Five bus routes, one in each borough, will be part of a pilot program that will use special lanes, computer-controlled stoplights and other means to speed bus travel, in an effort to change the prevailing image of tortoiselike service.According to people briefed on the program, which involves state and city agencies, the list was made final over the summer and includes the route on First and Second Avenues in Manhattan. That route, with an average of 61,000 passengers each weekday, is considered by transit officials to be the most heavily used urban bus route in the nation.The city's transportation commissioner, Iris Weinshall, said this month that two of the routes would be in use by next fall, and plans call for the rest to be in use in 2008. Officials would not identify the two routes. If the pilot program is successful, the city envisions adding more.The program is known as bus rapid transit, which may seem an oxymoron to people accustomed to buses that crawl rather than sprint through traffic.The new souped-up service would replace current limited-stop buses on the five routes, but current local service would be retained, according to plans.Stops would be spaced from one-half mile to a full mile apart. The bus lanes would be painted a special color, and the buses would get a distinctive paint job, to differentiate them from their pokier cousins. Cameras would be mounted on buses and bus stops to photograph trucks and cars blocking the bus lanes, so tickets could be sent to the vehicles' owners.To help speed buses along, on some of the routes they will have devices that transmit their location to a computer system that controls traffic lights: a green light could be kept on a few seconds longer, or a red light could turn green a few seconds earlier, to let the buses pass. At some bus stops, passengers would pay their fare at sidewalk turnstiles rather than on the bus, to make boarding faster.For all that, the projected increases in speed are less than heart-stopping.A report prepared for the city's Transportation Department and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority estimated that the greatest time saving would come on the route along First and Second Avenues, where the new buses would run as much as 22 percent faster than the limited-stop bus service currently available. That means that if a trip on the current First Avenue limited bus takes 30 minutes now, it would take about 23