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Ask
any New Yorker who rides the M60, and they'll tell you: it's so
slow, sometimes they're tempted to get out and walk. And
that might even be faster--during rush hour the M60 can take 40
minutes to go from Manhattan Avenue to the Triborough Bridge on
125th street. That's just about the time it would take a human being
to walk the 1.5 miles. Unlike
trains, the MTA buses have to compete with other vehicles for space
in the city's crowded streets, put up with traffic snarls caused
by maintenance work on roads, stop at almost every block to pick
up passengers and wait until each new passenger has paid the
full fare.
Some
of the MTA buses serve areas that the subway doesn't cover, making
them the only public transport available for people in that area.
In Manhattan, for example, where the trains run mostly north and
south, commuters depend on buses to take them across town.
 According
to the MTA's schedule, some of the slowest buses are the crosstown
M96 which connects the Upper West to the Upper East side, the Bx35
which connects West Farms in the Bronx and Washington Heights
and the airport-bound M60, which connects Morningside Heights in
Manhattan and LaGuardia airport in Queens.
Running
from 106th and Broadway, along 125th street and across the Triborough
Bridge, the M60 serves Harlem residents, airport employees, air
travelers and Columbia University students. It makes at least 20
designated stops to ferry passengers
with little time to spare.
Going non-stop, it would take an
automobile 24 minutes to completethe 12.7 miles from 106th and Broadway
to LaGuardia. But M60's official running time for the same route
is over twice that - 55 minutes. And that is only an ideal timeframe,
achieved only under the best of conditions, according to M60 driver
Karen Glover.
During rush hour, the bus, with up
to 150 commuters on board, takes an average one hour and 15 minutes
to make the journey to the airport, said Glover, who has driven
on route M60 for five years.
Security checks at the bridge and
maintenance work also slow down the bus, said Glover. And in the
event of an accident on the route, things come to a dramatic halt.
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