Elected officials and transit advocates from Staten Island called on the MTA Monday to consider building a new bus depot on the grounds of Freshkills Park, citing growing concerns about overcrowding, traffic congestion and bus service within the borough.

Borough President Vito Fossella hosted the press conference near the South Shore park, where officials urged the state-run transit agency to explore the city-run site as a potential location for a fourth Staten Island bus depot.

The call comes amid reports that the MTA is considering acquiring another bus depot on the island, after it refused to renew its lease of the temporary Meredith Avenue facility as a money-saving decision in Jan. 2025. The Meredith Depot, which the MTA said last year was designed to be temporary, housed approximately 80 buses and served a majority of the borough’s express bus routes.

“Closing Meredith Avenue was a total lemon,” Fossella said, adding that the closure has resulted in problems such as overflow, traffic congestion, and parking issues at the borough’s three other bus depots located in Charleston and on Castleton and Yukon Avenues. 

The MTA at the time said Meredith Depot was no longer needed, as it was designed to be a satellite to absorb overflow from two existing depots as a third was being built in the borough’s Charleston area.

Before the closure, elected officials, union reps and rider groups on Staten Island warned that consolidating operations at the remaining depots could lead to overcrowding, increased traffic and diminished service.

Fossella and advocates are now proposing that the MTA consider a location within Freshkills Park, the 2,200-acre site of the former Fresh Kills Landfill, that could accommodate a new, larger facility. The beep said any new depot should have enough capacity to potentially reduce or even eliminate operations at the borough’s other depots to ease traffic congestion and improve quality of life for nearby residents. 

He added that the city has already shown that large municipal facilities can be built on the park’s green space, pointing to a new NYC Department of Sanitation truck garage as an example. 

“There’s plenty of space, plenty of acres available. It would be not just a win-win, but a win, win, win,” he said. In other words, it would be a state-of-the-art maintenance facility. The buses would be here. You can’t get better access to the highways than right here. You can close Castleton Avenue once and for all. You can scale back or modify the Yukon Bus Depot, which is a problem in the surrounding area for parking.”

Assembly Member Charles Fall, who represents the borough’s North Shore, said residents near Castleton Avenue are seeing the impacts of Meredith’s closure, including overcrowding and overflow of buses waiting to be serviced outside the local depot.

“This is a common sense solution,” Fall said. “Closing down the bus depot and bringing it here from Castleton to Freshkills will make that neighborhood much better. Any effort we could support to make our communities better, this is one of those efforts.”

Freshkills Park is the site of the former Fresh Kills landfill that continues to open in phases. Several parts of the site are already open to the public, including natural spaces, Schmul Park featuring a playground, Owl Hollow Field and a 3.3-mile multi-use greenway path. 

amNewYork contacted the NYC Parks Department for comment about Fossella’s proposal regarding an on-site bus depot, and is awaiting a response.

Relocated Staten Island bus depot would be ‘home run’ for commuters

Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) 726 President Danny Cassella said he supports building a Freshkills bus depot. 

“We could easily put a depot here,” Cassella said. “Closing Castleton would be a home run for the commuters, it would be a home run for the employees, and it would be a home run for the public because anyone who lives around Castleton knows the issues that they are having with that depot.”

But not everyone is 100% on board with a Freshkills plan. 

Express bus rider advocate Filippa Grisafi agreed that Staten Island needs another bus depot, but questioned whether Freshkills is the right location. She expressed concern that construction could disturb potentially contaminated soil beneath the surface of the former landfill.

“A fourth depot is much needed on Staten Island,” she said. “We have the largest express bus fleet and are not equipped to properly manage them. They have my full support for a fourth depot. Personally, though, I’m not sure about the location due to the history, but it’s very much needed!”

Meanwhile, the MTA said that Meredith Depot’s closure has had no negative impact on the borough’s bus service. 

“In the past year, Staten Island bus service has become more frequent, more reliable, and more popular,” Michael Cortez, a spokesperson for the agency, said. ” And we’ve done it all while making our operation more efficient for taxpayers. We’re looking forward to continuing that progress in 2027 and beyond.”

The agency also said that its latest Customers Count survey results found that Staten Island continues to improve, with overall satisfaction at 67%, up seven points from fall 2025 and 12 points from spring 2025. 

Waiting time for buses, a primary concern among Staten Island commuters, has also improved from 50% in fall 2025 to 55% in spring 2026, according to the survey.