Cambridge Puts a Stop to Vamoose Bus

The Vamoose bus company—which promised direct Harvard Square-to-New York trips featuring wireless internet—has suspended service entirely as a result of a licensing hitch, just two weeks after the company’s buses began running.

The company’s service has been halted since Nov. 26, Vamoose co-owner Florence Bluzenstein said, because the company failed to secure one of the two licenses required to operate out of Cambridge.

The company had gotten a “stop-location” allowed Vamoose to stop in front of either the Charles Hotel or on Mt. Auburn St., in front of Lowell House, said Susan E. Clippinger, the director of the Cambridge Traffic, Parking and Transportation Department.

But Vamoose never got a “jitney license,” the permit that allows companies to pick up and drop passengers within the City of Cambridge.

The news comes at a particularly inconvenient time for many students, who had planned to travel home for winter break on Vamoose buses.

“I was planning to take it home for winter break, but now I can’t,” said Zachary A. Katz ’10, who lives in East Meadow, New York. “It’s an inconvenience because the vamoose bus went straight to Penn Station and I could get straight on the Long Island Rail Road.”

The missing license is the latest in a series of upsets that the Vamoose company has faced in its campaign to run the Harvard Square to New York line.

After being denied permission to operate in Boston, the copmany received approval from Cambridge officials to pick up and drop off passengers on Bennett Street, outside the Charles Hotel. But a week before its first bus was scheduled to leave, the company was suddenly notified that it had to change locations, and “scurried” to inform its passengers, according to Bluzenstein.

Vamoose’s Bluzenstein said the company is still working to obtain the license and hopes to begin service again soon.

“We got a lot of positive response there from Harvard students,” Bluzenstein said.

She said that the failure to obtain a license was a result of miscommunication with the company’s corporate partner, Crystal Transportation.

“Licensing has nothing to do with us,” she said. “Crystal Transportation applies for the jitney license. We just contract and rent their buses. We do the booking and customer service.”