Brooklyn Boro

Award-winning buses: Brooklyn buses are least reliable in the city

July 24, 2019 Jeffery Harrell
The B35 got an honorable mention. Eagle photo by Lore Croghan
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Brooklyn buses can now boast award-winning bus service: The B15 line was awarded the Schleppie Award on Tuesday for the most unreliable bus in New York City.

The prestigious accolade, two golden elephants lumbering slowly across a pedestal, was bestowed upon the bus line by the Straphangers Campaign and TransitCenter as the two public transit advocate groups gave “awards” to the worst buses in the city.

The B15 was given the award due to how often its buses “bunch,” meaning they arrive at the same stop in quick succession. This means that large gaps have opened up in service, leaving passengers waiting longer at stops in the interim.

The award. Photo courtesy of the Straphangers Campaign
The award. Image courtesy of the Straphangers Campaign

“It’s extremely frustrating to wait twice as long for a B15 only to see two show up at the same time,” said Mary Buchanan, a research assistant at TransitCenter. “What makes it even more aggravating is that we know the solution: Dedicated, enforced bus lanes would un-bunch even the B15.”

The Straphangers Campaign found that a whopping 20 percent of B15 buses arrived bunched up, creating unpredictable waits for the nearly 20,000 daily riders traveling between Bedford-Stuyvesant and JFK Airport.

Service to the B15 was recently slashed, as reported by the Brooklyn Paper. According to internal MTA documents, the passengers on this line will be waiting longer during midday and weekend rides.

The B12, B41, B6, B68 and B35 lines were also among the top 10 most-unreliable bus lines in the city.

Although Brooklyn buses didn’t take home any other awards, the B35, which travels between Brownsville and Sunset Park, and the B63, which travels between Bay Ridge and Cobble Hill, were given honorable mentions.

They were both listed among the slowest bus lines in the city, moving “slower than a manatee.”

“Improving bus service is one of the four main pillars of President Andy Byford’s plan to modernize NYC Transit,” MTA spokesperson Tim Minton told the Brooklyn Eagle.

“We’re redesigning the bus network in every borough, building a state-of-the-art new command center to better manage service, and modernizing our fleet with reliable new buses that are the most accessible, clean-running and advanced in history. The commonsense objective is to make routes more direct and serve more New Yorkers, so that our buses can get them to their destinations faster.”

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  1. Rochelle Campbell

    Perfect subject
    Just stand in front of bus number 1058 at 18th street and church Ave at 11:01pm B35 and the driver look at us and drive off. What a good service.