I'm not one to post this kinda fantasy crap, but I had a small little political debate with someone earlier that led to talk about Staten Island possibly bringing up splitting from NYC again. With Mayor de Blasio unfortunately in office and likely not going anywhere for ~9 years, I can definitely see affluent and conservative SI starting to feel neglected and that far-left City Hall is doing nothing for them, like they felt under Dinkins last time they tried to split. Whether or not that's true is for a whole nother debate, but it could very well come up for vote for Richmond County to become an independent county, and the residents of SI may very well be in the right to vote yes.
Don't get me wrong, an independent county may serve its residents better than the City of NY does now in many ways. But what happens to transit on the island will likely be along the lines of what happened in Nassau County with the beginning of NICE Bus.
My prediction is that when the county first starts to operate, they will have an interim (very short term, possibly month to month) contract with the MTA to operate bus and Staten Island Railway service. The interim agreement allows Richmond County to take ownership of all buses stored at the SI Division depots at the minute the county starts to exist, and the MTA purposely moves old and beat up buses from Brooklyn and Queens to those depots so they become county property and stay there if the MTA gets forced out. Within days, the new County Executive will send out an RFP for a private operator for all bus service, and a major international company such as Veolia Transdev wins the bid. SIRT service gets a long-term contract with MTA and stays mostly untouched, and bus service comes under Transdev or another conglomerate.
Bus service particularly to the South Shore starts to be cut within weeks, like the beginning of NICE. Maintenance is cut and breakdowns happen everywhere with the POS buses the MTA left the county with. Richmond County and the private operator do anything possible to draw riders away from buses. Teenagers, who count for lots of the ridership across the island 7 days a week, are all now cheese bused to school through HS, no more student MetroCards, and they start to be conditioned to being cheese bused and driven around everywhere in their parents' cars, like suburban kids, and start to think "buses are for poor people/minorities", also like suburban kids. Ridership, particularly on the weekends can now be severely cut without kids on the buses.
Everything local that does continue to run, even on the North Shore where ridership will still exist, will have frequent no shows and breakdowns, the cut maintenance at all the depots will be focused on the express buses (the only buses the pols care about and will defend) leaving the local fleet with maintenance that will probably be worse than NICE since SI will have to keep the express buses running on time and in tip top shape. Drivers will decide to leave the private company and the drivers left that usually cover locals will be sent to cover express runs and locals won't go out. People who need transit to get around may start looking to leave the island. And with all the cuts to local service, people who don't live near SIRT and take the bus/ferry to work instead of the express bus will have no choice but to start taking the express bus.
All in all, within a few years, local bus service will be SEVERELY cut (possibly worse than NICE), whatever's left will run so terribly no one will want to use it (they'll be lucky if they keep 40% of their riders, NICE is already down to 60,000 from 100,000 under LI Bus just a few years ago), and the island becomes a real Nassau County or NJ-style suburban enclave/sh*thole. Then eventually, kids who grow up there leave to other parts of the city and don't come back and the retirees move to Florida. The only thing keeping the county alive will be the developments and possibly gentrification by the ferry, as long as the ferry is still free and not cut.
What do you think? This one had me thinking a lot tonight, and I can definitely see them trying something like it over there.