Aggressive ticket vendors who have long duped tourists for Statue of Liberty tours are now mucking up a Big Apple bus service.
The Downtown Connection, a shuttle for Lower Manhattan residents, began skipping five stops along Battery Park last week for the second summer in a row to avoid confrontations with the overzealous hawkers.
The vendors accost visitors, often as soon as they exit the subway stations at Whitehall Street and Bowling Green, selling tickets for boat rides around the Statue of Liberty. They warn tourists about long lines for tickets on the official tour boat to Liberty Island, which leaves from Battery Park, and promise a shorter cruise experience.
But they don’t make clear that visitors must first take a bus to a pier on the East River or Hudson River and then wait for the tour boat. One operator even shuttles unwitting passengers to a bus that then takes them to New Jersey for the cruise.
“They try to shove them onto our bus to get them out of the neighborhood. We don’t want to be part of that,” said Jessica Lappin, the head of the Downtown Alliance which runs the Downtown Connection. “We don’t want to make it any easier for them to hoodwink people.”
Lappin said the shuttle, which goes from Battery Park City to the South Street Seaport, would resume full service after Labor Day.
A 2016 city law requires vendors to have a license and wear it but scofflaws abound.
Four vendors have been arrested this year including Kashif Williams, 26, who ignored a police officer’s order to leave Battery Park and then refused to be escorted out, swiping at the officer’s arm, according to the NYPD.
Jersey City resident Tony Nation said he was recently misled by the fast talking vendors who convinced him to buy four tickets for a boat tour. He thought the boat left from Battery Park, not a pier north of the Manhattan Bridge.
“I didn’t get that we actually would be getting onto a bus,” said Nation, an actor who runs the Actors Connection studio. “Because of my experience, I would not recommend that to anybody.”