| Headquarters | 8 Washington Avenue |
|---|---|
| Locale | Spring Valley, New York |
| Service area | Rockland County, New York |
| Service type | coach service |
| Routes | 5 |
| Web site | [1] |
Monsey Trails is a private bus company plying a publicly licensed route based in Rockland County, New York. It is operated by a Jewish family of the Skver Hasidic sect in New Square. The publicly subsidized carrier uses a fleet of 60 coach-style buses running 80 scheduled daily trips to provide charter functions and commuter bus service. While the county-owned Transport of Rockland provides local service and connects commuters with rail transit to New York City, Monsey Trails, along with Short Line, provides private bus service between the sub-urbanized region and the area's principal city.
The company's primary area of service is in the heavily ultra-Orthodox Jewish west-central portion of the county, and much of the system's literature is printed in both English and Yiddish. Routes originate in Monsey, a community with a strong Orthodox Jewish but somewhat diverse population, and New Square, a homogeneous Hasidic village. Many routes bound for Manhattan also travel to the heavily ultra-Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Boro Park. Another route connects Monsey and New Square with Kiryas Joel, an exclusive Satmar Hasidic community in Orange County.
Monsey Trails made the news in 1994, when a Jewish woman filed a sex-discrimination suit against the company, after she was told by ultra-Orthodox Jewish passengers to leave a men’s section.[1] The dispute raised questions about how far a company which receives government financing can go in accommodating religious practices. Monsey Trails received mass transit subsidies from New York State amounting to nearly $650,000 in 1993, roughly a quarter of the company's annual revenue.[2] The suit resulted in an out-of-court settlement, in which Monsey Trails agreed not to actively segregate male and female riders for Jewish prayers, and neither to provide a curtain to separate the male passengers from women and non-Jews, nor advertise daily prayers in its timetables, as they had done before.[3]
| Route Number | Route Name | Route Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | NYC Route | New Square/Monsey to Manhattan/Williamsburg |
| 2 | Brooklyn Route | New Square/Monsey to Williamsburg/Boro Park |
| 3 | Boro Park Express | Monsey to Boro Park Express |
| 5 | Forshay Route | Monsey North to Manhattan/Williamsburg |
| 6 | K.J. Express | New Square/Monsey to Kiryas Joel |