Cambridge says halted NYC bus company still needs a license

It's been almost a month since a Vamoose bus picked up a passenger in Harvard Square, and many residents are still wondering what became of the low-cost coaches.

Back in November, New York-based Vamoose Bus set up shop in front of the Charles Hotel, shuttling passengers from Cambridge to Manhattan on the cheap.

Weeks later, the city sent the company a letter ordering them to shut down, apparently because they never applied for any operating licenses with the city or the state.

"Basically what happened was there was a miscommunication, and they went ahead and set up service," said Elizabeth Lint, executive director of the city's License Commission.

Calls to Florence Bluzenstein, a spokeswoman for Vamoose, were not immediately returned.

For about four weeks, Vamoose ran as many as four trips a day out of Harvard Square to New York City, at $22 a seat. For just a few dollars more than Greyhound and Peter Pan - each charges $18 to New York - passengers coming from the other side of the Charles or the western suburbs could save themselves the trip all the way out to South Station. Unlike the Lucky Star and Fung Wah bus lines -commonly called the "Chinatown bus" - Vamoose dropped passengers at Penn Station. Most Vamoose buses also offered free wireless Internet, an amenity no other discount bus service to New York has offered.

Lint said the company mistakenly believed it didn't need a jitney license to operate in the city. The company was allowed to continue bussing passengers over Thanksgiving weekend, and then ordered to put the buses in park.

"We let them do those last runs, but they need to apply for a license," Lint said.

A spokesman for the state's Department of Transportation said the company never applied for a state license.

"Unless they're operating under a different name, I don't have anything on file here," state spokesman Ingar Moir said.

It was unclear whether Vamoose had any communication with the state that would have led company representatives to believe they didn't need a license to pick up passengers. Lint said the company has not filed for a jitney license since being shut down last month.

Cambridge Chronicle