Yay! It's that time of year when the Straphangers Campaign announces the winner of the annual Pokey Award for the slowest city bus service. And this year, there's a new award: The Schleppie, for least reliable service.
The 2007 Pokey Award goes to the M23: "The M23 had the slowest bus speed at 4.0 miles per hour as clocked at 12 noon on a weekday. This is not much faster than the 3.0 mph maintained by the average person walking." Crosstown buses usually get the Pokey - last year, the M14 won and the M34 won in 2004 and 2005. Here are the slowest routes in each borough:
- Brooklyn's B63: 4.9 mph - Between Bay Ridge and Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
- The Bronx's Bx19: 5.0 mph - Between Fordham in the Bronx and Upper
- Manhattan's M23: 4.0 mph- Crosstown on 23rd Street in Manhattan
- Queens' Q56: 6.1 mph - Jamaica, Queens to East New York, Brooklyn
- Staten Island's S61: 11.7 mph - Between Staten Island Mall and St. George Ferry Terminal
And the 2007 Schleppie Award goes to M1: "the M1 Fifth/Madison/Park Avenue. Nearly one in three of its buses have big gaps in service or are off schedule, the worst record for the 42 key local routes for which MTA New York City Transit calculates reliability measures." And here are the most unreliable bus routes in the boroughs:
- B15: 26.4% unreliable- Between Bedford-Stuyvesant and JFK
- Bx41: 26.1% unreliable - Between Wakefield and to Hub on White Plains Road
- M1: 32.8% unreliable - Between Harlem and East Village
- S78: 24.4% unreliable - Between St. George Ferry Terminal and Tottenville
The Schleppie Award itself is described as "lumbering elephants mounted on a pedestal." Love it!
There are more details here.
