A year in, the MTA says the Queens bus redesign made buses faster and more reliable

A year after it redrew nearly every bus route in Queens, the MTA says the gamble is paying off. Local buses in the borough are moving 1.7% faster on weekdays and nearly 2% faster off-peak than before the Queens Bus Network Redesign, Evan Bialostozky, the agency's senior director of network redesigns, told an MTA board committee on Monday, amNY reported.

The figures compare bus performance in spring 2025, before the new network, with spring 2026. "Riders with the longest trips are benefiting from the new network," Bialostozky said, according to amNY.

The numbers

• Rush routes: the new route type, which makes local stops in neighborhoods far from the subway and then skips stops along major roads, got 4.6% faster overall and 11% faster on the skip-stop segments. The Q36 Rush saves riders more than six minutes between the Little Neck LIRR station and Jamaica, Bialostozky said.
• Biggest gains: 24 of the 25 routes with the largest speed jumps citywide were in Queens, and 41 Queens routes sped up by 3%, the MTA said.
• Reliability: 71.2% of Queens bus trips reached their destination within five minutes of schedule this spring, the highest the MTA has recorded for Queens outside the pandemic years, amNY reported.
• New connections: the Q51 Limited links South Ozone Park and Cambria Heights along Linden Boulevard, saving riders about 18 minutes, and the Q74 Limited links the Forest Hills-71 Av station with Queens College and Queensborough Community College, saving about six.
• More frequent service: 124,000 more Queens residents now live near a bus that comes every 10 minutes from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., and 68,000 more have 24-hour service.

Riders seem to agree, at least partly. In the MTA's spring 2026 Customers Count survey, satisfaction among Queens bus riders rose five points to 67%, returning to where it was before the redesign (68% in spring 2025).

What changed

The MTA rolled the redesign out in two phases, on June 29 and Aug. 31, 2025, after six years of planning, 300 public events and nearly 20,000 comments, according to the agency's announcement at the time. It was billed as the largest bus redesign in the country, with a $33.7 million yearly operating investment. The network added 17 new routes, turned 25 into Rush routes, changed 49 others and extended hours or frequency on 25 more, Bialostozky said. Queens now has 124 routes, 94 local and 30 express, a net gain of 11.

The overhaul serves about 800,000 daily bus riders. NYC Transit President Demetrius Crichlow said at Monday's meeting that the team "delivered on all fronts" on faster travel, better connections, reliability and simpler service, amNY reported. The MTA said in 2025 that the results would guide future adjustments to the network.