State of art of bus rapid transit transportation

Eur. Transp. Res. Rev. (2014) 6:149–156 DOI 10.1007/s12544-013-0113-1 ORIGINAL PAPER State of art of bus rapid transit transportation Elvira Maeso-González & Pablo Pérez-Cerón Received: 8 October 2012 / Accepted: 15 July 2013 / Published online: 15 September 2013 # The Author(s) 2013. This article is published with open access at SpringerLink.com Abstract Purpose The increasing importance of the Bus Rapid Transit systems in the last 20 years has given rise to the implementation of several sorts of systems over the world with different characteristics and success levels. This paper aims to describe a global approach of them as well as to carry out an effective comparison in order to achieve outstanding conclusions. Methods From the conceptualization or determination of the main features and evolution of BRT Systems we do a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the currently operating systems according to the development of countries in which they operate in order to identify the key factors for the success of such type of transportation, regarding both its management and users comfort. Results and conclusions Comparison between different BRT systems according to their geographical area provides some important evidences. Paper results suggest that we can find two separate groups in BRT systems, on one hand, some countries with more technology and commercial velocity (European, Australian and Americans BRT systems), and on the other hand countries more developed in terms of service, ridership, routes and impact in population. It’s necessary to understand the BRT in the context of the mobility of the city and as long as this system has to compete with other modes of transport the compliance of desirable requirements for a full BRT become more essential. E. Maeso-González (*) : P. Pérez-Cerón Cátedra de Gestión del Transporte, University of Málaga, Estación de autobuses. Paseo de los Tilos s/n, 29006 Málaga, Spain e-mail: E. Maeso-González e-mail: P. Pérez-Cerón e-mail: Keywords Bus rapid transit . State of art . Characteristics . Public transport . Comparative 1 Introduction There are many definitions for the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system. According to Thomas [1], it is a “rapid mode of transportation that can combine the quality of rail transit and the flexibility of buses”, while Levinson et al. [2] give more technical details “a flexible, rubber-tired rapid transit mode that combine stations, vehicles, services, running way, and ITS elements into an integrated system with a strong positive image and identity”. Wright focuses on the economic aspect “BRT is high-quality, customer-orientated transit that delivers fast, comfortable and cost-effective urban mobility” and the IDTP [3] includes the use of segregated lanes “a high-quality bus based transit system that delivers fast, comfortable, and cost-effective urban mobility through the provision of segregated right-of-way infrastructure, rapid and frequent operations, and excellence in marketing and customer service”. As a result of the above information, we can define a BRT system at present as a collective way of land transportation based on the functional features of LRT (Light Rail Transit) that benefits from the economic advantages and flexibility of the bus, so it can offer a collective service of land transportation in a comfortable, fast and functional way by rubber-tired vehicles. It implies an important decrease of costs compared to other ways of service at the same level. The main difference between BRT and urban railway systems is that the BRT can provide with services of high quality massive transportation at a very lower cost, whose price for the city could be between 4 and 20 times less than a LRT system and between 10 and 100 times less than an underground type system (GTZ, [4]). BRT systems are seen by local governments as an interesting transportation option, according to Kittelson and Levinson 150 [5], due to several features such as the appropriate design of vehicles, the fast way of validation of the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), the availability of right-of-way roadways which afford a high frequent service during the whole day, the possibility of operating in all kind of road (even in the historic district), their ability to be built quickly and gradually or to join easily other transportation systems both local and express, as well as their low implantation cost compared to the train or underground, while their benefits would be similar. In addition, as shown in some publications (Mojica C. and Rodríguez D. [6]; Muñoz-Raskin, [7]), the implementation of a BRT in cities leads to an increasing of the value of properties and market surrounding the areas in which it operates, so it contributes to the regeneration and promotion of highly populated areas. The possibility of being incrementally developed and the flexibility to operate are just exclusive advantages of the BRT against LRT or any other transportation system nowadays. First of all, an incremental development allows the implementation of the system in different phases, so that the investment cost derived both from the construction of stations and lines and the maintenance can be distributed in time. Since the implementation will be gradual, it is important at the beginning to choose a set of attractive conditions to demonstrate the advantages of the BRT system and help the investment in infrastructures and future extensions or improvement works in the line. On the other hand, the rapid transit systems offer a flexibility to operate which can be observed in different features. Regarding the routes, it is important to underline that the buses can generally run on all kind of roadways, even on the roads in the centre of the towns, which can be considered narrower than usual. Also, they allow the use of vehicles with higher or lower capacity depending on the needs of the service, so they can operate with articulated, standard or small buses, according to the quantity of users of a line, and change such configuration if the evolution of demand shows a change of the needs over time. Moreover, alternative routes could be adopted in case of eventual works or accidents on the road. However, BRT systems have also some disadvantages compared to other ways of public transportation. Buses have usually less capacity than LRT systems or underground, what must be taken into account to plan the routes. Besides, according to the right-of-way level of the roadway, there may be non-exclusive lanes for buses. Finally, BRT will be always slower than the underground, because of the shorter distance between the stops for the first one and the established proceedings to be followed in crossroads. At this point we wonder whether BRT systems currently in the world will have all these features we have seen. And if it’s not the case, the extent to which a larger number of lines, exclusive line, priority in crossroads, velocity, system identity, (...truncated)