If it felt like your crosstown bus was crawling this year, congratulations — your instincts are impeccable. The new Pokey, Schleppie & Mazel Awards report is out, and Hell’s Kitchen has officially dominated the podium for slowest buses in New York City.
The M42 Crosstown Bus picking through traffic on W42nd Street. Photo: Phil O’Brien
Leading the pack (or… slow parade): the M42, clocking in at a breathtaking 5.25 mph — the slowest high-ridership bus in all five boroughs. The golden-snail Pokey Award is back after a three-year hiatus, and W42nd Street proudly reclaimed its title as the place where time ceases to have meaning.
Right behind it? Our own M57, shimmying across Midtown at 5.26 mph — barely fast enough to beat a distracted pedestrian with a latte. Rounding out our neighborhood medal haul, the M34/M34A placed in the city’s Top (Bottom) Five at 5.54 mph. It’s an impressive achievement: three of the five slowest buses in NYC run through Hell’s Kitchen.
A table from the Pokey, Schleppie & Mazel Awards report showing the speed of local buses.
The report by the New York Public Interest Research Group Straphangers Campaign and Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA blames 42nd Street’s lack of a real busway, double-parked cars, weak enforcement and Midtown’s eternal traffic Jenga. Even the congestion charge helped only so much — the M42 is still stuck behind a wall of delivery trucks, Ubers and tour buses that refuse to believe lanes have meaning.
At a press conference on E42nd Street Monday (reported by amNY), MTA chief of policy John McCarthy put it even more plainly: “As much as I’d like to accept the award for the M42, it’s really not the bus’s fault. The bus wakes up in the morning, and it wants to provide great service, it wants to go fast… the problem is that things are in the way. It’s the street, it’s the road, it’s the vehicles blocking buses,” he said.
To add insult to immobility, the M42 also made the “most improved” list, thanks to a tiny bump in speed over last year. That’s right: it won the Pokey and landed in the Mazel Award rankings. Only in New York can the slowest bus be celebrated for getting slightly less slow.
Across the city, Queens’s Q8 took home the Schleppie Award for least reliable service — riders waited an average of 3.62 minutes longer than scheduled. Staten Island’s S48 topped its borough’s “slowest” list, and the M79+ won the first-ever Mazel for most improved. But let’s be honest: Hell’s Kitchen kept the spotlight.
If all this feels familiar, remember that Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani spent part of his campaign quite literally riding our misery. We photographed him campaign-stumping on the M57, chatting with bleary commuters as the bus inched across town — a real-time demonstration of the problem he’s pledged to fix.
Mayor elect Zohran Mamdani takes the time to chat to commuters on the M57 bus during his campaign. Photo: Catie Savage
His plan? “Fast and free” buses citywide, backed by bus lanes, signal priority and better dispatching. Whether Albany, the MTA and the city’s budget agree is an open question — but bus riders in Hell’s Kitchen would welcome even a single extra mile per hour.
For now, though, the trophies belong to us. The M42 is once again New York City’s slowest bus, and the M57 and M34 are right there on the podium.
Congratulations, West Side — we’re number one… in going nowhere.