BUS RAPID TRANSITSUPPLEMENT 11 Colin Brader


Managing Director, Integrated Transport Planning Ltd (ITP)


Turning to BRT for cost effective and low impact urban mass transit


Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is ‘going viral’. The concept is spreading throughout the developing world and seen as a low cost and flexible means of addressing escalating congestion and mobility problems. The developed world is not immune and it is seen variously as a means of affordable mass transit or a way of improving bus operations. In the developing world the objectives are efficiency and safety, in the developed world the prize is reducing car reliance.


A global trend towards increased urbanisation, a thirst for personal mobility and an aspiration for car ownership has created an environment of congestion and pollution that threatens to frustrate economic growth and social well- being: the very things that personal mobility was once thought to achieve. In many of our cities public transport is a mode of last resort; where there are no other


choices except not to travel at all. In some cities the public transport user is well catered for, e.g. Hong Kong and Singapore, but in others he/she is the poor relation. The public transport option is often inconvenient, uncomfortable, expensive or maybe just non-existent. In developing cities there is quite often a


proliferation of public transport but, it could be argued, its existence is for the benefit of the


operator, as a means of earning, rather than a service to aid personal mobility. It is a business where revenue is extracted from those who have little choice but to pay and no voice as to the service they need. A history of light or non-existent government intervention has often left a vacuum that the private sector, knowing there is money to be made, seeks to occupy. In cities such as Lagos, Nigeria, this has led to transport unions dictating the terms and controlling movement in and around the city. In western cities the situation may be


different but the user can feel equally unheard. A non, or lightly, regulated system such as that which exists in the UK allows free market forces to prevail. The thought was that, in a relatively affluent society, the competition would centre upon quality in what would be a growing market. The reality is that free choice in an


» BRT typically operates within segregated lanes that protect it from the congestion effects of traffic «


affluent society leads to increased car use, decreasing the public transport market to those who have little choice; they are forced to pay for a product that is far from ideal. As the author Bill Bryson stated in his book on travels around the UK, Notes from a Small Island (1995):


The TransMilenio in Bogotá is one of the most comprehensive applications of BRT


“If you travel much by public transport in Britain these days you soon come to feel like a member of some unwanted sub class, ………., and that everyone wishes you would just go away”


www.eurotransportmagazine.com


Eurotransport Volume 9, Issue 6, 2011


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