A man riding a child's tricycle beat the M42 bus in a race across town just to show how slowly it really moves.
Mark Malkoff, a comedic filmmaker from Queens, raced the M42 bus for more than a mile on 42nd Street from 10th Avenue to Madison Avenue. Riding 4.7 mph, he clocked in at 12 minutes and 42 seconds, almost three minutes faster than the bus.
Malkoff told NBC New York he got the idea for the race when he saw children riding Big Wheels on the street.
“I thought maybe one of them could beat the buses,” he said. “In fact, at the speed I was going on my tricycle, I would have beaten seven different bus lines.”
The 5-foot-7-inch, 131-pound Malkoff challenged the M42 bus at 1:17 p.m. on February 17. He spent $82 on a Razor RipRider scooter from Amazon.com for the race.
Malkoff filmed the project with a camera attached to his tricycle and a camera crew stretching across his entire route on 42nd Street. He released the finished video today.
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According to Malkoff, the project took a week of research.
“I rode the M42 bus every week day between noon and 2:00 p.m. to test its speed,” said Malkoff. “Riding the bus is like playing the slots in Vegas, sometimes it goes fast, but most of the time it’s slow.”
According to Gene Russianoff, staff attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, a public transportation advocacy group, the M42 bus has one of the slowest speeds in the city at 3.6 mph.
The group has compared the speed of the bus to a running chicken, an elephant walking in the circus and, yes, a child on a tricycle.
“We’re not shocked that Malkoff beat the bus,” said Russianoff. “He probably didn’t even have to break a sweat.”
