A Bus-Filled Future For New York City?

With subway funding hard to come by and development times excruciatingly slow, many officials are looking at the surface as the solution.

"So the future of movement in New York-how we get from home to work, how we navigate the city-is not going to be about subways. But what about the bus? True, buses are what most people think of when they think of not getting anywhere: senior citizens waiting in lines, guys counting out change, double-parked cars. They are less sexy than subways and tend to be ignored until the MTA announces another round of service cuts. The last time buses were new was in the forties, when they were installed around the city as a cheaper, more flexible alternative to streetcars.

To a large extent, flexibility remains the bus's chief advantage-unrailed, they can go wherever we want them to go-and they're a relative bargain. But over the last decade, in a few transit-enlightened cities around the world, the bus has received a dramatic makeover."