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There's a reason why New Yorkers walk so fast, and it's because public transit is so slow.
Sure, that's a bit of an overstatement, except when it comes to certain routes. The annual Pokey Awards returned this year for the first time since 2022, officially naming the M42 crosstown bus as the slowest bus in all of NYC.
Awarded by the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) Straphangers Campaign and the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, the Pokey Award—a golden snail—revealed that the M42 travels at an average speed of 5.25 miles per hour. In comparison, a wolf trots along at about 5 miles per hour.
This is at least the sixth time the award has gone to the M42; the last time was in 2021, when the crosstown bus had the same average speed of 5.25 miles per hour.
Runners-up for the Pokey include the B35 (5.36 miles per hour), the Bx35 (5.59 miles per hour), the Q72 (6.08 miles per hour) and the S48 (9.19 miles per hour). The M42 is at least faster than the 2022 Pokey Award winner: the M102, which clocked in at 4.6 miles per hour. Thank you, congestion pricing?
Along with the Pokey Award, the elephant-shaped Schleppie Award was once again handed out to the least reliable bus. The 2025 recipient is the Q8, with an average wait time of 3.62 minutes longer than the scheduled interval.
There's more: since it's 2025, and everyone is looking for good news wherever they can find it, a new category was added. The Mazel Award goes to the standard and express bus routes with the most improved average speeds. The inaugural winners are the M79+ (standard), which went from 6.63 to 7.25 miles per hour, and the SIM32 (express from Travis, Staten Island, to Lower Manhattan), which added 2 miles per hour for an average speed of 17.14 miles per hour.
This marks the awards’ 18th year, with the 2025 rankings based on bus speeds and reliability data from May 2025, before the Queens Bus Network Redesign took effect. While congestion relief measures have already created significant improvements, that redesign is expected to contribute even more. The key takeaway is that better service will rely on additional investments, including enforcing dedicated bus lanes, which, perhaps, mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will be able to implement?