Comptroller Lander Doles Out a D Grade or Lower for More Than Half of NYC Bus Lines

 

Nearly three-quarters of Manhattan buses got a D or F for speeds as low as 5 MPH

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander unveiled a report card for New York City’s 332 bus lines operating across the five boroughs, with 186 of the 332 bus lines getting a D or F grade. Leveraging real-time MTA bus data, the report evaluated every city bus line’s on-time performance, speed, and the frequency of service delays. By putting each bus line on an A-F grading report card, the City and State can target interventions to improve bus performance.

“New York City is home to the largest bus network in all of North America, yet pedestrians can walk faster than some buses, like the M34 in Midtown,” said Comptroller Brad Lander. “New Yorkers deserve a system that actually gets people where they need to go. From Brooklyn seniors waiting over 20 minutes for bunched buses to Manhattan commuters crawling at slow 5 mph speeds, the impact of the City and MTA’s failures is unmistakable and felt daily for thousands. Our office’s report card offers a clear roadmap to pinpoint the most necessary interventions to improve bus service for all.”

The comprehensive evaluation detailed in the report, Life in the Slow Lane: A Report Card for NYC Buses, builds on the Comptroller’s April 2025 report Behind Schedule that documented how bus speeds remain stagnant over the last decade, despite NYCDOT and MTA’s pledges to improve the nearly one-in-three buses that fail to arrive at scheduled stops on time.

Key findings 

The report reveals consistent patterns of underperformance across the city’s bus system and provides granularity to the disparities between boroughs and service lines:

• A majority of buses perform at “below average” standards: 56% of bus lines (186 out of 332) received a grade of D or lower due to bunching and consistently failed to arrive at scheduled stops on-time. By comparison, only 27 lines (8%) received a B or higher. Just seven bus lines throughout the city received an A grade.
• Almost three-quarters (73%) of Manhattan buses got a D or F, worse than in any of the other four boroughs, largely due to heavy traffic in Manhattan, where some buses run at speeds as low as 5 mph.
• Fifteen percent of Brooklyn buses are bunched, a rate considerably higher than the citywide average of 10.6%. This means that 15% of buses in Brooklyn fail to maintain even spacing along their routes, creating unreliable service and wait times regularly in excess of 10 minutes for riders on lines where average wait times should be no more than five minutes.
• Express buses have higher average speeds but a much lower on-time reliability rate than the system overall. Many express buses travel across bridges, highways, and tunnels, allowing them to reach speeds most local buses cannot. However, they fail to reach stops at their scheduled times compared to local or SBS buses. All of the ten bus lines with on-time performance rates below 50% are express buses.
• SBS lines perform slightly better than local and express buses overall. 16% of SBS bus routes received A or B grades, compared to just 8% of routes overall. The success is likely attributable to stop consolidation and all-door boarding on these routes.

While the persistent issues with bus speeds and reliability hamper bus services, the report finds some areas of improvement. Using the most recent data before and after the implementation of congestion pricing in January 2025, Comptroller Lander’s report finds that the 106 bus lines operating in the congestion pricing zones say reliability scores improve by 9.2 percent in the five months after implementation. Express buses saw the largest growth in speeds throughout this period.

While solutions like dedicated busways, transit signal priority, and automated enforcement are effective tools to boost bus performance, they have not met their full potential in New York City. The report card offers a clear path for identifying underperformance and provides a framework to measure meaningful outcomes.

The Comptroller’s report recommends the City and MTA set performance-based goals for improving bus performance. Public reporting should link policy interventions and new infrastructure to impacts for bus riders. Potential performance targets could include:

• Increasing speeds by 15% citywide, moving 90% of C-grade bus lines to B-grade or better.
• Reducing the bunching rate on high-frequency bus routes from 10.6% to 5%.
• Improving reliability on the 40 worst-performing bus lines.

Read the Comptroller’s report here: https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/life-in-the-slow-lane