Midtown’s M42 bus is NYC’s slowest: report

Transit advocacy group Straphangers Campaign has come out with its annual awards for the worst performing buses in New York City, and the M42 bus has emerged on top yet again—the fifth time it has done so in the 15-year history of the awards.

Averaging just 3.2 miles per hour, the M42 bus earned the Campaign’s Pokey Award, beating out 200 other bus routes surveyed by the advocacy group. The group analyzed MTA Bus Time data to create their analysis. They also identified the slowest buses in each borough, and they are: the B63 in Brooklyn, the Bx19 in the Bronx, the Q20A in Queens, and the S48 on Staten Island.

The Pokey Awards are handed out in tandem with the Schleppie Award, a designation given to those buses that are considered the most unreliable in terms of arrival times and ones that often tend to arrive together in bunches. This year, that distinction went to the B12 bus, which travels between Brownsville and Prospect Lefferts Garden. Nearly 22 percent of the buses on this arrived bunched, thereby impacting the 15,380 riders who use this service on average each weekday.

Despite modernization efforts in recent years, the city’s buses have seen a decline in ridership across all five boroughs. Even the supposedly speedier Select Bus Services has failed to substantially increase ridership.

Transit advocates have called for a variety of improvements including all-door boarding and more dedicated bus lanes. The MTA on its part has vowed to improved service through solutions like doing away with the MetroCard and replacing it with a pay-as-you-go system, which may also help speed up things.

• New York City bus operating costs: an analysis [Curbed]
• MTA bus ridership continues its decline, despite modernization efforts: report [Curbed]
• MTA’s Select Bus Service has failed to increase ridership: report [Curbed]