About 40,000 riders have been taking the B44 Select Bus in Brooklyn every day since the MTA launched the line in 2013. But as NY1’s Jose Martinez reports, many other commuters are feeling left behind.

The B44 local stops at Nostrand Avenue and Avenue R in Marine Park in Brooklyn, but the B44 Select Buses just whizz by, leaving commuters in the neighborhood frustrated and angry.

"For every like five or six, you might get one local,” said one commuter.

"It's a hard way to start the day, when all you want to do is just get to work,” said another.

On Wednesday, a City Councilman made a new plea for the MTA to bring Select Bus Service to Avenue R, saying local service is lagging.

"You have to wait sometimes as long as 45 minutes standing out here for a local bus to stop,” said Councilman Chaim Deutsch of Brooklyn.

Like express buses, select bus service has limited stops. Riders must pay their fare on the sidewalk to allow for quicker boarding.

The buses now travel more than a mile without stopping from Avenue U to Kings Highway. That’s too far, residents say, for anyone living in between at Avenue R.

The MTA last year added SBS stops along the B44 at Gates Avenue and Avenue L, giving riders at Avenue R hope that they too would have more than local service. But so far, they've been fighting a losing battle.

"I've been writing letters to the MTA. I wrote a letter just recently to the president and I got a negative response,” said Deutsch.

It appears it's going to stay that way. The MTA says there just aren't enough potential passengers to support adding the new stop.

MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz said, "Transfer levels at Avenue R are much lower than at the stops added at Gates Avenue and Avenue L. There are also physical obstacles at Avenue R that make placing an SBS stop there impossible."

That's a reference to a private driveway, in the path of the would-be Select stop.

For Select riders, life is pretty good, the MTA says travel times have been cut as much as a third. That’s something for local riders to think about while waiting for the next bus.