Should We Build BRT?

Bus Rapid Transit! A fairly new concept of making buses good enough to be a form of rapid transit. Should cities look into it? Or should they disregaurd it as a waste of money. Watch this video to find out and learn more!

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Frederick Jenny

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[guitarkharma]

The HealthLine BRT in Cleveland has completely transformed Euclid Avenue, and spurred development throughout a corridor that was completely left for dead 20 years ago. It has been a real game changer to be sure.

[TheLiamster]

I think BRT is ok but it should be built with provisions to allow for light rail if there’s enough demand and a higher capacity transit mode is needed

[markstocker]

As long as it doesn't become BST (busses stuck in traffic).

[AverytheCubanAmerican]

That Adelaide guided busway you showed at 0:56 is quite the interesting system. The history behind it is that the greater Adelaide area experienced significant growth during and after WWII, and thus so did the number of vehicles registered. By the mid-1970s, transportation had become a problem in the northeastern suburbs. This led to a study that concluded that a light-rail would be the best option. However, there was opposition because people thought it would interfere with the well-designed layout of the city proper, and that light-rail vehicles would be too noisy. In search of a replacement for the light rail project, they examined the O-Bahn system in Essen in what was then West Germany by Daimler-Benz.

The system was seen as far superior to previous proposals because it was flexible, used less land, made less noise, they viewed it as faster and as mentioned here as a reason for BRT, it cost less. In addition, its unique feature of a non-transfer service direct from suburban streets to the city center made it more attractive. With this system, the buses use a guide-wheel, which protrudes just ahead of the front wheels. It is connected directly to the steering mechanism and steers the bus by running along the raised edge of the track. Adelaide's track is 12 km/7.5 mi long and includes three interchanges at Klemzig, Paradise and Tea Tree Plaza. With its interchanges, it allows buses to enter and exit the busway and to continue on suburban routes, avoiding the need for passengers to transfer to another bus to continue their journey. Not to mention, the O-Bahn has sump buster devices to prevent cars. The O-Bahn has caused a clustering of commercial and community development near the Tea Tree Plaza Interchange, as service-providing organizations and businesses have of course sought to exploit the area's easy accessibility to public transit and the city center. Market imperatives have also been aided by the zoning of the land around the area as commercial rather than residential. The large Modbury Hospital is adjacent to the interchange, and the Torrens Valley campus of TAFE was built directly to the east of the busway after it opened

[goldenstarmusic]

Taking this from the Twin Cities angle, where BRT costs have been standardized and we've been building a lot, it is a good stop gap to improving transit in the US.
Even BRT-lite solutions with a solid emphasis on standardized high quality stations, as per the Twin Cities BRT stations, you can quickly and cheaply build out a network in a few years. We are already 5 lines in and going down the alphabet for each new line. Rochester MN is even building a BRT line with up to 5 minute frequency and dedicated lanes!

I don't think the ITDP's standards should be taken without scrutiny though. They think fare gates on BRT is better than proof of payment, which is definitely wrong.

Great video once again!

[jamiecinder]

San Antonio is definitely guilty of creep when it comes to the BRT lines it has. Its first line, Route 100 Fredericksburg seems like a proper BRT line. But Route 102 Military and Route 103 Zarzamora are basically regular bus routes that run more frequently than the others.

[TohaBgood]

This video does a nearly perfect job of discussing BRT. There are only two slight problems however that needed more screen time,
1. BRT costs more than light rail after 10-15 years due to all the extra maintenance. This is extremely important. We are trading off slightly lower (20-30% lower) construction costs vs light rail for much higher operating costs into perpetuity! This is a rotten deal. And the BRT line costs even more if it becomes popular and needs to expand capacity. You can always add a second car to your light rail trains. You can't with BRT. You need more operators which are by far the most expensive part of transit.

2. We need to pay more attention to BRT creep. If we can't fix it then BRT is not for the US. Yes, the video talks about it, but still not enough. There are no US "BRT" systems that measure up to the international standard. None. Literally all of them were watered down below real BRT status. It's like a watering down epidemic in the US! It is infinitely easier to water down BRT projects in general, and our political system is uniquely apt at watering down projects.

This is exactly why our politicians and transit planners absolutely BRT. It's not just that it's cheaper in the short term with the high costs being hidden in future budgets. It's the fact that they can build some substandard turd and still pretend like they've built a "rapid transit" line.

[stroudhunter]

Jacksonville’s first coast flyer “BRT” now has 30 min headways 😭😭

[chicagoakland]

Indianapolis has no choice but building BRT...and state politicians are trying to ban that, too.

[Titoroski]

This was super informative and inspirational. I just moved to Norfolk VA and the city itself does have a light rail line but Chesapeake to the south of Norfolk is entertaining BRT and I'm so disappointed that it's even a thought. Initially to the best of my knowledge, they wanted to connect to Norfolk's light rail. Nothing changed about that publicly but this week a post was made on Instagram saying that they were studying Richmond's BRT to see if it's a "good fit" for Chesapeake and I'm like "WHUT!? what about the train!?

[williamhuang]

Also it's worth mentioning that much of the cost of LRT and rail is the alignment. Full bus-highway type BRTs are generally not that much cheaper to build than light rail or metro despite offering lower capacity and much much higher labour costs.
BRT is good as an enhancement for existing, well-used bus services or as a transit improvement for smaller cities but definitely not as a discount transit solution for all of our transit problems.

[janoschwecker]

BRT Can be a good start, then at some point you can lay Overhead Wires for a trolley bus network, which will eventually become a Tram

[liamhodgson]

The pittsburgh BRT are good for when they were built. They need some in motion charging trolleybusses tho 👀

[thFlProductions]

Cincinnati Ohio is building two BRT corridors (Reading Road and Hamilton Avenue) starting next year. They are planned to run every 10 minutes (and then interline from University of Cincinnati to the Riverfront, thus every 5), use mostly dedicated lanes, transit signal priority, level boarding, off-board fare collection, and electric articulated buses. I think for Cincinnati, BRT is very good because it's something that can actually get built instead of the many good idea but failed proposals for light rail. Cincinnati and Ohio are both very hostile to transit so the fact that Cincy has an option that can improve transit at all is very good. SORTA (Cincy's transit authority) is very interested in TOD for these corridors to get more ridership. I hope to see things go well for it and not get watered down. The Streetcar is rail based transit for Cincy yes, but it is almost entirely in mixed traffic with no transit signal priority, and it's much more limited in how far it can go than BRT will be. I think Streetcar expansions that are not redundant with the BRT would be very helpful for serving more of the main urban core area though.

[ezekielcarsella]

Charleston, SC is building a Bus Rapid Transit line which I at first thought was silly, but after reading through their environmental survey I understand it. A private company owns the rail ROW and didn't want to share with light or heavy rail.

[FrederickJenny]

Awesome video and glad the random footage I got while in Albuquerque made it into your video. I will have to get more footage of my adventures for future videos. And if you ever make a Rio Grande Plan video I can get whatever footage you need!

[manraj]

The brt opened in Winnipeg as the blue bus and has been really good, especially the frequency during rush hour which is around every 3minutes. So I would say if implemented correctly it’s a good way of rapid transit

[vette]

BRTs are good for suburbs that are in the process of increasing density

[megalithagnusdei]

I think brt systems are generally overlooked by urbanists, brts are awesome and if done right they can be comedically good. A good example is istanbul metrobus, its awesome. Line is around 45 miles in lenght and uses buses in 4 different size smallest being 60 feets long THE SMALLEST! And the longest ones system uses are 82 feets long bi articulated buses. There is also plans to use 130 feets long buses from crrc's art series on the line. Other than buses frequency on metrobus is excellent, in the rush hours buses runs on every 15 SECONDS and this means your buses must have great performance and istanbul really take that seriously, in fact istanbul municipality take role in development of newer buses on the system. And of course system has great ridership with around 800k riders DAILY on average and over a million riders on some days A MILLION dont forget that most used metro line in istanbul, m2 line, usually has around 650k daily riders which is crazy in fact metrobus is the second most used transportation way in the istanbul after regular buses. Thats why i think brts are awesome.

[athenaclark]

I think a question that small cities should ask is if they should save money for a future light rail network, because once costs are out of the way, light rail is just better.