R’wood-Flu. Route Is Qns.’ Slowest
Maybe the MTA should rename it the Q50-Late.
The Q58 bus line between Ridgewood and Flushing again earned the Straphangers Campaign’s Pokey Award as Queens’ slowest route-the fifth consecutive year that the line received the dubious honor.
According to the Straphangers Campaign, the Q58 clocked in this year with an average speed of 7.7 mph. Still slower than its counterparts, this represents a 10 percent speed improvement over last year, when the Q58 had an average speed of 7 mph.
The Q58 was also more than twice as fast as the slowest bus line in New York City: the M79 crosstown route in Manhattan along 79th and 81st streets, which had an average speed of 3.2 mph. As Straphangers Campaign attorney Gene Russianoff noted, the average human walking speed is 3.5 mph.
The Straphangers Campaign nominated and surveyed 41 bus routes across the five boroughs “to provide a ‘snapshot’ of the most used routes in the system and in each borough,” according to the campaign’s methodology. Volunteers rode the routes between May 20 and Aug. 21 of this year in both directions from one terminus to another during weekday afternoon hours.
Running from the Ridgewood Intermodal Terminal at the corner of Myrtle Avenue and Palmetto Street to the intersection of Main Street and 41st Road in Flushing, the eight-mile long route winds its way through Middle Village, Maspeth, Elmhurst, Corona and Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. It includes segments of Fresh Pond Road, Grand Avenue, Broadway, Corona Avenue, 108th Street, the Long Island Expressway and College Point Boulevard.
In recent years, the MTA worked to speed things up along the route, mainly by introducing limited stop service. Nevertheless, delays continue, and some riders suggest the problems stem from both the length of the route and increased congestion on the roads that the buses travel.
