Not sure if anyone else on the B57 in the morning has noticed this, but I keep catching two buses back-to-back around 6:10 at Flushing/Morgan, then the next one is a full 20+ min ghost. This morning I got the second bus and it was maybe 6 people on it, but the first was packed. Are these buses coming off the overnight run or deadheading? Do I just need to get to the stop earlier and hope for the first one? Or is the bus time app actually reliable for this stretch?

OH man I have been waiting for this thread!! I ride the B57 from near Woodhull up to Flushing Ave sometimes and the bunching is 100% real. It's not your imagination! Part of it is the pull-outs from Grand Avenue Depot—some buses start at Flushing/Morgan or there's a school tripper? But the 6:00-something trips get held by the light at Metropolitan and then they end up stacked. Have you tried using the MTA bus time map instead of the scheduled times? If you see two buses behind each other, the first one usually gets crush-loaded and the second will sit at the next timepoint forever because the dispatcher tells the driver to hold. I'd honestly walk over to the J at Flushing/Marcy if the gap is more than 12 minutes. The B57 is also notorious for short-turns at Myrtle-Wyckoff, so your second bus might drop out.

Not on the B57 much, but the M15 does the same thing on First Ave around 5:30am. Two local buses show up, the first one is full with hospital workers, the second one runs empty and then gets terminated at 125th or something. At this point I just chase the first bus if I see the pair coming. You can't trust the countdown after the first one passes, the second one tends to vanish off the tracker once they put it out of service. Flatbush_Fi if you got the second bus and it stayed empty, you probably got lucky it wasn't a drop bus.

greenpoint_guy that makes too much sense actually—I've definitely seen B57 signs change to "Myrtle-Wyckoff" at random. EastHarlem_E yeah the tracker showed the second bus then just "no real-time" after I got on. Guess the move is: if two show up, take the first unless the driver waves you to the second. At that hour I'd rather just walk to the J than gamble on a 20 min hole. Appreciate the intel.