Not even the New York Yankees or New England Patriots could duplicate the title “success” of the Q58 bus line, which earned its sixth consecutive Pokey Award from the Straphangers Campaign as Queens’ slowest bus route.
The New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) Straphangers Campaign and Transportation Alternatives announced the winners (or losers) of the slowest bus routes, the “Pokey” Award, and worst bus services, the “Schleppie” Award, in the five boroughs, and a familiar bus topped the list for Queens.
According to the groups, the Q58, which runs between Ridgewood and Flushing through neighborhoods including Maspeth, Elmhurst and Corona, clocked in at an average speed of 7 mph, the slowest in all of Queens and 22nd in the entire city.
In their survey, the groups observed a total of 40 routes. Five of the routes were dropped because of construction ongoing construction on the routes during the survey period, three of which are in the midst of significant upgrades as part of the Select Bus Service program. As a result, 35 bus routes were included in their report.
The bus named the most unreliable route in Queens– such as having large gaps in service or buses arriving in bunches– was the Q43 between Floral Park and Jamaica, with 22.2 percent unreliable service.
The number of bus routes that meet the requirements for unreliable routes, with over 20 percent of buses bunched together or big gaps in service, increased 68 percent within the last year, jumping from 19 routes in 2014 to 32 routes in 2015.
The groups hope that this information will spur the city to use techniques tailored for Select Bus Service.
“Select Bus Service has features that provide faster service, such as collecting fares before boarding buses; buses with three doors and low floors to speed up boarding and alighting; reconfiguring bus stops and bus lanes to reduce conflicts with other traffic; wider subway-style spacing between stops; and enforcement of bus lanes by camera to keep the lanes moving,” the groups said.
Click to see the group’s methods of calculating slowest bus routes and unreliable service. Click to see full tables of bus speeds and buses with unreliable service.
