One such slowpoke route is the M42, along 42nd Street, which cuts across Times Square, where the traffic continues to move along at a tortoise-like pace. For comparison purposes, I took a couple of trips on buses on both streets.

On 14th Street, aboard the M14, I remembered a childhood book about a magic bus with a button on the dashboard. When someone pushed the button — abracadabra — the bus went from Boston to New York, just like that.

The M14 isn’t that fast. But it was more than twice as fast as the M42 on the rides I took. And on one standing-room-only trip late in the afternoon, I wondered if I would need a crash helmet.

I was in the middle of the bus interviewing high school volleyball players on the way to — I think they said a match on the Lower East Side. I swayed as the bus went into a turn onto Avenue C. Whatever I scribbled in my notebook was illegible.

That was a couple of blocks beyond the car-free zone, which runs from Ninth Avenue to Third Avenue.

But the most startling thing was not just the ride but the views along the street. Sitting in a westbound bus, I could see all the way from First Avenue to Third Avenue — two long Manhattan blocks with no traffic in sight, just some police cars and a few trucks parked at the curb.