By Aaron Naparstek

In midtown the other day, I came across an MTA bus plastered with an ad for the Discovery Channel's Pompeii: The Last Day. It showed an exploding volcano and asked, "How do you outrun an eruption that's faster than this bus?"

It made me laugh. If you want to outrun a bus in midtown Manhattan, all you have to do is walk.

New York City has the slowest buses in America. The M34, winner of the 2004 Pokey Award, lurches across town at 4 mph (slower than the average swimming speed of a king penguin). And you can ride the train to Philadelphia in less time than it takes the M15 to run its 10-mile route from South Ferry to East Harlem.

While New York bus riders agonize, cities around the world are setting up bus rapid transit. The best BRT systems give buses their own dedicated lanes separate from cars and trucks. Fares are collected on the platform before passengers board, reducing the waiting time at each stop. The vehicles are extra-long, clean-burning and have low floors, again, for fast boarding. Real-time information systems let passengers know exactly when the next bus will arrive and allow routers to manage more effectively. And buses have signal priority. If a bus is running late, traffic lights automatically turn green for it.

BRT has produced dramatic increases in bus speeds, reliability and ridership. Bogotá, Columbia is one of the biggest successes. BRT has been a key part of this city of seven million's rapid transformation from a traffic-choked disaster to a model of sustainable urban development.

BRT is a no-brainer for New York City. First and Second Avenues are begging for it, and there are obvious routes in the outer boroughs as well. Compared to light rail (which could also be great here), BRT is fast and cheap to start up, and there is a pile of federal funding available for it.

But in the same amount of time that Bogotá transformed itself, New York will have only managed to hire consultants to do a $2 million study (you could fill a bus with the dusty volumes of unheeded NYC transportation studies). The MTA has earmarked $22 million in its 2005-2009 capital plan to implement the study's recommendations.

This measly funding essentially ensures that we won't have real BRT any time soon. Rather, New York will get something like Boston's Silver Line. Unlike Bogotá, Boston didn't have the cajones to restrict private cars. So now Boston's got the "Silver Lie," an expensive bus with a new coat of paint stuck behind the same old double-parked, single-passenger SUVs. Ultimately, the real barrier to getting BRT up and running isn't technological or fiscal. It's cultural and political. We've got to have the will to take away a lane of traffic from the spoiled urban motorist.