The Question Is What Is 180 Seconds Worth?

Answer: about $20 million:

Five bus routes, one in each borough, will be part of a pilot program that will use special lanes, computer-controlled stoplights and other means to speed bus travel, in an effort to change the prevailing image of tortoiselike service.

. . .

The program is known as bus rapid transit, which may seem an oxymoron to people accustomed to buses that crawl rather than sprint through traffic.

The new souped-up service would replace current limited-stop buses on the five routes, but current local service would be retained, according to plans.

Stops would be spaced from one-half mile to a full mile apart. The bus lanes would be painted a special color, and the buses would get a distinctive paint job, to differentiate them from their pokier cousins. Cameras would be mounted on buses and bus stops to photograph trucks and cars blocking the bus lanes, so tickets could be sent to the vehicles’ owners.

To help speed buses along, on some of the routes they will have devices that transmit their location to a computer system that controls traffic lights: a green light could be kept on a few seconds longer, or a red light could turn green a few seconds earlier, to let the buses pass. At some bus stops, passengers would pay their fare at sidewalk turnstiles rather than on the bus, to make boarding faster.

For all that, the projected increases in speed are less than heart-stopping.

A report prepared for the city’s Transportation Department and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority estimated that the greatest time saving would come on the route along First and Second Avenues, where the new buses would run as much as 22 percent faster than the limited-stop bus service currently available. That means that if a trip on the current First Avenue limited bus takes 30 minutes now, it would take about 23 1/2 minutes on the new buses.

The smallest saving would be on a route that would run along Pelham Parkway and Fordham Road in the Bronx, where the projected difference was only 8 percent, according to the study. There, a trip that takes 30 minutes now would take about 27 1/2 minutes on the revamped buses.

The other buses are the Merrick Boulevard route in Queens, where buses would move an estimated 16 percent more quickly; the Nostrand Avenue route in Brooklyn, with an estimated time saving of 20 percent; and the Hylan Boulevard route in Staten Island that would run across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge into Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with the time saving estimated at 21 percent.

The transportation authority has earmarked $20 million for the program.

Buried in there is the novel and probably controversial concept of buses equipped with cameras to ticket scofflaws . . . can this work?