The Promise & Danger of BRTs

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Ever wondered why your city's transit just doesn't seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!

Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.

[RMTransit]

It’s important to remember as mentioned in the video that “putting the rider at the center” is key and that “BRT can provide excellent service” so I’m not dismissing that they can provide good transit which is the most important thing, but I think in a lot of cases it could be and would be better as some form of rail.

[kozuskoo]

Just a correction, BRT was invented in Curitiba, Brazil in 1974. Bogota implanted around 2000 and somehow get all the credits. Jaime Lerner invented the system, an urban planner ahead of his time and deserves credit for his work, not a marketer mayor of Bogota. Lerner converted normal car streets in pedestrian-only streets too with "Rua XV de Novembro" in 1972.

[Alenasup]

One thing ive also noticed from taking a lot of transit in toronto: on occasion i have had motion sickness on the bus but never felt that on the streetcars or in the subway. I appreciate the smoother ride, and more consistent speed, the streetcars and subway are less wobbly too. The "railed" really make a difference in my ride experience.

[edgarrodriguez]

I'm from Bogotá and I've been using our BRT since the first line was built 2 decades ago. We have the busiest BRT in the world just because we are a 10-million metropolis without a metro. Transmilenio was a temporal healing but nothing further than that. Now we are waiting anxiously our first 2 metro lines.

[cyborgspaceman]

THANK YOU for bringing up the number of operators needed for BRT vs Metros, I feel like that doesn't get highlighted nearly enough. Like you said, many developing countries which rely on BRT have pretty low wage requirements for their drivers, while advanced nations (i.e. Canada, USA, Germany, etc) not only have high wage requirements but are often facing a shortage of available labor. Even rail transit systems in many cities are having trouble getting enough drivers for trains that can carry 1000 passengers!

[robojimtv]

There's a lot of elitism and snobbery that comes into play when buses are discussed. You can't always build a train track. BRT shouldn't be the first choice but in the right situations, it fulfills a need.

[paulj]

When I lived in Pittsburgh in the early 1990s. The East Busway and the South Busway worked well. Both were built on rail corridors. Both had routes that branched off to serve various neighborhoods. Suburban companies such as 88 Transit Lines and DeBolt used them too.

I used route EBA (East Busway All-stops) every day and found it to be very quick.

[humanecities]

Calgary’s MAX Lines are BRT-ish and are pretty popular. Building them happened a lot faster than if we were to do trains. There’s also a lot of *shudders* oil money that floats around to kill trains… So it gave us something fast and generally unopposed. But hopefully we get more trains.

[liamhodgson]

Pittsburgh resident here, not sure what “level” of brt we have but I love the busways here! They integrate really well with the trolleys and biking and are good for keeping buses moving around congestion

[jamesorlando]

I don’t know if you’ve ever taken a deep dive into the MBTA Silver Line, but it’s a fascinating mess. Specifically look up the absurdly fancy underground metro-style Courthouse and World Trade Center stations in the Seaport than surface to then operate circuitous routes in congested mixed traffic

[tonysoviet]

Hi RMTransit, been a subscriber since your detail guide to HK metro. Personally, I worked on a BRT system in Hanoi, Vietnam with the World Bank and many of the points you stated are dead-on.

What actually surprised me is that the information from your vid is accessible, but even a huge organization like the World Bank still makes the very same mistakes. Keep up the great work!

[Guiggs]

If you want to dig further in the problems with BRT, have a look of the system implemented in Belo Horizonte ( Brazil ).
It's a city with the population comparable to Toronto ( little more than 6million ) but is also a metropolitan center, meaning that a lot of people from nearby cities come to word or do business everyday.
So the city had only a small metro system with one line and the rest of public transportation was (and still is) done by bus. So almost 15 years ago when they decided to improve the city public transport, instead of follow the specialist and expand the metro, they chose to follow the corruption way and go with the BRT route to satisfy all the corrupt politicians.
It's clear that the system was created to the benefit of the operators.
So they did the BRT with exclusive lines, big buses, air conditioner and all. THen the public hated.
They eliminates a lot of bus lines and the rest became short route lines, wich means that they would only carry you to the nearest BRT station and go back to the neighborhood.
The traffic became even worse with the exclusive lines and to get to a BRT station was awful because they had to build were it does have a lot of space.
One year later a research showed that the new system added in average 20% more in the commute time for the users. To put in perspective a good amount of users already expended between two and three hours in the traffic just to go to work, so 20% increase in time to go and to go back is huge.
Worth to mention that the research doesn't include the time to get to the station neither the time to buy the tickets.
Since than the sales of motorcycles and used old cars skyrockets because people prefer to spend hours inside a car or to cut the traffic with the motorcycles, than be trapped in a bus like tuna.

[andrewclarkson]

Hi Reece, I see a difference between BRT that is used for BRT-specific routes, as you would arrange a metro, and BRT that is used for a variety of bus routes that each have part of their routes on a common road. In my mind, the latter situation makes a stronger case for BRT, since higher order transit on all these various routes may be prohibitvely expensive. I see Dundas St. in western Toronto and Mississauga as a good candidate for this kind of BRT. Many TTC and MiWay bus routes use Dundas from Kipling station, but then spread out north, south, and west. Dundas being a busy street, a busway would allow them to bypass car traffic.

[giantredlobster]

This was such a comprehensive, balanced, and ultimately persuasive exploration on the topic. Really excited to dive deeper into the ITDP—I write and implement product standard frameworks for the food industry—this is literal catnip for me. This could have just been a (literal) point-by-point comparison of various BRT systems, but embracing the nuance and considering ultimately what is the most appropriate mode to move and connect people, this vid is broadly applicable to different modes/industries/categories. Hats off!

[peeky]

09:15 as a Greater Manchester resident of almost 15 years now, I had a good chuckle there. Thanks Reece!
I'd be fascinated to hear your take on GM's public transport - we have Metrolink (light rail/light metro), a guided busway which is quite BRT-light, lots of heavy rail and aspirations for a full tunnelled metro in the next decade or so (then again, we've heard that before).

[cbr]

My hometown of Toulouse, in the south of France, has 2 metro lines with a third one on the way, 2 tram lines (which are parralel for most of the trip), a cable car line that bypasses the Garonne river, an extensive bus network and finally Lineo, which is a BRT Lite system : it has high frequency (6 to 12 minutes), bus lanes on some of the congested parts, dedicated bus stops with level boarding and accessible articulated (mostly) buses, it runs from 5:00am to midnight and finally it has great connectivity to the metros and trams. It's a great network in my opinion. Greater Toulouse's population is 1.2 million and what it does is connect the outskirts of Toulouse to the metro or tram stations.

[mazustudio]

An interesting approach is in Oberhausen, Germany there is a hybrid sytem, where trams and buses share the same route. In that way, you get a higher frequency and serve more different routes.

[markw.schumann]

Here to say the transitways in Pittsburgh are impressive. Pittsburgh is especially amenable to grade separation because the city itself is built on steep hills and the transitways are largely reusing old railbeds.

[Mert_Ozfirat]

I use BRT in İstanbul to go to the school everyday. I think it is really fast and has very frequent buses. They arrive to the stations like less than a minute! Also they are cheap for the students. They are integrated with all other transportation systems in the city.

[vaibhavjoshi]

In my hometown of Ahmedabad in Gujarat state in western India, we have an extensive BRT system (called BRTS actually where the S is for System) since 2009. A ton of people use it everyday and its actually pretty cool. BRTS won several national and international awards for design, implementation and operation. Its rated Silver on the BRT Standard