In this week’s New York magazine, Robert Sullivan takes a look at NYC and the MTA’s plan for Select Bus Service, suggesting that the bus improvements planned for the city in the coming years are “the future of New York.”

Taking a test run on the Bx12 Select, which runs on Fordham Road in the Bronx, Sullivan seems particularly impressed by the prepaid boarding:

The transit-interested rider, upon seeing a bus this size pull up at a station with two-dozen prepaid fares, breaks out his stopwatch. Traffic geeks know that about a third of bus delays comes from passenger-boarding issues, and now the doors of the Bx12 SBS open. The stopwatch is running … Twenty-two people board; about four get off. The doors close; the bus sets off. Total wait time: 23 seconds.

Sullivan finds smooth, traffic-free rides on the Bx12 and across 34th Street in Manhattan — though the fact that only one vehicle blocked the bus lane on each of his trips may have as much to do with luck as police enforcement. Bus camera enforcement, which state legislators approved on six bus routes, should make sure his experience becomes the norm.

After riding the buses and talking to transit planners and advocates (including TSTC’s Kyle Wiswall), Sullivan takes a step back and imagines the possibilities:

The glaring intelligence of the idea—put a bunch of people on a big vehicle and keep a path clear—suddenly starts to look like something impossible not to replicate on each of the other thick Manhattan cross streets, like 42nd, 57th, and 23rd. And, while you’re at it, the East River bridges. Pretty quickly, you start thinking of the city as more multimodal all around. What if Flatbush Avenue had Bus Rapid Transit from river to ocean? What if BRT lines finally provided access to chronically underserved neighborhoods like East Elmhurst?

What if, indeed.  But with a $10 billion gap in the MTA’s 2010-14 capital program, there’s no guarantee that even some of the already planned projects will take place.