Joseph Quattrocchi owns Dependable Auto Body shop on Rector Street on Staten Island. He says some days he cannot get cars in or out of his garage because of buses waiting to get into the Castleton Bus Depot.

“Our customers are afraid to come down here because you could see you can’t move, the streets are blocked,” Quattrocchi said. “It’s impossible to do business.”

It’s also causing issues for Richmond County Ambulance right across the street.

“Emergency response times have been up, and we’ve been having to forward a lot of our emergencies,” William Kilpatrick, with the company, said. “The more high-risk emergencies, we’ve been having to forward them over to 911.”

Employees also can’t park and are late, with buses backing up for, sometimes, up to three hours.

“Three hours is just too much,” said Quattrocchi.

Elected officials blame the closure of the Meredith Bus Depot.

“What we predicted, unfortunately, came true that when you close the fourth bus depot, Staten Island would suffer,” Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella said.

In early January, the Meredith Depot closed, moving 34 buses to Castleton. The union representing bus drivers on the island, say that is causing the congestion.

“It’s not just happening here at Castleton Depot,” Daniel Cassella, president of ATU Local 726, said. “It’s happening in the other depots also. So, I really implore transit to open up another location to alleviate all of these problems.”

But the MTA says Meredith was meant to be temporary to maintain capacity as it built the Charleston Depot.

“When the other depot is finished and the lease expired, we cancelled. We didn’t renew it, and we’re saving a couple of million dollars a year,” said MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber. “That’s responsible governance.”

The MTA says that’s $2.6 million in savings, while Castleton can absorb the extra buses.

“There’s enough space in and on the depot property, so fundamentally it’s not a bus issue,” Frank Annicaro, the MTA’s senior VP of buses, said.

But the union says buses that need repairs are taking up space.

“Let’s say there’s 15 or 20 lifts for the buses to be worked on. When you add another 35 or 40 busses here, they’re not getting to the lift,” Cassella said. “They’re just sitting, these busses, idle.”

There’s fear that with added service this summer, it will only get worse. The MTA suggested the issue may be with lack of parking enforcement or the timing of traffic signals.

The city transportation department says it has not received any complaints related to the signaling.