and reality, said James Hoffman, a New York City sightseeing guide.
Like other guides who spoke with Patch for this story, Hoffman worked for one or more double-decker companies during his career.
The past tense in “worked” is deliberate — several double-decker tour companies shifted to pre-recorded audio guides, Hoffman said.
This means bus drivers now shoulder responsibilities, from handling tickets to answering questions about the tours, that once fell to guides, Hoffman said.
The drivers even have to cue up the pre-taped tour recordings to be in sync with where they’re driving, all while they’re behind the wheel in heavy Manhattan traffic, he said.
They should be entirely focused on driving and keeping people safe, said Hoffman.
“The general culture of putting profits ahead of consumer protections or safety issues is a problem in the double-decker bus industry,” Hoffman said. “A lot of these companies don’t have a symbiotic relationship with New York City, they have a parasitic one.”
All the guides who spoke with Patch were curious about the exact circumstances behind the July 6 double-decker crash, which involved a bus from TopView.
When asked for an update on the crash investigation, NYPD officials directed Patch to a news conference shortly after the incident and said the double-decker bus driver — a 53-year-old man — received a summons for disobeying a steady red light.
Officials have said the double-decker driver ran through the red light about 7 p.m. at East 23rd Street and First Avenue and T-boned an MTA bus. The crash left 67 people injured and 32 hospitalized, officials said.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, those poor people,'” Pflantzer said. “They’re in a panic and there’s no one to guide them.”
‘Thrown Under The Bus’
Double-decker Rider Heidi D. watched in dismay as her bus in Chinatown and drove the wrong way on one-way streets late at night, she told TripAdvisor in an April to review of TopView.
“Very scary and disappointing experience,” Heidi wrote. “When I asked for a refund due to safety issues, the request was denied.”
She’s not the only rider to bring complaints to the tourism review sight.
TripAdvisor ratings for the three double-decker bus companies in New York City generally hover between three and four stars — normally a tourism kiss of death in a system where anything less than five is considered negative.
More formal concerns are documented in “Thrown Under the Bus”, a 2017 study by state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal recirculated after the weekend’s crash.
The report outlines several significant crashes that left passengers and pedestrians with serious head injuries, mangled limbs and other trauma.
The state has little to no enforcement power over the buses, operators are under no obligations to report crash data and double-decker drivers are exempt from laws that ban convicted sex offenders or drunken drivers from driving other similar vehicles, the study found.
“What we found was alarming,” the study states. “These vehicles are operating in an environment of legal loopholes, ambiguous jurisdiction and lax enforcement.”
Patrick Casey, a secretary for the Guides Association of New York City, told Patch he too tried and failed to find recent data about crashes involving double-decker buses.
Casey blamed the gray area in which double-decker buses operate.
He argued the industry needs legislation focused on worker and consumer safety, especially now that bus drivers are in charge of everything, including the ongoing flow of pre-recorded audio tours.
“That’s a disaster now waiting to happen,” Casey said.
City Council legislation has been brewing since 2018, and backed by the guides’ association, would restore at least some safety, contends Casey.
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The current version sponsored by Council Member Gale Brewer would require a licensed guide to be present on double-decker buses’ upper level when passengers are present.
All guides have stories about double-decker passengers standing up on the top level, only to fall as the bus brakes or nearly hit their heads on low-lying traffic lights, Casey said.
Guides are an inherent part of double-decker bus safety, given that drivers can’t easily see or communicate with the upper level, he said. And tourists, currently being denied the “full experience” of New York City, would benefit as well, he said.
Doing so would be good for the city, even if New Yorkers have a love-hate relationship with tourism and tourists, he said.
“Let’s face it,” he said. “There’s a huge amount of money in tourism.”
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