“Life is a gamble on the whole and here I am, trying to make $2. She said, though, the deadly accident is not enough to keep her from returning to the slot machines. “I told him he was getting ready to fall asleep.”īefore boarding for the sleepy trip home, Margaret admitted the casino bus crash that killed fifteen passengers in the Bronx was on her mind.

He took a dive like that,” Margaret said, bobbing her head up and down.

Margaret says she rests, but keeps one eye open, because she once witnessed her bus diver doze off behind the wheel. Most customers sleep on the three-hour ride back to New York City. I don’t drink, so you have to have an outlet and this is mine.” She admits she probably spends too much time at the casino. Margaret, an unemployed health aide, says she makes the overnight gambling trip up to three times a week. According to records from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Sky Express performed worse than 98 percent of all passenger bus companies in the “unfit driver” category, which includes employing drivers who don’t have commercial licenses or who don’t speak English.Ģ023 ends as the least snowy year on record for NYC The bus owner, a company called Sky Express, Inc., has a troubled inspection history. The matching funds allow a gambler to turn a $25 bet into a $50 bet, explained a groggy passenger who woke up as the casino bus pulled into the Foxwoods parking lot. The 30 or so passengers pay just $8 round-trip and when they arrive to the betting tables, they are each handed a $15 meal ticket and a voucher worth $45 in casino matching funds. The motor coach is a bargain, mainly because Foxwoods Casino subsidizes the cost of tickets. Most people are home unwinding after dinner, except for the the dozens of gamblers boarding a white, unmarked bus at the intersection of Chinatown’s Bowery and Division Street.

Foxwoods casino bus schedule