Two New York City bus lines can now say they offer award-winning service…but it isn’t an award they’ll want to brag about.<\/p>\n
The bus lines were given “awards” for having the slowest and least reliable service, respectively, by TransitMatters, a nonprofit straphangers group.<\/p>\n
Which lines earned the dubious distinctions? The winner of the prestigious “Pokey Award” \u2014 aka the slowest bus \u2014 was the M42, which only averages 5 mph, according to the advocacy group.<\/p>\n
One silver lining: Speeds did improve on the M42 since the launch of congestion pricing got more cars out of the way.<\/p>\n
The “Schleppie Award” for the most unreliable bus went to the Q8 in Queens. On average, that bus is more than three minutes late to every stop, the group said.<\/p>\n
But it wasn’t all bad news. There was the new “Mazel Award” for most improved service, which was awarded to the M79 on the Upper West Side.<\/p>\n
Advocates for public transit and buses have demanded improvements for years. There are now red bus lanes throughout the city, as well as bus lane cameras. So why hasn’t service improved for all?<\/p>\n
“There has to be a continuation. We will finally have a real bus mayor who wants to see those improvements for real bus riders,” said Lisa Daglian, of the MTA Citizens Advisory Committee.<\/p>\n
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has promised free buses that go faster, even though Albany has not signaled it was willing to go along with those plans. Though Mamdani has appeared undaunted.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m just as excited about free buses today as I was more than a year ago,” said Mamdani.<\/p>\n
Another answer as to why bus service continues to struggle comes down to enforcement, according to some riders.<\/p>\n
“There’s cars that block the bus lane. So the buses are in the regular traffic lane. And that\u2019s why they\u2019re slower because the buses lanes are not open,” said rider Irwin Mensch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two New York City bus lines can now say they offer award-winning service…but it isn’t an award they’ll…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":371243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,11900,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-371242","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-transit","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115530380684687323","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}