[title]
Move over, subway meltdowns—your crosstown bus isn’t doing much better. A new “report card” from Comptroller Brad Lander just dropped and the grades aren’t exactly parent-proud. More than half of New York City bus lines—56-percent, to be exact—earned a D or an F, meaning service is just as pokey and unreliable as the train delays you’ve already built into your morning routine.
Manhattan buses were the undisputed dunces: A staggering 73-percent flunked, thanks largely to gridlock that slows buses to a crawl of around five miles per hour. That’s slower than a jogger in Central Park. “This is our effort to help provide a report card system that helps us get out of life in the slow lane and get those buses moving faster,” Lander said, framing the findings as both wake-up call and rallying cry.
Brooklyn fared little better. Its buses bunch more often than anywhere else, leaving riders stranded for 20 minutes only to have two buses show up at once. Express buses, meanwhile, hit higher speeds on bridges and highways but couldn’t be counted on to arrive anywhere near their scheduled time. In fact, all 10 lines with on-time rates below 50-percent were express services.
There were some bright spots. Thanks to congestion pricing, buses that run through the toll zone south of 60th Street actually sped up—scores improved by 9.2-percent between January and June 2025. Certain lines even earned gold stars: Brooklyn’s B31 and B84, the Bronx’s Bx29, Queens’ Q35 and Staten Island’s S89 and SIM26 all pulled in rare A grades.
But overall? Grim. Average local bus speeds citywide hover around 8 miles per hour—the same as a decade ago, despite years of “bus priority” talk. Lander slammed the MTA for failing to set transparent, line-by-line improvement goals, while advocates said the findings merely confirmed what riders already know: The bus is often the slowest ride in town.
The MTA insists it’s working on fixes, from borough-wide route redesigns to camera enforcement of bus lanes. “Dedicated bus lanes are needed to make a material impact on bus speed citywide,” acting NYC Transit exec Frank Farrell said. Until then, straphangers will just have to keep packing podcasts and patience—for both subway breakdowns and buses stuck in traffic.