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NEW YORK, NY April 20, 2006 —The Second Avenue Subway is still years away. But a faster bus line could be coming to the East Side of Manhattan and to other neighborhoods that are under-served by rapid transit. WNYC’s Beth Fertig has more.

REPORTER: Imagine catching a city bus at a little island that juts out into Second Avenue. You’d pay your fare at a machine while you wait and when the bus arrives, you’d step through the doors and zip downtown making stops about every half mile.

The concept is called Bus Rapid Transit. Department of Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall says it works because it relies on a separate lane solely for these new express buses.

WEINSHALL: And that means that no cars, no trucks, no cabs, no bicyclists, nobody can interfere in that lane. It is segregated out just for the buses.

REPORTER: Just for buses? Hard to imagine in New York City. But Bus Rapid Transit is used throughout South America and Europe, as well as in Boston and Los Angeles. Places without extensive subway service. For the past few years the Department of Transportation and the MTA have been studying a similar plan for New York City. On Tuesday night, about 50 residents of the Upper East Side got a sneak preview.

OROSZ: What you’re looking at here is a one-way avenue.

REPORTER: Ted Orosz is New York City Transit’s Project Manager for the bus study. Armed with a power point presentation and a slide projector, Orosz showed the audience scenes of gleaming bus stations in Colombia and France, and color-coded express lanes. Here in New York, he said, local service would continue alongside BRT. But the new express buses would replace the limited lines – making fewer stops to speed things along.

OROSZ: The challenge of course is to do it intelligently – if you take out all the stops there won’t be anyone to ride but the bus will go fast. But (laughs) we’re looking to balance those two needs.

REPORTER: The busy M-15 route along First and Second Avenue isn’t the only area under consideration for Bus Rapid Transit. The city has identified 15 routes – six of them in Queens. A total of five will then be selected for a demonstration project to begin in 2008. That time table stumped transit advocates. Paul Steely White is executive director of Transportation Alternatives.

WHITE: Systems in Bogata, Seoul, South Korea, and also in Jakarta, Indonesia went from conception to study to full operation within 2 and a half to three years. It’s been more than 2 years and we’re still in the study phase in NYC.

REPORTER: The city and the MTA argue that this project is more complicated because they have to study existing bus routes and parking patterns. The bus lanes will limit parking.

There are also questions about implementation. Transit advocates want to make sure the city reserves two different lanes, one for express buses and one for local service. A computerized tracking system is being explored. Then there’s enforcement. The city favors using cameras to catch any vehicle that enters the special bus lane. And, this being New York, there will be turf wars. State Senator Liz Krueger represents the East Side and is a booster of Bus Rapid Transit.

KRUEGER: My concern is that people who drive private cars will not want to see anything that decreases lane availability for cars vs buses. There is always the competition for space along the sides, the trucks that park and double park.

KARLSSON: Conny Karlsson and his wife Mandy are veterans of the Second Avenue bus. He loves the idea of new Express Service.

KARLSSON: Sometimes it takes forever, we end up waiting for the bus 20 or 30 minutes when there is a lot of congestion.

REPORTER: And if truck drivers and car owners don’t want to give up valuable curb space, he says they’re fighting a losing war.

KARLSSON: There is a lot more people that takes the bus than truck drivers, you know so!

REPORTER: The MTA has set already aside 20 million dollars in capital funds for Bus Rapid Transit and the city is planning to foot the rest of the bill. The five routes for the demonstration project could be announced this fall. For WNYC I’m Beth Fertig.