This is the absolute worst way to travel in New York City

METRO

By Steve Cuozzo

Department of Transportation dimwits changed their traditional routes at the end of last year. Instead of turning right on 34th Street from Fifth Avenue, southbound buses now turn right on West 37th Street. That was to satisfy a dumb, new, no-left-turn rule from 34th Street onto Seventh Avenue — one of myriad monkey wrenches the Department of Transportation has thrown in to suit City Hall’s car-hating, traffic-management fantasy.

The poor M4 or Q32 now must worm its way from Fifth to Seventh through three of Midtown’s most impassable blocks. A baby on its belly could cover them more swiftly than the buses, which take 45 minutes and worse at busy times to traverse 800 feet. Citi Bike stands, utility digs, construction jobs, double- and triple-parked trucks — even a few vestigial, rolling garment racks — all scrunch through traffic into one lane.

Most of the traffic trauma stems from former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s and current Mayor de Blasio’s aspirations for an auto-less city where everyone walks or rides a bike.

With ideology substituting for rationality, is it a wonder that city bus ridership is down 7 percent from 2010 to 2015, according to the MTA?

But wait — shouldn’t buses be more popular, thanks to “dedicated” lanes, “select” routes that skip stops and allow boarding through three sets of doors, and apps that take the mystery out of when the next lumbering conveyance is coming?

Hah! Even hallucinogen-addled Kesey would grasp a simple fact that’s beyond City Hall’s Cuckoo’s Nest thinkers:

People are abandoning New York’s buses, which never were the swiftest way to get around, because they keep getting slower. Streetsblog.org, which tracks such things, reports that bus “speed” fell by 2 percent overall from 2010 to 2015. The MTA reported a 5 percent drop at rush hour. But it often feels more like 100 percent.

Why might this be?

Although 45,000 fewer cars come into Midtown daily than in 2010, according to DOT, it often seems like more cars, thanks to the mess the agency made of things.

I’ve never driven a bus, but I’ve driven cars since 1967. And I can attest that driving in Manhattan has never been as difficult as it is today. (Bike-crazy Cuozzo-bashers: I’m a happiest-on-foot mass-transit mouse, and my car has just 28,000 miles on it after 20 years). If driving a car has turned from merely miserable to horrific, might it not be just as awful for bus drivers caught up in the same city-inflicted chaos?

Anti-auto airheads blame Uber-type cars and lack of congestion pricing. More reasonable minds cite an unprecedented volume of construction and pavement resurfacing.

But mostly what’s brought buses to a halt is the same fiasco that reduced auto-traffic average speed in Manhattan from 9.35 mph in 2010 to 8.51 by 2015, according to the city: the zany maze of obstructions and interdictions it’s imposed on the historically challenging, but more or less comprehensible, street grid.

People are abandoning New York’s buses because they keep getting slower.

The fun starts with a baffling zoo of lane markers, painted arrows and bus and bike lanes that pop up and vanish at whim. Some of the charming features they announce were spelled out in a Post analysis last week.

They include bike lanes that take away vehicular lanes; pedestrian “plazas” thrust into traffic lanes; “buses only” lanes full of trucks, bicycles and pedicabs; and curbs that meander to and fro like mischievous rats.

Traffic lights were un-synchronized in order to force stops at consecutive corners, like the one that turned Third Avenue in the 30s, into a horn-honking hell. No-turn rules meant to speed up 23rd Street from First Avenue to Ninth Avenue have the opposite effect of jamming it up, as drivers pause to devise escape strategies. Crazy corners where left-turn lanes merge with bike lanes give fits equally to pedestrians, drivers and cyclists.

Can’t the NYPD take on the gridlock? Sure! During this Most Wonderful Time of the Year, traffic cops aplenty blow whistles to no effect and ignore wrong-way cyclists who nearly run them down.

No wonder de Blasio increasingly uses NYPD choppers to borough-hop. Those of us who can’t soar above it all must choose a different way — and we’re not on the bus.