NYC’s M42 bus wins ‘award’ as city’s slowest while riders rage they’d be ‘better off walking’

It’s not fast, but riders are furious.

The M42 Crosstown was just crowned the slowest bus in the Big Apple — a title that its riders say comes as no surprise.

The MTA shuttle earned the first “un-coveted Pokey award” from the New York Public Interest Research Group in three years after clocking in at an exhausting 5.25 miles per hour on average.

At that pace, the M42 would have fittingly finished in 42,232nd place of the 59,226 runners at this year’s NYC Marathon.

“It’s torturous,” said Leanne Ottomanelli, who rides nearly the entirety of the M42’s 2-mile route six times per week — a journey that takes 45 minutes.

“I’ve used this route my whole life, on a regular basis 14, 15 years. To me, it’s gotten worse because there’s more people and the same — or less — buses.”

“I hate the MTA.”

The M42’s Pokey win comes just two months after the City Comptroller’s Office slapped the route with a dismal “D” rating for its total lack of efficiency.

All MTA and New York City Transit local bus routes with at least 5,000 daily riders were eligible for the dishonor.

On Tuesday afternoon, the M42 was moving so slowly that The Post, walking at a 2 mph pace, beat it from its first stop on 12th Avenue to its sixth stop on Seventh Avenue.

It took the bus about 30 minutes to travel that 0.8-mile stretch.

Several riders gave up waiting for the bus upon checking its travel time and opted to walk instead.

The problem apparently centered around the lack of respect for the M42’s designated bus lane, which on Tuesday was riddled with taxis and blocked by double-parked delivery cars.

Even three police cruisers were idling in the bus lane in a particularly congested section of Times Square.

“The bus isn’t slow, it’s the traffic,” said Susan, who rides from 12th Avenue to Seventh Avenue every day.

“There shouldn’t be a bus lane because a bus is never in it. How can it when the cars are parked in it? The bus cannot go anywhere,” she continued, calling it “frustrating.”

Susan, who declined to share her last name, feels that bus lane violations aren’t enforced — or that the drivers just don’t care about getting tickets.

The M42 was outfitted with on-board bus lane enforcement cameras that fine selfish drivers back in July, but the double-parking problem has continued to persist.

Walter Reilly, who takes the bus two or three times per week, hopped off before reaching his destination Tuesday because the trip was taking too long, possibly because of the remnants of the Veterans Day parade festivities from earlier in the day.

“I was better off walking. Traffic gets so bad, nobody obeys the rules, they block the bus lanes and that creates the traffic,” Reilly said, describing the situation as “frustrating.”

There is a silver lining in the disappointing award, however — while still painstakingly slow, the M42 is still faster than its preceding Pokey Award winner in 2022, the last time the New York Public Interest Research Group gave out the prize.

That year, the M102 was named the slowest at just 4.6 mph, but it has since improved to a neck-breaking speed of 6.08 mph.

Now, the slowest routes across the Big Apple average between 5.2 and 6.0 mph, the group said.

Interestingly, the borough-wide Pokey winners, like the M42, were all crosstown buses, including Brooklyn’s B35 at 5.36 mph; the Bronx’s Bx35 at 5.59 mph; Queens’ Q72 at 6.08 mph; and Staten Island’s S48 at 9.19 mph.

At a press conference Monday, MTA Chief of Policy & External Relations John McCarthy acknowledged the M42’s Pokey win, but said the award should have been given to 42nd Street instead of the shuttle.

“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. That’s what it’s equipped to do and the bus operator wants to drive the bus quickly. The problem is that things are in the way,” said McCarthy.

“I’d like to take this award and hand it to 42nd street because it’s the street, it’s the road and it’s the vehicles that are blocking buses that are the problem and continue to be the problem.”