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.
Can you look into the GRTC of Richmond VA, US? we have a new BRT system, it is our first and it is 5 years old. They scrapped our bus system for this one. But Richmond has no trains even though we were the first metro system in the world for transit, as we are one of the oldest settlements in America. They put our BRT in the middle of the street, so the bus shoots down the center of the road like a bullet train, and the system is free for the time being
IMO, BRT can work if they run on their own private roads and are grade-separated from private vehicles and other normal traffic. Still not as good as trams or subways because the capacity per vehicle is pretty low, but if they run at very high frequency on an elevated BRT line, it can almost be like a subway line. OTOH, as he said in the video, if you're going to the expense to build a private elevated road, you might as well build a light rail line...
What about BRT as the main backbone of a rural public transit network, providing a link between small towns and terminating in nearby cities, thus creating transit interconnectivity between disparate cities and small towns? Within the towns an Uber-type service provided by the transit agency would do last-mile service. Especially since rural counties often have very low budgets and no transit agency whatsoever, so everything would need to be built from the ground up on the cheap.
@RMTransit: I listened to your video twice now, just to ensure I didn't miss something, and still can't distill a clear thesis from the story. It's all over the place and full of vague levels of what is enough (service/investment/ridership/ride quality, stop density) and what is not. I'm just a random youtube commenter, but I'll provide some well meant tips. - Structure your story with a red line that connects introductions with conclusions, both in subsections and overall - Try to use clear numbers to illustrate your points when comparing systems and show how they relate to the conclusion you make. - For example refer to real world examples of the construction, operation and maintenance costs when you claim one system is in the long run cheaper than the other Although I think many of the things you say are correct in isolation, I am on the whole not convinced with the overall tone that your story seems to emit that BRTs are some novelty mistake. If you think I got the tone of the story wrong, I would blame the undefined structure in the story.
Could you please do a video for Athens metro? They extended the system with 3 brand new stations this week and also has trams! and they build a new line as well!!
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.
Thanks. Sadly, this story plays out all the time. Behind every ingenious inventor lies some poor guy with little or none of the credit who got virtually none of the profits for the idea.
Yeah the lack of mention is a bit weird, even as the ITDP rankind has it with 7 silver/gold systems and Wikipedia mentions it as well (though not as the first city)
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.
I appreciate this comment. I have thrown up from motion sickness on buses several times in my life, and it is a horrible experience, and even slow mixed traffic trams do not cause this issue for me. I understand decisions shouldn’t just be made for my benefit, but others have to have the same issues, so it’s something to consider.
I've experienced this as well. I find it even worse when the bus gets stuck in traffic. Before the BRT in Richmond Hill I used to try and avoid taking the VIVA/any route down a major road like Yonge or Bathurst because it was almost a guarantee to make me really ill with the constant slow movements and the stop/start rhythm, especially if it was during rush hour. I still get some motion sickness but at least traveling through Richmond Hill on the VIVA Blue is relatively smooth, just nowhere near as much as rail would be obviously
+1 on the motion sickness. Many people I know who don't get motion sickness on cars will get it on the bus. Feels like half the Toronto bus drivers take joy in seeing as many people fall over as possible. I have pretty decent balance, but even holding on with both feet planted, lowered centre of gravity, etc etc, find it difficult to hold on for dear life. I've witnessed first-hand how some drivers will repeatedly transition from slamming gas to slamming brakes - definitely an operator issue but nevertheless really puts people off from buses.
@@danielbrockerttravel It's ridiculous how so many cities had rail transit streetcars and then thought buses were better, if only because of this factor. Of course a BRT isn't battling traffic and darting in and out of stops like a bus. And even the most modern buses don't seem to have as good a suspension system as the old GM New Looks did. Then the lack of decent seats (outside of London/UK) doesn't help. Plus: quiet clean electric power instead of diesel.
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.
@Zaydan Naufal Big yes Zaydan. The difference is that our downtown and 1950 to 1970 expansion was based on European urbanism so that we have walkable streets and neighborhoods and not those stroad suburbia common in North America. Our great handicap, nonetheless is the lack of real massive transit ie the metro. In a nutshell, even though we are way more walkable or cyclable than LA (because of our mixed use urbanism and our City beautiful heritage) we have a hell of transit the way they do.
Agree!. I think BRT is a good solution, but not the right solution for Bogotá. When Enrique Peñaloza was mayor (Fun fact: Peñaloza´s Brother ran for mayor of Toronto) he kind of brought BRT everywhere. My hometown of Bucaramanga (a 1.2 million people town) got into the BRT fever and implemented one and quite frankly, It was not that bad. I used it to go to University and it was decent , considered what we had before. Then I moved to Bogota, a metropoli with more than 8 million people and a huge BRT system and oh boy.... It simply didnt cut it. City is way to big for the system.
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.
Honestly, I think it should be the first choice. It shouldn't always be selected, but removing cars from a lane for bus ROW and removing fare payment while boarding for the existing bus system should be the first thought everytine.
I think the elitism originates from American bus services, which in mine and other americans experiences, are super dirty, unreliable, and bus stops are undedicated and sometimes without street lights making them feel unsafe. This is just an anecdote though.
Because BRT oftentimes get compromised... Some "BRT"s are just bus lines with fancy stop shelters. While I acknowledge that even BRT lite services without dedicated lines have values, which I personally had rode on, sometimes taxpayers are promised a full BRT but end up getting scammed with a BRT-lite service or even a non-BRT.
@@EgnachHelton This happens with rail service too, though. Honestly, I think the main thing is just the low quality of public transportation in North America, and the fact that buses are far and wide the most common mode used. If we hadn't ripped out street cars, they would likely be hated just/nearly as much (Streetcars are preferred, generally in Toronto. But I still think thats connected to watching TV whwre the bus is disgusting, and the fact all Street car routes are in dense enough areas to be reasonablely frequent).
Also, due to that snobbery BRT doesn’t seem to drive rapid gentrification the same way as rail, which means providing better transit to low income neighbourhoods without causing a wave of ‘renovictions’.
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.
As someone who occasionally rides the BRT, it's just not that good a service. The MAX Purple for example has 20 minutes usually between rides during what I'm guessing is off-peak hours. It's able to get away with this because the #1 route stops at the same stops and also has about 20 minutes between rides, it's spaced out so effectively there is a bus every ten minutes. That would be all fine and good except they are usually delayed, re-routed, and very slow. to get to downtown from the bus stop takes over 20+ minutes, assuming no delays. a comparable drive would be 11 minutes. So combine that you have to wait 10 minutes potentially for a bus unless you live close to a bus station and can plan around it, a common five minutes of delays, whether that's from switching drivers, a emergency, just being late and the trip is 31 minutes. the service isn't particularly good, nor is it frequent, and desperately needs some improvement.
@@f1naliz3d I don’t have any power with the city (other than a voter and someone with a mouth), but I’m genuinely curious what specifically you’d do to improve the MAX Purple?
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
The fact that there are benches on the inbound side of South Station is really telling for what the Silver Line should’ve been all along. RIP Phase III
The Silver Line is why I'm skeptical of BRT proposals: BRT has a strong tendency to not actually be BRT. The Silver Line was sold as BRT but as far as I can tell doesn't meet the standard at all.
The Silver Lie was obsolete the moment it was proposed. It should have, at the very least been light rail integrated with the Green Line. It has certainly soured me on BRT!
If you're going to take a deep dive into the MBTA Silver Line, you need to be a sardine, because that's how crowded it gets at rush hour. It's just too small for the ridership it serves, and the T loses extra money on it, because the passenger crush is such that they can't even take the fares (of course, that's also because the T has a fare collection system that is lousy for several reasons). And while the Silver Line Washington Street portion doesn't have the circuitous route problem that the Silver Line Waterfront portion did (who thought THAT up?), it still isn't much separated from traffic (with this being a problem on an even higher percentage of its route). As for the never-built in-between segment (Phase III), that proposed routing just made NO sense (including that it would have added to the circuitous aspects of the routing), so good riddance. And then when snow is on the ground (a common occurrence in Boston winters), the articulated rear-wheel diesel and CNG and hybrid buses can't run due to the risk of jackknifing (the dual-mode buses that they are now stupidly getting rid of in favor of hybrids at least didn't have that problem, since they had the middle axles powered as well as the rear ones). (The hybrid articulated buses that they acquired just a few years ago were advertised as being tested in Winnipeg and having some kind of anti-jackknife measure, but obviously it hasn't worked.) And then these things use up more fuel per passenger (and have no provision for a switch to renewable energy unless they actually get battery buses working reliably) and generate more rubber tire particles than a metro or light rail would have generated. And with the ridership on the Silver Line Washington Street, they really should have left a branch of the Orange Line metro there (even light rail seems to be bordering on too small). And the residents around Washington Street were promised "equivalent" service, with plans for a light rail line even being floated, but it was a broken promise, that was almost certainly intended to be broken from the start.
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!
I guess within 10 years we will have many of these BRT's drive autonomously. Autonomous driving, possibly with one remote operator overseeing 10 BRT's on remote screens, is quite reasonable especially when the BRT's are on fully separate lanes. Digging, building and maintaining metro-tunnels and stations is quite expensive too.
@@richardbloemenkamp8532 Setting up an autonomous BRT is going to be MUCH more difficult than an autonomous metro and require a lot more expensive technical development to meet safety standards. Computers don't do well with unpredictable environments, and roads have a lot of unpredictable drivers and pedestrians to consider. Something that's on rails is massively easier to automate, and this is already done in a lot of places. If we design systems with automation in mind, rail-based transit is going to continue to be the most cost-effective option. Unless you're trying to get someone to give you VC money. Then you can just make bogus claims about self-driving cars from dawn till dusk until the investors give up, then run off with the cash.
That’s fair - here in my city, bus drivers are paid R$70-79 (13,26-14,96 USD) per day, depending on if they’re pulling double duty as the fare seller or not. We even still have the ticket sales person separately selling tickets while the driver solely drives! They’re being phased out now, but yeah, all busses use to have a crew complement of 2 until *very* recently, in my city, and most busses still do.
@John Wang in my place (jakarta, which has the longest BRT system in the world), the government never build new road just to use it for BRT. they simply use the existing road and put some kind of fence to prevent regular cars to drive on it.
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.
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.
Weird - here in Porto Alegre we have the largest number of bus corridors by lenght in Brazil and have had them since the ‘70s, and they do work. They’re not “gold” BRT like Expresso Tiradentes in São Paulo which has OVER 90% SATISFACTION WITH THEIR RIDERS!! But hey, they massively speed up transit and they’re really not bad.
That's it friend. Once you look beyond the bla bla bla and the so-called experts reading from textbooks, bus corridors and BRTs are horrible for those they are supposed to help the most: commuters and urban centres. They suck, plain and simple.
Yeah, in Rio de Janeiro is the same thing. Thank god we still have a couple of old suburban rails, but we use to have trams all around the city back in the day. Now, transit expansions circle around BRT due, in my opinion, to the political power that bus private companies have here. The system is all privatised, and subway/train/bus, each one with it's own fare and turnstiles. A whole mess. And they keep building more BRTs
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
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.
@@nicolasblume1046 You would need to have super deep stations to be able to cross the Bosphorus. Not only would it be very expensive, it would be worse from a user experience perspective, as instead of just getting on a bus, you'd have to go down 6 sets of escalators. The best replacemement for the Istanbul Metrobus is some sort of automated surface rubber tyred vehicle IMO.
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.
That’s an option and this could be an entire new video, but if many routes are running together especially to a rail station (like Torontos Kipling) a rail extension seems like a sensible idea!
The situation where many bus routes join onto a common corridor CAN also be solved with rail on that corridor which is served by feeder buses. Yes, you do add one more transfer to everyone's trip, but since the agency already knows that everyone from the buses will continue via rail and that pretty much everyone arriving by rail transit will hop onto a bus, they can just sync the schedules and require the trunk vehicles to wait for the feeders and vice versa. I.e. in a well-working system these transfers might add 1 minute of wait time to each trip. - And in return you gain the higher top speed that usually comes with rail based transit. The one advantage that BRT gives you is that it puts vehicles onto the common corridor way more frequently. If you have bus lines 61, 62, 63 and 64 each passing such a BRT station every 10 minutes, that gives you 4 times as much frequency than a single line 6 tram or metro every 10 minutes (as long as your trip or leg is entirely on that shared corridor). Then again, there's nothing keeping the agency from putting 2 trams every 10 minutes onto that corridor and linking half of the bus lines to the "xx:x2-past" trams and the other half to the "xx:x7-past" trains. In that case the ability to take a "xx:x2-past" tram if your connecting bus leaves after a "xx:x7-past" tram allows you to split up your waiting time. You can warm yourself up in a tram after waiting for 3-4 minutes and then wait another 5 minutes for the bus instead of waiting 8-9 minutes in one miserable block. Or you can evade a sudden downpour by quickly jumping into a tram that goes in the correct direction. Not that you couldn't do the same with a BRT bus, but it would add an extra transfer to your trip, which seems like a slightly counterproductive thing to do.
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.
I'd convert them to rail. A cross Pittsburgh rapid transit line from Monroeville to Pittsburgh Airport at standard guage and 25KV AC overhead wires. 80 % of the line would be above ground with underground portions in Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh airport.
the best case scenario for a BRT is when it uses old rail infrastructure or rail quality infrastructure, at which point just build rail. BRT is a scam and never worth it.
I think I generally agree, you alluded to this, but BRT can be approached from two different sides and where you approach it from will dictate whether it is a positive thing or not. If a region approaches BRT from the "enhancing our bus service" direction, it can be a very positive (albeit problematic in the long term) strategy. Basically a region which has a lot of bus service, and especially when a lot of those buses end up concentrated in a few corridors in the more dense areas, those busy bus areas can be improved. First with improved stations, then improved features like queue jumps, and eventually full bus lanes. Because it can be built using iterative improvements, BRT can be achieved without the need for a huge influx of cache along with long disruptive construction periods, and this can sometimes be a better trade off with better service now, for existing and latent riders, at the cost of some reduction in the long term potential of growth. But for a region which cannot get the investment needed for a huge project, or is too much underwater on existing demand to suffer the huge disruption of a major project it can be a very valuable option. The potential advantage of BRT is that a system can provide a lot more single ride services, by having local buses transition into the BRT system. Whether this is a good thing or not depends on a lot of local contextual factors. But if BRT is planned AS a megaproject, well...in my experience, BRT is chosen because it's a shiny thing that money can be spent on, but which the hard political issues that would apply for an LRT for example where it would have to sacrifice space for cars to fit the right of way, well...those problems can just disappear along with dedicated lanes.
100% agree, except for the long term issue comment. While I see your point, I think BRT is at least equally positive long term by providing the rapid transit needed to densify suburban communities, and create the environment needed for LRT. They create the long term issue of not having enough capacity, but that means without them there wouldn't be the long term demand.
When you get to the maximum capacity achievable by BRT the upgrade to LRT lies only in laying tracks and building pentographs. These can be done during the night to ensure operation during the day, and after just a short time you can replace your busses with LRVs that serve exactly the same route... Modern LRVs can have basically any floor height, so if your platforms exist they can just match that exact height. If LRT is not enough capacity, then you can just build a subway and remove the BRT entirely, using the additional space for green space and/or sidewalks
@@jan-lukas Lol...just ask Ottawa how smoothly converting a BRT to an LRT goes. What you describe is only possible if the BRT is replaced exactly one for one with an LRT, which isn't the case if the BRT is built as I describe it.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 This could be true, but it's all pretty context dependent. In Ottawa Canada they built a BRT and later converted it to an LRT. IMO the city could have justified building an LRT in the first place. And the flexible nature of the BRT probably increased urban sprawl over building an LRT. Conversely Waterloo ON built a BRT *light* (very *light*) system with long term plans to expand it into a continuation of their LRT system, and that's probably a good/successful project.
The most successful modern BRT systems are the ones that are built as “enhanced buses” such as the one in Richmond (consisting of painted lanes and dedicated stops which is quite cheap and fast to build). In contrast, BRT systems such as Hartford and Winnipeg, where a transitway is built, have construction costs similar to light rail
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.
There's a street in cologne that has LRT tracks and dedicated bus lanes, and the busses are just EMPTY. Nobody wants to use busses if there's light rail available, so with the next work the bus lanes will be removed to widen the sidewalks and cycle lanes (like actual cycle lanes not painted bicycle gutters)
A shared tram/bus-lane seem to be a very common thing. As trams are relativley infrequent there is enough room to put at least some bus lines inbetween them, speeding up buses without needing additional lanes.
I think one of the great promises of BRT, particularly BRT-Lite, is the ability to serve a higher number of corridors than you would otherwise be able to. Because you can keep the cost of construction so low for BRT-Lites, you might be able to upgrade 6 corridors for the price of 1 true BRT, or 20 for the price of 1 LRT. If you provide great service along each corridor, all of a sudden you have a full transit network that is more useful to more people. Now, this isn't to dismiss the need for metro/LRT along higher demand corridors, but I do think there are a lot of cities (particularly in North America) that could benefit from a full network, service centric BRT-Lite approach.
A lot of these rankings tend to be to rigid in their criteria and thinking. Like Pittsburgh's Busways get points docked for not having platform level boarding and off board fare collection and it makes them sound like bad systems but they're actually completely grade separated bus highways that don't intermingle with regular traffic at all and serve thousands of people daily living in the south, east, and west suburbs of the city. The South Busway was actually opened in 1977. First BRT in the US and only 3 years after Brazil pioneered the idea. I used to take the West Busway into downtown for work every day when I lived near a stop because it brought my total commute time down from >40 minutes to
@@13squier Here's where we run into the problem the video addresses which is, "What is an actual BRT system?". As far as I can tell, the Shirley Busway is more of a glorified HOV lane that also allows car pooling rather than an actual full, intricate BRT system with a network of stops that are all grade separated. In fact, if you look up the history of HOV lanes, it lists the Shirley highway as being the first. HOV lanes != BRT It's great that it can get the busses down the freeway faster but what about when it's actually picking people up at stops? If all the bus stops are just intermixed with traffic until the busses hit the freeway, I don't really think you can fairly call that a true BRT.
Almost all of those "best city in X" rankings are completely made up, have inconsistent (when not blatantly biased) criteria, nothing that would qualify as scientifically solid and are made just for publicity (both of the cities and of the organization who made it). You wouldn't do bad in preemptively ignoring them. Mind you, I am from Brazil. The city who "pioneered" it (because they are essentially bus dedicated lanes with some cosmetic improvements, hardly anything ground breaking), Curitiba, has 2 million people. Cities of that size in Europe will instead have a quite large metro, plus trams AND bus corridors. Instead Curitiba relies in those buses to be the backbone of their transport system. The result is exactly what one would expect. Congestion, slow speed, massive queues to even enter the bus stops.
@@fresagrus4490 I can't speak for Curitiba as I don't know they're situation. I advocate for BRT based on how it is in many North American cities such as my own (Pittsburgh). Obviously rail would be the ideal solution in most cases, but most North American cities aren't in ideal situations. They're crippled with years worth of car dependent infrastructure that they have to keep maintaining as well as years of disinvestment and people fleeing for the suburbs leaving dwindling tax bases. For many cities, it's not a choice between BRT or LRT. It's a choice between BRT or nothing. I'll take the transit right of way being created and dedicated now and the incremental progress towards a more rail and transit oriented future vs just throwing our hands up and saying, "We can't implement the best solution (rail) so we're just going to keep doing cars".
The current form of Curitiba’s BRT only appeared in 1991 when they started using biarticulated buses and the iconic tube stations with off board fare payment i think
@@anindrapratama Yes, but by the 70s Curitiba already had the trinary system with the exclusive busways, the offboard fare payment in closed stations, as well as the feeder bus network that supports the main line. It's honestly surprising that Curitiba does not get talked about that much, when it was where these elements were first implemented, and where the full BRT system as we know it was consolidated.
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!
I also like BRT light. Here in Berlin we have metro busses that are serving the spaces between the train lines. They also come by more frequently and have a higher capacity than normal busses.
MetroBus lines don‘t use dedicated vehicles and therefore also don‘t offer more capacity than a regular bus line running at the same frequency. They also serve every stop along their route, unlike express buses, with those stops being just regular bus stops. They are far from BRT.
BRT light seems more reasonable than full BRT, in my opinion. Like a best bang for a buck. If you have a fully separated system, then why not make a tram?
Istanbuls BRT has been a huge success but it was born out of necessity, as the city was growing so rapidly and no funds nor loans were available for additional metro projects. There has been extensive talk about how to convert it to a rail system, the new administration has a project called Hizray, which means fast rail, to take of pressure of the BRT system, it’s an express metro system, which gets the number M34, same as the BRT system, they are the busses with numbers 34a, 34b, 34c etc. the number 34 being the identification number on vehicle registrations for the province of Istanbul, now the BRT system will still be in place when the metro will hopefully be opened but, passenger numbers are expected to drop according to the sustainable public transport master plan of the municipality of Istanbul. All in all using the Istanbul BRT was always a horrible experience, too crowded too noisy and a sometimes a bumpy ride, still better than not getting around but still a poor experience, for someone who’s used to London’s extensive Underground system. The city of İzmit has a really nice tram system, tho not comparable to Istanbul as the city is way smaller, I think the main choice cities have a make is whether they give priority to private cars or pedestrians and trams. I like trams because they’re easy and fast to board you don’t have to walk through tunnels for ages.
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
Cleveland has the opposite approach to stroads. The heart of downtown with smaller streets has dedicated BRT lanes in the center of the road along with the station while further away from the city center, where the street turns to stroads, the dedicated lane disappeared and stations and stops are at the side of the road. The bike lane also disappears as the road gets narrower towards downtown and the bus lane also becomes a bike lane there according to the Transit Authority's policy (which some cops will still yell at you for despite being allowed).
There's a BRT proposed on Colfax Avenue, the busiest bus line in Denver, it is proposed to have dedicated lanes, and hopefully, it will still be frequent.
11:55 Speaking for Istanbul, we are. Problem is, as you have also made a video about that, we are also building many other metro lines, which serve places that didn’t have ANY rapid transit before. So they are of course a priority. Given that, and that a metro to replace the metrobüs has to be 50km of two-way tracks, with a crossing of the Bosporus (depth over 100 meters!) it is understandable why that project is slow.
BRT feels like it has the potential to be the perfect "gateway drug" to get cities and their metro areas transitioned over from a car mindset to a transit mindset, if they're designed from the onset with the plan being from the onset to eventually upgrade to other modes also my god does the GTA ever need better student pricing for the go trains, spending three hours on the viva blue line every day to get to and from college was exhausting
I highly agree with this sentiment, as seen from Jakarta. BRT was their first ACTUAL integrated, rapid, and timetabled system that made the people think "hey we should do this to all of our transit" so they went ahead on their commuter train modernization couple years later followed by an MRT and LRT line now
I completely agree. 6 lane Stroad= 4 lane stroad and BRT. Local buses that come through my neighborhood regularly, and then operate on an expressway to major locations. At the same time, upzone along those routes to create an urban "mesh" with a dense user and destination base.
But as mentioned in the video, actually converting and making that transition isn’t really something we’ve seen yet! I’d love to see it but until then I think skepticism is healthy!
"BRT feels like it has the potential to be the perfect "gateway drug" to get cities and their metro areas transitioned over from a car mindset to a transit mindset, if they're designed from the onset with the plan being from the onset to eventually upgrade to other modes" If only... most often it is chosen as a politically convenient solution because it will not make car users cringe as much as LRT or metro systems. If anything BRT is mostly picked by politicians who fear backlash from car users.
@@RMTransit if you come to Jakarta you will understand that your idea of "converting BRT to train" is not the way to go. Bus and train are meant to coexist together. Thinking that Train are always superior in everything to BRT is just wrong.
Here in Pittsburgh, they're building a "BRT" that seems to be just like regular bus service (stops too close together) but with dedicated lanes and nicer stops. We already have a few dedicated "busways", though, so I doubt it will even be the fastest bus service in the city when completed.
I don’t think a busway approach is bad in a small city, Pittsburgh doesn’t seem to have a huge likelihood of building full rail rapid transit as an alt
Transit planners in the 60s: "Rip out the street cars, buses are the future" Transit planners in the 2010s: "Rip out the metros, Buses are the future of rapid transit" Thank goodness for progress /s
@@Conellossus Didn't Boston just do something like this? But ya Idk about ripping them out, I more meant that BRT was being considered for new projects that "traditionally" would have been metro.
@@Conellossus Bogotá, instead of keeping the funding for its metro system, decided to build a BRT instead because it was "cheaper", it's funny because, in the long run, it has been even more costly to maintain the BRT rather than the metro in the first place
The worst thing is that it isn't the BRT's fault, the Bogotá BRT is a great system, it's very efficient actually, the thing is, it was seen as a replacement for the Metro, and 20 years later, we can see that it just doesn't have the capacity to hold out Bogotás population, the problem is so bad, that the ride isn't even uncomfortable because of the bus, but because of the number of people riding it
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.
A small city doing BRT fairly well is Madison Wi. We are also doing a bus network redesign to extend 15 minute service to a lot of high density areas of the city. Definitely check it out!
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).
My city built four BRT lines and they are great. Cheap for everyone, fast (very fast compared to common traffic) with dedicated lanes, bypass lanes, elevated stations, and biarticulated buses. Literally changed my life.
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!
I live around Jakarta and use the train and BRT busses on daily basis. There are SO MANY THINGS you misunderstood about BRT. you always think BRT can always be replaced by Metro then BRT is just some sort of peasant/inferior form of public transport. While building Metro is indeed way more expensive than BRT around 10-20x more per km, it also requires HUGE land clearance hence you need to compensate and faces disputes from local people, while BRT is just about "stealing" one car lane. BRT has the ability to adjust frequency and capacity to serve the number of passengers in demand it is also flexible to adjust routes in case some incidents happening, it reaches to remote destinations (closer to your house) that Train cannot reach do to it's huge footprint, the ability to switch multiple lines in one journey while Train requires lot of transits, The MRO and spare parts for trains are more expensive and specific to manufacturer design BRT has lots of advantages that Train don't have. in Jakarta, Metro Trains and BRT DO NOT COMPETE with each other but a perfectly complementing each other to widen the Public Transit network coverage. BRT will eventually serve as an important part for Metro as first and last mile ride. JAKARTA built 12 corridors of BRT in less than 10 years while 1 line of Jakarta MRT requires the same amount of time for construction. Jakarta MRT just reached 100K daily ridership 10y after construction started, while BRT reaches 1 million ridership 16y after construction started Taking huge loan for construction will put your country in huge debt and protesting march will guarantee happening
I am glad you mentioned Guangzhou's BRT. As one of the larger (and earlier) adopters of such systems in mainland China, it also attracted a considerable amount of criticism despite the high quality infrastructure (fare gates, screendoors and level boarding for all corridor sections). BRT creep (like the picture you showed in video) was a real complaint, the fact that it takes up 4 lanes (though necessary), and the fact that with ridership in the millions a subway should've been built from the get-go (but won't because a BRT was already there). If memory serves, Guangzhou isn't building a new BRT corridor after the first one.
Interesting information and presentation. Thanks. For the work. People argue that public transit is under utilized. But so are roads but roads never get critized for under capacity.
San Francisco has a "BRT" now that I assume was intended to stop people requesting more BRT service. It is a somewhat faster way to get standard motor coaches down a busy street, but if there are people in wheel chairs or people with bikes it bogs down. It was supposed to serve 2 city bus lines plus buses from the county to the north, but one of the 2 city buses has yet to return from the COVID shutdown. What was really needed in this corridor was something more like Seattle's transit tunnel.
The Metropolitano in Lima Perú, another BRT system, was a major upgrade from the informal local bus systems that the city has. The problem is that it started operating at max capacity almost immediatly. Even during the pandemic and lockdown of 2020 there were huge boarding lines that went from the platforms themselves, up the stairs,through the rest of the station, past the turnstiles and entry, and finally onto the street. Also, the companies that run the buses are constantly asking for fare increases or subsidy increases.
Mexico City have a lot of BRT lines that were planned as metro, e.g. the path of the first BRT line was originally thought as a metro line (the 10nth never build), because is setted in the longest avenue of the country place of many workplaces (offices, universities, malls, etc.), almost since it's aperture runs overcrowded. Now the government has the idea of make an elevated BRT trolleybuses system in a place where also the studies have shown that the best solution is a new metro line. It's an absurd. Meanwhile, they are killing the metro, almost everyday we see images from multiple lines failing (trains catching fire or even buildings, collapsing viaducts, crashes, or a plethora of daily fails). The BRT comes to the city to kill the metro.
Metrobus is just a mediocre alternative to the Metro that they have promised us since the Plán Maestro de 1985. Actual heads of federal and CDMX governments ditched updates to that plan,the one of 1996, and the other the one of 2018.
I'm not a huge fan of the giant stations we see with new rail lines, but with buses I do like the proper stations you see in Ottawa and Mississauga. Particularly in Canada, since the surface levels routes can be very cold in the winter.
@@RMTransit Idk Ottawa transitway stations were generally pretty well used. I feel like a fully enclosed shelter with a heater isn't excessive. Thanks for the great video and the balanced commentary.
@@RMTransit The Ottawa transitway was HEAVILY used prior to the LRT. Especially the east/west transitway that the LRT replaced. The problem is that it became so successful that it ran into capacity issues.
@@RMTransit and Ottawa’s Transitway suffered heavily from “BRT Creep”, as you call it. They cut that (originally very comprehensive) system to the bone. Gigantic empty (largely open to the elements) stations with no services, no washrooms, and no heat. Lovely in February.
Could you talk about the "Trolebus Elevado" of Mexico City? A new elevated BRT system built to replace what would be an extension of an existing subway line and a proposed Light Rail line
@@marcoshenriquesaat3121 Funny how our mayor swears it's the first one of it's class in the world 💀💀 and like nobody asked for that they all wanted metro or at least metrobus but it's already done
Excellent video! The biggest issue I have with "BRT" is the fact that having frequent busses that don't get stuck in congestion doesn't need a fancy name, its the standard in well run public transport services. Far too often the only time BRT is mentioned is in discussions arround trams or metros as an "alternative" which completely misses the point that differing transport modes compliment each other, they're not in competition. The larger (gold tier) systems with large amounts of infrastructure just seem like a missed opportunity to go the last mile and build a tram / metro and don't make good use of the flexibility that busses are useful for
I'm from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and we have seen exactly what you described Our government doesn't want to spend the money on extending the metro lines or building the new ones that were already planned, but instead they put the normal buses on sections of special lanes for them, making it a sort of BRT light. It didn't alleviate the congestion in most places, the buses are not articulated, and in some places you have HUNDREDS of buses passing by every few minutes, making the waiting A VERY AWFUL EXPERIENCE. It's so loud I can't even explain it, I HATE IT. Also, in our case, we don't have specific stations, so we wait in somewhat regular bus stops, only with a platform, so it's hot in summer, cold in winter, and wet when it rains. It's also more easy to get mugged since you're still on the street technically. So yeah, the only pro is that in the dedicated lanes you save time if you compare yourself to the cars, but it will never rival a metro
Haha, my own route on the thumbnail to get to work & school. Ottawa’s 99 is the perfect example of how not to do BRT: it is called a rapid route and yet it runs on low frequency (every 30min) and it’s unreliable at best. I can’t remember the last time the 99 was on time, busses are commonly cancelled and it simply isn’t mentioned 🙃 I’ve had to find alternate ways of getting to school because of it
Portland just opened BRT Light on Division from Portland to Gresham. It's a good addition to an already good light rail and streetcar system. Tacoma is building two BRT Light lines, which I think is just going cheap, but it's better than what they have now, which is nothing but a short downtown streetcar to nowhere.
BRT is very rare in Germany. The only contenders I know are the Oberhausen transitway, which serves express buses and trams, and maybe the Essen guided busway, if that counts. Most of the time, the role of BRT is filled by trams or LRT lines here, and I‘m surprised that something like Oberhausen‘s transitway even exists. It‘s certainly an unusual experience for someone who‘s never ridden any BRT before.
France has got rid of most of its trams and rebuilding them more recently in the last decades. And many BRT-like projects (so long buses on dedicated lanes) have been built and are planned.
The interesting thing about it is that you can use the same ticket on those systems on the Hauptstrecke Rhein Ruhr S-Bahn lines S1 Duisburg Dortmund via Essen S3 Oberhausen to Hattingen Mitte service splits from the S1 at Essen Steele Ost
I teach urban planning and for me Curitiba is one of the best examples of how to implement an integral plan, specially taking into account the ups and downs of latin american politics. Everything in urban and regional planning is interconnected. You can´t just work on solving a transportation issue without addressing other problems. When he became mayor of Curitiba he took a holistic approach to urban planning which completely changed the city for the better (it´s always at the top of livable cities not only in Brazil but in Latin America) He was years ahead in sustainable principles implementing social, economic and environmental programs. For example, he not only was a pioneer with the BRT system, he convinced Volvo to open a factory in Curitiba in exchange for the high number of articulated busses that the city was going to buy.
As a Brazilian, it's funny hearing about BRTs using São Paulo as an example instead of Curitiba (arguably the first BRT system in the world). One bad example of BRT usage is in Rio de Janeiro. The local politicians decided to build a BRT system from stratch over building subway lines in preparation for the Olympics, even going as far as converting old (and much needed) subway projects to BRT corridors (Metro Line 6, connecting the International Airport and the Federal University to the new downtown of Barra da Tijuca, while passing through major comercial centers and transversally connecting all the suburbian train system lines with Metro Line 2, was demoted to the Transcarioca corridor). The system was overcrowded from the start, and after the 2016 Olympics it was basically abandoned to its own luck. The situation became so dire that, in 2021, the City decided to take over the BRT Consortium and inject loads of money to try to save the network. I could go all way talking (and ranting :V) about Rio's transport network. I live in São Paulo now, and even though this city has its own share of problems and abandoned projects, it's still miles ahead of Rio or any other Brazilian city when it comes to mass transit.
I remember when it launched in my neighbour, the Transolimpica was very good, I could get to the Metro in one hour. But as of today, I tend to go to regular buses to do the same route, because the arrival times are beyond ridiculous (it can get up to 40min in the middle of the afternoon, and in rush hours isnt that better, going for more than 20minutes). And its so crowded, that if im not in a hurry, I just go and take the traffic jams, because BRTs are overcrowded and has terrible air systems.
I live in Taguig City, Philippines. Yes, we have also the only BRT that is a feeder from our MRT-3 of Epifanio Delos santos Avenue, but the BRT is longer than four stations of LRT-1 and all stations of MRT-3 combined. Though, we just call it as busway as we do not have even single journey tickets to that busway, unlike the MRT an LRT lines. Recently, our transportation department put signalling on 13 out of 19 stations of our "busway". Plus, the free rid can last until 31 December this year. This is not only the first time that the busway had offered free rides, but for the third time. Our "busway" just started on 5 September 2020, and I am not certain that the busway can fail as the other countries or not. But one thing for sure that the busway is more expensive than riding the MRT and LRT along EDSA.
My favourite form of BRT is of the sort that gets built without the BRT label or any fanfare, because it is a routine city bus improvement, not a big project. The best city buses I've ever taken have all been in countries that do not have the term ‘BRT’ in their local languages, because they simply don't need it
someone (NotJustBikes i think) recently made a great point along the lines of “city planners usually know all this stuff already, but it’s the politicians who actually make the decisions”. as a part of that, many (uninformed) citizens and politicians will opt for the cheapest option because the alternative can seem ‘unnecessary’ or ‘mismanagement of public funding’ and so on; which can make the governing local politicians less popular. in addition; there often isn’t that much money to go around - as we know, the USA especially is full of cities that are going bankrupt due to the financial pressure of unsustainable suburban sprawl. i suspect there is a significant amount of preference for BRT in these circumstances simply due to the lack of upfront capital. as an anecdote: i’m led to understand that a few years ago, Brisbane chose to move forward with upgrades to the existing bus network (called Brisbane Metro - don’t be fooled by the name; it’s just battery-electric articulated buses running mostly on the existing busway corridors with some stop changes and upgrades) instead of a proposed light rail or tram system that would have been about 40% more expensive, simply because they were already struggling to secure funding. even then, the plan may have been cut back from its proposed form. based on the number of new vehicles they are getting as part of this; some analysts think it’s unlikely to have significant improvement for Brisbane commuters, and may even *add* vehicle changeovers on existing commute journeys where there was none before. to be fair, the project is also designed to reduce congestion from buses at BRT hubs in the inner city, since the platforms are at capacity at peak, but light rail would have reduced the same congestion in the same manner, with its own benefits.
@@Croz89 True, and it’s not just light metro, it’s a full scale metro (pretty sure the Chinese would call the trains that Bogotá is using “6B” or something like that)
@@alexjenkins1079 yes it is a full automated heavy metro, we have 10 almost 11 million in our urban core and maybe 13 million or more in the metro area
As someone who has followed Latin America's politics, and in particular public transit, for decades, it is easy to forget that even building a BRT in the first place was highly controversial. In Bogota, for example, buses and bus lines are independently owned, and would often compete against each other, and also cars, while spouting pollution. BRT was brought in to deal with real pollution, congestion, and safety issues and were not expected to be so popular so fast. In Latin America's past, before BRTs became a thing, most governments pushed for all the typical problems you see in car dependent countries, from car parking minimums to car ownership as a status symbol. One of the first things you saw in Bogota after BRTs were brought in, was a huge cultural shift. People were leaving cars at home. Rich and poor began to take transit together, pollution and congestion went down, crime went down. High riderships were achieved in months what were originally thought to occur in decades. Many other BRT systems in Latin America, from Mexico to Argentina received a lot of pushback as lanes were taken away from already gridlocked cars, but now their successes have shifted the views of so many people. Building a metro and streetcars are now being pushed by people, as well as walkable neighborhoods. Bike storage buildings accommodating them are becoming so full, new bike storage buildings near the stations are being built every year. This awareness started, in small ways, in the early 90s but really really exploded because of BRTs. So you should take this into account when talking about BRTs. In Latin America, more and more money is spent on public transportation and trains are coming back (as long as they are democratically run and not have revenues siphoned off by various corrupt governments. I do agree that in Europe and North America they are not always built or designed well, but that goes for trains as well. They are still too car focused. And I do agree that in many cases a metro or street car line would be better, but it is the popularity and change in perspective of BRTs that have largely started the Metro Line to be built in Bogota. And despite what you might think, getting funding is hard, especially when so much corruption is present, it is hard to get the money to actually be spent properly instead of being put in pockets. Argentina, for example spends a lot of money, much more than it should, for every train car or "improvement" but most of these have been mostly ego boosting political endeavors and do very little to address real issues while costing massive amounts of tax dollars while these same politicians enrich themselves on these "public works" projects. Which is yet another thing good about BRTs, they got people demanding more and more (as the demand outstrips the BRT capacity) and they get more involved in the economics of it all, asking for more BRTs, street cars and metros while demanding more transparency, especially as the wealthier and more educated citizens begin to take BRTs themselves.
I'd love to see you analyze the Hamilton old BLAST proposal (especially in light of population forecasts) and what modes of transit could best suit it's various lines.
We have BRT lite in Bristol. There are some genuine infrastructure improvements like new roads, concrete bus stops, information points, faster boarding and alighting, priority traffic signals. I believe it's well used but it's been criticised for being a compromise, with plans for a tram network scrapped decades prior. It's become a bit of a motto that any planned public transport improvement will just end up being another bus.
I would love to hear your "moonshot" ideas for transit development, say in an ideal environment. I'm partial to the idea of testing on small scale, long-term planning, and incremental construction vs. ultra-large "overhaul" projects. For example (similar to this video), significantly increase busses along a corridor (no other changes). Eventually build better shelters along the route. Then construct dedicated lanes. Then begin laying track for tram in a way that DOESN'T disrupt traffic flow (eg. prefab track installation per night when traffic is not flowing). This type of idea amortizes the costs, and are perhaps less jarring, it is less disruptive, and instantly beneficial. It also justifies shrinking of lanes as the busses are likely to offset traffic in the corridor. If I were being honest, I would start this on the 401, between the city proper and outlying suburbs. I bet that ridership would be high as sitting in traffic on the 401 each day, in a coffin on wheels, is torture.
I'm not even that worried about disrupting traffic flow. Sure, it should be avoided as much as possible, but if disrupting traffic temporarily is necessary to build proper infrastructure improvements, that's just life. Edit: but if it's feasible to do this stuff at the same time as other maintenance or road repaving, that's obviously a nice bit of synergy.
The problem with a piecemeal "testing" approach to building out rail is that you almost certainly aren't going to see stellar results right out of the gate, since you won't have network effects in play. This will allow people who don't care about public transit to claim that it "isn't working" and scrap the project before there's any chance to build out a rail network.
@@alex2143 I'm with you on my personal preferences in this regard. My thoughts with minimzation of disruption, is that people are unlikely to complain (or even notice) that things are improving. The costs and disruption remain low through the life of the upgrade.
@@sinisterdesign Sure. Regardless of the implementation their will be challenges. I'm guessing that if costs and disruption are low, pushback will be minimized.
I lived in Jinan, China for 5 years (2010-2015). They got a subway system opened less than 2 years ago. They had 5 lines of BRT and I lived less than 500m from a stop. Truthfully, it rarely went where I wanted to go, so I didn't use the service often. It also didn't go to many places that were in most need of the service. That meant using taxis or regularly city buses. I haven't been back since 2017, so I don't know if it is being used the same way. Stations there were in the middle of the streets and BRT did have low-slung flat floors and were articulated. The price for any ride was 2 yuan (about $0.30 CAD). Using the transit card was the preferred form of payment for all public transit. I'm currently in Shenzhen, China and have been here since 2015 and use the metro here, including the system that crosses over to Hong Kong (pre-pandemic).
Another excellent video Reese. I used to live in Ottawa and the Transitway with one huge exception worked extremely well. (The exception: Downtown, hence LRT replacement.) But as you argue here getting a BRT in a large city doesn't make sense. I recently watched a video arguing that Atlanta shouldn't build a LRT in an old railway right of way. The arguments weren't very persuasive compared to yours here.
Brisbane Metro was supposed to be a proper metro system (with automated trains) until they decided to save money and just upgrade their BRT system with longer busses
And it's probably gonna suck again, though the decision makers will always be able to say "it's better than the terrible bus network we had before, therefore the expense is justified!"
seattle is building a BRT that is now costing equal or more than our light rail lines, and it's been BRT-creeped so much to the point where it's mostly just an upgrade for cars using the express toll lanes (which you don't even have to pay the toll if you have at least one passenger)
I Live In Jakarta I use BRT (Transjakarta) + Commuter Train (KRL Commuter Line) a lot is because is really cheap and sometimes than driving unfortunately some people who use Motorcycle and Car Oftentimes use the line to break through traffic jams making BRT In Jakarta not always ontime
I guess we can say that there’s no silver bullet when it comes to good transit. Each city will do what it needs and work with what it has; be that metro, light rail, trams, OR brt.
I really like some of the hybrid elements of BRT. You can make a true grade separated BRT line through busy downtown, but then use the same busses as branching local busses out in residential neighborhoods
That's the most sane solution. Darmstadt, though not a city with a BRT, puts buses and trams on exclusive lanes on major arteries (i.e. Rheinstraße, Neckarstraße and Bismarckstraße) which goes into the direction of your idea.
Chicago has one BRT line called the Loop Link that only serves the Chicago Loop area. It’s actually pretty useless and no one in Chicago likes it or uses it. It only connects one train station with the Chicago Loop and that’s pretty much it. It was actually supposed to be a streetcar system consisting of three lines but CTA and the Chicago government got all caught up in bureaucracy and it ended up being demoted to a BRT and it even fails at being an efficient one
I'm not against the idea of just building a metro instead, but there are corridors where BRT makes perfect sense. Montreal is currently turning an 4 lane (both ways) stroad instead a two lane (both ways) street with a BRT down the middle, for instance. Sure, you could build light rail there instead, and I'd like that better, but it's still going to be a huge improvement over the current buses that get stuck in traffic.
@@RMTransit I don't entirely agree, for instance one thing you often mention is the visibility of transit being important, and a simple painted bus lane with faster service... That's just an express lane, it's not exactly exciting or even visible. There's also the issue that painted lanes aren't as enforced as something that's separated by the curb, so I wouldn't be surprised if cars occasionally slowed service by dipping into the bus lane illegally, something that'll be much less frequent if they have to go into a separated section of the road.
Given the downsides, I don't see why you'd prefer BRT over a Tram. You can build trams in the same places as BRTs and they can share the road with cars in lesser-congested streets if need be, but the capacity is much higher and noise and emissions are lower. The Hague is a good example of this.
Saw a video yesterday about the Boston silver line and how they wanted to have let but couldn't get the federal funds for it at the time and ended up with brt lite, although the lack of bus lanes in some spots ends up causing very significant delays.
I think BRT is a good supplement to include in a city that already has mass rail transit. The metro being 🚇 the prime use of transit and BRT to cover areas where there’s more room and farther out.
Yes, it's thought Istanbul to convert its brt line to an lrt line. Probably it will never be a fully featured metro line because it will be too heavy for Bosporus bridge to carry.
@@RMTransit yes, there are, and there will be more! Istanbul has a long term transit plan. The goal is reaching the 1100 km long railway transit in next 2 decades. The reason Istanbul is building lots of metro lines so quickly is the municipality of Istanbul and the government's ministry of transport have a huge competition at this topic. (they are from different political parties). Competition is always benefits the public I think.
France has a problem with BRTs, the city council might not want to invest in trams and trains and sees BRTs as a cheaper solution you can just call a "tram-bus". Aix-en-Provence tram A line is a good example with battery powered buses, and another example in Nîmes with the tram line being a diesel bus at least it's high floor but still suck a bit when a train had been proposed
BRT can be a nice "first stage" for a new transit line. The Jokeri tram line in Helsinki would never have happened without the BRT-type service that was created there first. The bus passenger numbers was steadily growing for a few years until there was an induced demand that validated a tram line.
@@RMTransit yeah, I hesitated to call it actual BRT, and went with "BRT-type service". There are a few stretches that are exclusive for this particular bus line (oulunkylä to viikki for example) but most of it is shared with other traffic or buses 🤔 and of course it has regular bus stops, and none of the massive constructions mentioned in this video.
Fun fact, there is plan to build one BRT line in Prague. It would connect several villages south from city to Háje metro station. Reason why BRT is considered is that there are no tram lines anywhere near Háje and while there is intention to change that they are still far from being builded.
To me BRTs are awesome if they are used as feeders to a Metro System. But in Latinamerica they have been sold as the panacea and stops the development of metro (like what happened in Bogotá). Here in Santo Domingo BRT is being developed (although we still don´t have any real BRT yet) as a complement of the metro, not as the protagonist.
BRTs work the best in lower density areas with more space as “feeder” There is a short BRT in the suburbs of my city Also work better in warmer climates where you don’t have to worry about plowing snow and fixing potholes
@@otterofglory8140 oh we do have to worry about potholes, we get massive amounts of rain during hurricane season and maintenance isn't really the strength of the government. I think it has to do less with climate and more to do with density and budget, a tram would be way better but some countries can't afford that
@@josecarvajal6654 oh yeah that too I’m used to being in the Northeast US where ice creates the potholes Still, a reason I like trains better than BRT is that steel tracks done get potholes
Curitiba, in the south of Brazil, where almost 4 million inhabitants live in the metropolitan region, invented the BRT, the first Articulated and Bi-articulated in the three Americas.
Would you consider doing an Explained video of Kuala Lumpur's Metro (Rapid KL)? It includes, among other things, a fully elevated BRT line, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on it. Thank you!
There is an excellent example of BRT Lite in China. Bus route 77 in Changchun, Jilin Province, was opened in 2022 with dedicated lanes but without off-board payment. It received negative reviews at the beginning because of the dedicated lane but gradually attracted passengers and received a passenger flow record of 35,038 on May 24, 2024. But the construction cost of it is very low, for this 27km bus route, it only costs 5.5 million RMB(around 800,000 USD)
I loved this video. BRT light is (maybe) my overall favorite form of Transit due to its versatility. Investing in GoLd BRT is just dumb, if you're going to build a transit way, build tracks. PS. Sorry for spamming the comments, I don't usually I swear.
A lot of the highways connecting Montreal's exoburbs have widened shoulders that during rushour are BRT lines that buses can use but only if there's congestion
Hey nice video, i think you should look at Jakarta takes on BRT and integration with metros and regioal feeder such as small bus and suv based transit. Thanks
Here in Montreal we have a new BRT on the centre section of Pie IX Blvd. It can't be a subway because there are 3 directions past the last Montreal stop. People staying on the BRT will go straight to Laval incentive parking, others will go northeast in Montreal and a final bunch will go northeast in Laval using a Laval-people-only bus line. Half the people go to Laval and half to go the East of Montreal North. It will have dedicated trafic lights for buses and passengers and cuts the travel time. So that's 3 final destinations out of the same BRT. Buses will stop beyond intersections not before them so it's technically impossible for a bus to hit a passenger. The project will be complete next year with the connection by pedestrian tunnel already built to a future blue line extension at Pie-IX/Jean-Talon.
Hey Reece, have you mentioned your thoughts on the BRT that TransLink is going to be implementing? I think they are going to be converting some of the RapidBus routes into more fleshed out BRT. It did seem like a good move to me to increase capacity/frequency on these corridors before necessarily committing to something like light rail or SkyTrain.
We have maybe a half dozen BRT routes here in Calgary. The main two routes are widely known to be nothing more than a temporary measure while we wait for an LRT line to be built.
Gatineau would have spent in the billions to do this as LRT with no plan to get the trains into downtown Ottawa. We will see how a future LRT plan deals with the downtown issue, which is still up for debate.
BRT is a tool that makes sense in particular circumstances - when busses are reasonably full but getting caught in car traffic. Not as a replacement for high-capacity rail corridors.
I'd like to hear about open BRT - where only part of a route has dedicated lanes, stations, then the busses go out to different braches as local service
the reason why they built a BRT in istanbul was that some places on course were too steep to build a railway. now they are thinking of implementing rubber tired metro for the corridor. there is also the bosphorus bridge and they might use battery charge to pass it
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.
Can you look into the GRTC of Richmond VA, US? we have a new BRT system, it is our first and it is 5 years old. They scrapped our bus system for this one. But Richmond has no trains even though we were the first metro system in the world for transit, as we are one of the oldest settlements in America. They put our BRT in the middle of the street, so the bus shoots down the center of the road like a bullet train, and the system is free for the time being
IMO, BRT can work if they run on their own private roads and are grade-separated from private vehicles and other normal traffic.
Still not as good as trams or subways because the capacity per vehicle is pretty low, but if they run at very high frequency on an elevated BRT line, it can almost be like a subway line.
OTOH, as he said in the video, if you're going to the expense to build a private elevated road, you might as well build a light rail line...
What about BRT as the main backbone of a rural public transit network, providing a link between small towns and terminating in nearby cities, thus creating transit interconnectivity between disparate cities and small towns? Within the towns an Uber-type service provided by the transit agency would do last-mile service. Especially since rural counties often have very low budgets and no transit agency whatsoever, so everything would need to be built from the ground up on the cheap.
@RMTransit: I listened to your video twice now, just to ensure I didn't miss something, and still can't distill a clear thesis from the story. It's all over the place and full of vague levels of what is enough (service/investment/ridership/ride quality, stop density) and what is not. I'm just a random youtube commenter, but I'll provide some well meant tips.
- Structure your story with a red line that connects introductions with conclusions, both in subsections and overall
- Try to use clear numbers to illustrate your points when comparing systems and show how they relate to the conclusion you make.
- For example refer to real world examples of the construction, operation and maintenance costs when you claim one system is in the long run cheaper than the other
Although I think many of the things you say are correct in isolation, I am on the whole not convinced with the overall tone that your story seems to emit that BRTs are some novelty mistake. If you think I got the tone of the story wrong, I would blame the undefined structure in the story.
Could you please do a video for Athens metro? They extended the system with 3 brand new stations this week and also has trams! and they build a new line as well!!
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.
Thanks. Sadly, this story plays out all the time. Behind every ingenious inventor lies some poor guy with little or none of the credit who got virtually none of the profits for the idea.
Yeah the lack of mention is a bit weird, even as the ITDP rankind has it with 7 silver/gold systems and Wikipedia mentions it as well (though not as the first city)
Algo bom em Curitiba? Impossível
I thought it was Runcorn, UK, in 1971?
Runcorn in 1971 had the first BRT.
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.
I appreciate this comment. I have thrown up from motion sickness on buses several times in my life, and it is a horrible experience, and even slow mixed traffic trams do not cause this issue for me. I understand decisions shouldn’t just be made for my benefit, but others have to have the same issues, so it’s something to consider.
I've experienced this as well. I find it even worse when the bus gets stuck in traffic. Before the BRT in Richmond Hill I used to try and avoid taking the VIVA/any route down a major road like Yonge or Bathurst because it was almost a guarantee to make me really ill with the constant slow movements and the stop/start rhythm, especially if it was during rush hour. I still get some motion sickness but at least traveling through Richmond Hill on the VIVA Blue is relatively smooth, just nowhere near as much as rail would be obviously
+1 on the motion sickness. Many people I know who don't get motion sickness on cars will get it on the bus. Feels like half the Toronto bus drivers take joy in seeing as many people fall over as possible. I have pretty decent balance, but even holding on with both feet planted, lowered centre of gravity, etc etc, find it difficult to hold on for dear life. I've witnessed first-hand how some drivers will repeatedly transition from slamming gas to slamming brakes - definitely an operator issue but nevertheless really puts people off from buses.
Buses are both wobbly and bouncy. And the lane changing sometimes hurts my neck. Standing up on a bus is way scarier than standing on a rail line.
@@danielbrockerttravel It's ridiculous how so many cities had rail transit streetcars and then thought buses were better, if only because of this factor. Of course a BRT isn't battling traffic and darting in and out of stops like a bus. And even the most modern buses don't seem to have as good a suspension system as the old GM New Looks did. Then the lack of decent seats (outside of London/UK) doesn't help. Plus: quiet clean electric power instead of diesel.
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.
@Zaydan Naufal Latin American countries has metro system in the big mayority of their capitals. Bogota it's a big exception.
Ya venía yo a decir lo mismo ,ahora solo esperar para dejar de ser unas de las pocas capitales sin metro
@Zaydan Naufal Big yes Zaydan. The difference is that our downtown and 1950 to 1970 expansion was based on European urbanism so that we have walkable streets and neighborhoods and not those stroad suburbia common in North America. Our great handicap, nonetheless is the lack of real massive transit ie the metro. In a nutshell, even though we are way more walkable or cyclable than LA (because of our mixed use urbanism and our City beautiful heritage) we have a hell of transit the way they do.
@Zaydan Alfariz nah LA got a metro. Ion think it’s used all that much but the subway is still there
Agree!. I think BRT is a good solution, but not the right solution for Bogotá. When Enrique Peñaloza was mayor (Fun fact: Peñaloza´s Brother ran for mayor of Toronto) he kind of brought BRT everywhere. My hometown of Bucaramanga (a 1.2 million people town) got into the BRT fever and implemented one and quite frankly, It was not that bad. I used it to go to University and it was decent , considered what we had before. Then I moved to Bogota, a metropoli with more than 8 million people and a huge BRT system and oh boy.... It simply didnt cut it. City is way to big for the system.
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.
Honestly, I think it should be the first choice. It shouldn't always be selected, but removing cars from a lane for bus ROW and removing fare payment while boarding for the existing bus system should be the first thought everytine.
I think the elitism originates from American bus services, which in mine and other americans experiences, are super dirty, unreliable, and bus stops are undedicated and sometimes without street lights making them feel unsafe. This is just an anecdote though.
Because BRT oftentimes get compromised... Some "BRT"s are just bus lines with fancy stop shelters. While I acknowledge that even BRT lite services without dedicated lines have values, which I personally had rode on, sometimes taxpayers are promised a full BRT but end up getting scammed with a BRT-lite service or even a non-BRT.
@@EgnachHelton This happens with rail service too, though. Honestly, I think the main thing is just the low quality of public transportation in North America, and the fact that buses are far and wide the most common mode used. If we hadn't ripped out street cars, they would likely be hated just/nearly as much (Streetcars are preferred, generally in Toronto. But I still think thats connected to watching TV whwre the bus is disgusting, and the fact all Street car routes are in dense enough areas to be reasonablely frequent).
Also, due to that snobbery BRT doesn’t seem to drive rapid gentrification the same way as rail, which means providing better transit to low income neighbourhoods without causing a wave of ‘renovictions’.
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.
Yes, but it’s been a serious victim of BRT creep, there is generally not very good service!
@@RMTransit In Calgary’s recent “Route Ahead” survey, it seems what people are asking for most is frequency. 🤞
"BRT-ish" sounds like "british"
As someone who occasionally rides the BRT, it's just not that good a service. The MAX Purple for example has 20 minutes usually between rides during what I'm guessing is off-peak hours. It's able to get away with this because the #1 route stops at the same stops and also has about 20 minutes between rides, it's spaced out so effectively there is a bus every ten minutes. That would be all fine and good except they are usually delayed, re-routed, and very slow. to get to downtown from the bus stop takes over 20+ minutes, assuming no delays. a comparable drive would be 11 minutes. So combine that you have to wait 10 minutes potentially for a bus unless you live close to a bus station and can plan around it, a common five minutes of delays, whether that's from switching drivers, a emergency, just being late and the trip is 31 minutes. the service isn't particularly good, nor is it frequent, and desperately needs some improvement.
@@f1naliz3d I don’t have any power with the city (other than a voter and someone with a mouth), but I’m genuinely curious what specifically you’d do to improve the MAX Purple?
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
The fact that there are benches on the inbound side of South Station is really telling for what the Silver Line should’ve been all along. RIP Phase III
They really tried to called SL4/5 BRT and charge subway fare to ride
The Silver Line is why I'm skeptical of BRT proposals: BRT has a strong tendency to not actually be BRT. The Silver Line was sold as BRT but as far as I can tell doesn't meet the standard at all.
The Silver Lie was obsolete the moment it was proposed. It should have, at the very least been light rail integrated with the Green Line. It has certainly soured me on BRT!
If you're going to take a deep dive into the MBTA Silver Line, you need to be a sardine, because that's how crowded it gets at rush hour. It's just too small for the ridership it serves, and the T loses extra money on it, because the passenger crush is such that they can't even take the fares (of course, that's also because the T has a fare collection system that is lousy for several reasons).
And while the Silver Line Washington Street portion doesn't have the circuitous route problem that the Silver Line Waterfront portion did (who thought THAT up?), it still isn't much separated from traffic (with this being a problem on an even higher percentage of its route). As for the never-built in-between segment (Phase III), that proposed routing just made NO sense (including that it would have added to the circuitous aspects of the routing), so good riddance.
And then when snow is on the ground (a common occurrence in Boston winters), the articulated rear-wheel diesel and CNG and hybrid buses can't run due to the risk of jackknifing (the dual-mode buses that they are now stupidly getting rid of in favor of hybrids at least didn't have that problem, since they had the middle axles powered as well as the rear ones). (The hybrid articulated buses that they acquired just a few years ago were advertised as being tested in Winnipeg and having some kind of anti-jackknife measure, but obviously it hasn't worked.)
And then these things use up more fuel per passenger (and have no provision for a switch to renewable energy unless they actually get battery buses working reliably) and generate more rubber tire particles than a metro or light rail would have generated.
And with the ridership on the Silver Line Washington Street, they really should have left a branch of the Orange Line metro there (even light rail seems to be bordering on too small). And the residents around Washington Street were promised "equivalent" service, with plans for a light rail line even being floated, but it was a broken promise, that was almost certainly intended to be broken from the start.
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!
I guess within 10 years we will have many of these BRT's drive autonomously. Autonomous driving, possibly with one remote operator overseeing 10 BRT's on remote screens, is quite reasonable especially when the BRT's are on fully separate lanes. Digging, building and maintaining metro-tunnels and stations is quite expensive too.
@@richardbloemenkamp8532 Setting up an autonomous BRT is going to be MUCH more difficult than an autonomous metro and require a lot more expensive technical development to meet safety standards. Computers don't do well with unpredictable environments, and roads have a lot of unpredictable drivers and pedestrians to consider. Something that's on rails is massively easier to automate, and this is already done in a lot of places. If we design systems with automation in mind, rail-based transit is going to continue to be the most cost-effective option.
Unless you're trying to get someone to give you VC money. Then you can just make bogus claims about self-driving cars from dawn till dusk until the investors give up, then run off with the cash.
That’s fair - here in my city, bus drivers are paid R$70-79 (13,26-14,96 USD) per day, depending on if they’re pulling double duty as the fare seller or not. We even still have the ticket sales person separately selling tickets while the driver solely drives! They’re being phased out now, but yeah, all busses use to have a crew complement of 2 until *very* recently, in my city, and most busses still do.
wage is weird reason... because the cost of building rail system is much more expensive then BRT.
@John Wang in my place (jakarta, which has the longest BRT system in the world), the government never build new road just to use it for BRT. they simply use the existing road and put some kind of fence to prevent regular cars to drive on it.
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.
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.
Weird - here in Porto Alegre we have the largest number of bus corridors by lenght in Brazil and have had them since the ‘70s, and they do work. They’re not “gold” BRT like Expresso Tiradentes in São Paulo which has OVER 90% SATISFACTION WITH THEIR RIDERS!! But hey, they massively speed up transit and they’re really not bad.
That's it friend. Once you look beyond the bla bla bla and the so-called experts reading from textbooks, bus corridors and BRTs are horrible for those they are supposed to help the most: commuters and urban centres. They suck, plain and simple.
Yeah, in Rio de Janeiro is the same thing. Thank god we still have a couple of old suburban rails, but we use to have trams all around the city back in the day. Now, transit expansions circle around BRT due, in my opinion, to the political power that bus private companies have here. The system is all privatised, and subway/train/bus, each one with it's own fare and turnstiles. A whole mess. And they keep building more BRTs
Trains have to stop at stops, cars have to stop at lights, buses have to stop at both
And when a bus stops at a red light, the driver's getting paid for not performing a lick of work!
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
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.
It's super useful in the beylikduzu area
A metro line would still be better
@@nicolasblume1046 You would need to have super deep stations to be able to cross the Bosphorus. Not only would it be very expensive, it would be worse from a user experience perspective, as instead of just getting on a bus, you'd have to go down 6 sets of escalators.
The best replacemement for the Istanbul Metrobus is some sort of automated surface rubber tyred vehicle IMO.
less than a minute? In what way, if u mean frequency its just a lie
@@bibendum452no one needs gadgetbahns
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.
Open vs Closed busways is definitely a topic worth discussing since there are far more benefits network-wide with the former.
Couldn't that be solved by a dedicated bus lane?
That’s an option and this could be an entire new video, but if many routes are running together especially to a rail station (like Torontos Kipling) a rail extension seems like a sensible idea!
The situation where many bus routes join onto a common corridor CAN also be solved with rail on that corridor which is served by feeder buses.
Yes, you do add one more transfer to everyone's trip, but since the agency already knows that everyone from the buses will continue via rail and that pretty much everyone arriving by rail transit will hop onto a bus, they can just sync the schedules and require the trunk vehicles to wait for the feeders and vice versa. I.e. in a well-working system these transfers might add 1 minute of wait time to each trip. - And in return you gain the higher top speed that usually comes with rail based transit.
The one advantage that BRT gives you is that it puts vehicles onto the common corridor way more frequently. If you have bus lines 61, 62, 63 and 64 each passing such a BRT station every 10 minutes, that gives you 4 times as much frequency than a single line 6 tram or metro every 10 minutes (as long as your trip or leg is entirely on that shared corridor).
Then again, there's nothing keeping the agency from putting 2 trams every 10 minutes onto that corridor and linking half of the bus lines to the "xx:x2-past" trams and the other half to the "xx:x7-past" trains.
In that case the ability to take a "xx:x2-past" tram if your connecting bus leaves after a "xx:x7-past" tram allows you to split up your waiting time. You can warm yourself up in a tram after waiting for 3-4 minutes and then wait another 5 minutes for the bus instead of waiting 8-9 minutes in one miserable block. Or you can evade a sudden downpour by quickly jumping into a tram that goes in the correct direction. Not that you couldn't do the same with a BRT bus, but it would add an extra transfer to your trip, which seems like a slightly counterproductive thing to do.
@@Pystro Yeah it also depends on how long that shared section is. If it's just 2km, a bus lane may be enough.
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.
I'd convert them to rail. A cross Pittsburgh rapid transit line from Monroeville to Pittsburgh Airport at standard guage and 25KV AC overhead wires. 80 % of the line would be above ground with underground portions in Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh airport.
the best case scenario for a BRT is when it uses old rail infrastructure or rail quality infrastructure, at which point just build rail. BRT is a scam and never worth it.
I think I generally agree, you alluded to this, but BRT can be approached from two different sides and where you approach it from will dictate whether it is a positive thing or not.
If a region approaches BRT from the "enhancing our bus service" direction, it can be a very positive (albeit problematic in the long term) strategy. Basically a region which has a lot of bus service, and especially when a lot of those buses end up concentrated in a few corridors in the more dense areas, those busy bus areas can be improved. First with improved stations, then improved features like queue jumps, and eventually full bus lanes.
Because it can be built using iterative improvements, BRT can be achieved without the need for a huge influx of cache along with long disruptive construction periods, and this can sometimes be a better trade off with better service now, for existing and latent riders, at the cost of some reduction in the long term potential of growth. But for a region which cannot get the investment needed for a huge project, or is too much underwater on existing demand to suffer the huge disruption of a major project it can be a very valuable option.
The potential advantage of BRT is that a system can provide a lot more single ride services, by having local buses transition into the BRT system. Whether this is a good thing or not depends on a lot of local contextual factors.
But if BRT is planned AS a megaproject, well...in my experience, BRT is chosen because it's a shiny thing that money can be spent on, but which the hard political issues that would apply for an LRT for example where it would have to sacrifice space for cars to fit the right of way, well...those problems can just disappear along with dedicated lanes.
100% agree, except for the long term issue comment. While I see your point, I think BRT is at least equally positive long term by providing the rapid transit needed to densify suburban communities, and create the environment needed for LRT.
They create the long term issue of not having enough capacity, but that means without them there wouldn't be the long term demand.
When you get to the maximum capacity achievable by BRT the upgrade to LRT lies only in laying tracks and building pentographs. These can be done during the night to ensure operation during the day, and after just a short time you can replace your busses with LRVs that serve exactly the same route... Modern LRVs can have basically any floor height, so if your platforms exist they can just match that exact height. If LRT is not enough capacity, then you can just build a subway and remove the BRT entirely, using the additional space for green space and/or sidewalks
@@jan-lukas Lol...just ask Ottawa how smoothly converting a BRT to an LRT goes.
What you describe is only possible if the BRT is replaced exactly one for one with an LRT, which isn't the case if the BRT is built as I describe it.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 This could be true, but it's all pretty context dependent.
In Ottawa Canada they built a BRT and later converted it to an LRT. IMO the city could have justified building an LRT in the first place. And the flexible nature of the BRT probably increased urban sprawl over building an LRT.
Conversely Waterloo ON built a BRT *light* (very *light*) system with long term plans to expand it into a continuation of their LRT system, and that's probably a good/successful project.
The most successful modern BRT systems are the ones that are built as “enhanced buses” such as the one in Richmond (consisting of painted lanes and dedicated stops which is quite cheap and fast to build). In contrast, BRT systems such as Hartford and Winnipeg, where a transitway is built, have construction costs similar to light rail
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.
There's a street in cologne that has LRT tracks and dedicated bus lanes, and the busses are just EMPTY. Nobody wants to use busses if there's light rail available, so with the next work the bus lanes will be removed to widen the sidewalks and cycle lanes (like actual cycle lanes not painted bicycle gutters)
Definitely a good midfle group within a long term transit plan.
A shared tram/bus-lane seem to be a very common thing. As trams are relativley infrequent there is enough room to put at least some bus lines inbetween them, speeding up buses without needing additional lanes.
This can work, but it gets difficult when you run a lot of vehicles
@@RMTransit Look up the city of Essen. Busses and trams used to share a few underground tunnels.
I think one of the great promises of BRT, particularly BRT-Lite, is the ability to serve a higher number of corridors than you would otherwise be able to. Because you can keep the cost of construction so low for BRT-Lites, you might be able to upgrade 6 corridors for the price of 1 true BRT, or 20 for the price of 1 LRT. If you provide great service along each corridor, all of a sudden you have a full transit network that is more useful to more people.
Now, this isn't to dismiss the need for metro/LRT along higher demand corridors, but I do think there are a lot of cities (particularly in North America) that could benefit from a full network, service centric BRT-Lite approach.
A lot of these rankings tend to be to rigid in their criteria and thinking. Like Pittsburgh's Busways get points docked for not having platform level boarding and off board fare collection and it makes them sound like bad systems but they're actually completely grade separated bus highways that don't intermingle with regular traffic at all and serve thousands of people daily living in the south, east, and west suburbs of the city. The South Busway was actually opened in 1977. First BRT in the US and only 3 years after Brazil pioneered the idea. I used to take the West Busway into downtown for work every day when I lived near a stop because it brought my total commute time down from >40 minutes to
I believe the Shirley Busway on I-395 in NoVA was the first "BRT" facility in North America, it opened in stages from 1971 to 1975.
@@13squier Here's where we run into the problem the video addresses which is, "What is an actual BRT system?". As far as I can tell, the Shirley Busway is more of a glorified HOV lane that also allows car pooling rather than an actual full, intricate BRT system with a network of stops that are all grade separated. In fact, if you look up the history of HOV lanes, it lists the Shirley highway as being the first. HOV lanes != BRT
It's great that it can get the busses down the freeway faster but what about when it's actually picking people up at stops? If all the bus stops are just intermixed with traffic until the busses hit the freeway, I don't really think you can fairly call that a true BRT.
Almost all of those "best city in X" rankings are completely made up, have inconsistent (when not blatantly biased) criteria, nothing that would qualify as scientifically solid and are made just for publicity (both of the cities and of the organization who made it). You wouldn't do bad in preemptively ignoring them.
Mind you, I am from Brazil. The city who "pioneered" it (because they are essentially bus dedicated lanes with some cosmetic improvements, hardly anything ground breaking), Curitiba, has 2 million people. Cities of that size in Europe will instead have a quite large metro, plus trams AND bus corridors. Instead Curitiba relies in those buses to be the backbone of their transport system. The result is exactly what one would expect. Congestion, slow speed, massive queues to even enter the bus stops.
@@fresagrus4490 I can't speak for Curitiba as I don't know they're situation. I advocate for BRT based on how it is in many North American cities such as my own (Pittsburgh). Obviously rail would be the ideal solution in most cases, but most North American cities aren't in ideal situations. They're crippled with years worth of car dependent infrastructure that they have to keep maintaining as well as years of disinvestment and people fleeing for the suburbs leaving dwindling tax bases. For many cities, it's not a choice between BRT or LRT. It's a choice between BRT or nothing. I'll take the transit right of way being created and dedicated now and the incremental progress towards a more rail and transit oriented future vs just throwing our hands up and saying, "We can't implement the best solution (rail) so we're just going to keep doing cars".
11:06 BRT system wasn't created in Colombia, but in Curitiba, Brazil. Jaime Lerner, mayor of the city in 1974, is the urbanist who developed the idea.
I came here to say this 👍
The first one was actually built in a town called Runcorn in England in 1971, the Curitiba BRT was the second one.
@@acaciafruit347 you learn something new everyday!
The current form of Curitiba’s BRT only appeared in 1991 when they started using biarticulated buses and the iconic tube stations with off board fare payment i think
@@anindrapratama Yes, but by the 70s Curitiba already had the trinary system with the exclusive busways, the offboard fare payment in closed stations, as well as the feeder bus network that supports the main line.
It's honestly surprising that Curitiba does not get talked about that much, when it was where these elements were first implemented, and where the full BRT system as we know it was consolidated.
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!
I also like BRT light. Here in Berlin we have metro busses that are serving the spaces between the train lines. They also come by more frequently and have a higher capacity than normal busses.
MetroBus lines don‘t use dedicated vehicles and therefore also don‘t offer more capacity than a regular bus line running at the same frequency. They also serve every stop along their route, unlike express buses, with those stops being just regular bus stops. They are far from BRT.
BRT light seems more reasonable than full BRT, in my opinion. Like a best bang for a buck. If you have a fully separated system, then why not make a tram?
@@suigintouivanhoe1167 exactly
MetroBus isnt a BRT light, its just a more frequent bus service
@@bahnspotterEUans tzey arent even supposed to be BRT, people just have no idea what BRT actually is (which is a scam)
Istanbuls BRT has been a huge success but it was born out of necessity, as the city was growing so rapidly and no funds nor loans were available for additional metro projects.
There has been extensive talk about how to convert it to a rail system, the new administration has a project called Hizray, which means fast rail, to take of pressure of the BRT system, it’s an express metro system, which gets the number M34, same as the BRT system, they are the busses with numbers 34a, 34b, 34c etc. the number 34 being the identification number on vehicle registrations for the province of Istanbul, now the BRT system will still be in place when the metro will hopefully be opened but, passenger numbers are expected to drop according to the sustainable public transport master plan of the municipality of Istanbul.
All in all using the Istanbul BRT was always a horrible experience, too crowded too noisy and a sometimes a bumpy ride, still better than not getting around but still a poor experience, for someone who’s used to London’s extensive Underground system.
The city of İzmit has a really nice tram system, tho not comparable to Istanbul as the city is way smaller, I think the main choice cities have a make is whether they give priority to private cars or pedestrians and trams.
I like trams because they’re easy and fast to board you don’t have to walk through tunnels for ages.
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
Do you sometimes climb on top of it and ride it from there?
BRT does work in a lot of places
Cleveland has the opposite approach to stroads. The heart of downtown with smaller streets has dedicated BRT lanes in the center of the road along with the station while further away from the city center, where the street turns to stroads, the dedicated lane disappeared and stations and stops are at the side of the road. The bike lane also disappears as the road gets narrower towards downtown and the bus lane also becomes a bike lane there according to the Transit Authority's policy (which some cops will still yell at you for despite being allowed).
There's a BRT proposed on Colfax Avenue, the busiest bus line in Denver, it is proposed to have dedicated lanes, and hopefully, it will still be frequent.
6:23 BRT Lite 7:01 transitway: Ottawa, Toronto, Brisbane. 7:31 other variations 7:56 True BRT. 8:53 BRT cr ee p. 14:37 elevated metro.
"In developing countries, and the United States" ☠️ spot on though, especially transit wise
11:55
Speaking for Istanbul, we are.
Problem is, as you have also made a video about that, we are also building many other metro lines, which serve places that didn’t have ANY rapid transit before. So they are of course a priority. Given that, and that a metro to replace the metrobüs has to be 50km of two-way tracks, with a crossing of the Bosporus (depth over 100 meters!) it is understandable why that project is slow.
BRT feels like it has the potential to be the perfect "gateway drug" to get cities and their metro areas transitioned over from a car mindset to a transit mindset, if they're designed from the onset with the plan being from the onset to eventually upgrade to other modes
also my god does the GTA ever need better student pricing for the go trains, spending three hours on the viva blue line every day to get to and from college was exhausting
I highly agree with this sentiment, as seen from Jakarta. BRT was their first ACTUAL integrated, rapid, and timetabled system that made the people think "hey we should do this to all of our transit" so they went ahead on their commuter train modernization couple years later followed by an MRT and LRT line now
I completely agree. 6 lane Stroad= 4 lane stroad and BRT. Local buses that come through my neighborhood regularly, and then operate on an expressway to major locations. At the same time, upzone along those routes to create an urban "mesh" with a dense user and destination base.
But as mentioned in the video, actually converting and making that transition isn’t really something we’ve seen yet! I’d love to see it but until then I think skepticism is healthy!
"BRT feels like it has the potential to be the perfect "gateway drug" to get cities and their metro areas transitioned over from a car mindset to a transit mindset, if they're designed from the onset with the plan being from the onset to eventually upgrade to other modes"
If only... most often it is chosen as a politically convenient solution because it will not make car users cringe as much as LRT or metro systems. If anything BRT is mostly picked by politicians who fear backlash from car users.
@@RMTransit if you come to Jakarta you will understand that your idea of "converting BRT to train" is not the way to go. Bus and train are meant to coexist together.
Thinking that Train are always superior in everything to BRT is just wrong.
Here in Pittsburgh, they're building a "BRT" that seems to be just like regular bus service (stops too close together) but with dedicated lanes and nicer stops.
We already have a few dedicated "busways", though, so I doubt it will even be the fastest bus service in the city when completed.
I don’t think a busway approach is bad in a small city, Pittsburgh doesn’t seem to have a huge likelihood of building full rail rapid transit as an alt
Pittsburgh also has a transitway(s). The East, West and South Busway with the South Busway entering Mt. Washington with 3 shared light rail lines.
I used the EBA almost every day when I lived there.
Transit planners in the 60s: "Rip out the street cars, buses are the future"
Transit planners in the 2010s: "Rip out the metros, Buses are the future of rapid transit"
Thank goodness for progress /s
I know this is a joke, but I can’t think of one instance where a city “downgraded” its metro or LRT for BRT 🤔🤔
@@Conellossus Didn't Boston just do something like this? But ya Idk about ripping them out, I more meant that BRT was being considered for new projects that "traditionally" would have been metro.
@@Conellossus Bogotá, instead of keeping the funding for its metro system, decided to build a BRT instead because it was "cheaper", it's funny because, in the long run, it has been even more costly to maintain the BRT rather than the metro in the first place
There is a sliver of interesting conversation to be had around this!
The worst thing is that it isn't the BRT's fault, the Bogotá BRT is a great system, it's very efficient actually, the thing is, it was seen as a replacement for the Metro, and 20 years later, we can see that it just doesn't have the capacity to hold out Bogotás population, the problem is so bad, that the ride isn't even uncomfortable because of the bus, but because of the number of people riding it
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.
6 to 12 minutes sounds like regular frequency tbh
A small city doing BRT fairly well is Madison Wi. We are also doing a bus network redesign to extend 15 minute service to a lot of high density areas of the city. Definitely check it out!
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).
My city built four BRT lines and they are great. Cheap for everyone, fast (very fast compared to common traffic) with dedicated lanes, bypass lanes, elevated stations, and biarticulated buses. Literally changed my life.
what is your city?
@@ellihowa2365
Ciudad Juárez
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!
The Onion presented high speed bus transports many years ago. Like high speed trains but on the road. Their graphics made it look extremely rapid.
I live around Jakarta and use the train and BRT busses on daily basis. There are SO MANY THINGS you misunderstood about BRT. you always think BRT can always be replaced by Metro then BRT is just some sort of peasant/inferior form of public transport.
While building Metro is indeed way more expensive than BRT around 10-20x more per km, it also requires HUGE land clearance hence you need to compensate and faces disputes from local people, while BRT is just about "stealing" one car lane.
BRT has the ability to adjust frequency and capacity to serve the number of passengers in demand it is also flexible to adjust routes in case some incidents happening,
it reaches to remote destinations (closer to your house) that Train cannot reach do to it's huge footprint,
the ability to switch multiple lines in one journey while Train requires lot of transits,
The MRO and spare parts for trains are more expensive and specific to manufacturer design
BRT has lots of advantages that Train don't have. in Jakarta, Metro Trains and BRT DO NOT COMPETE with each other but a perfectly complementing each other to widen the Public Transit network coverage. BRT will eventually serve as an important part for Metro as first and last mile ride.
JAKARTA built 12 corridors of BRT in less than 10 years while 1 line of Jakarta MRT requires the same amount of time for construction.
Jakarta MRT just reached 100K daily ridership 10y after construction started, while BRT reaches 1 million ridership 16y after construction started
Taking huge loan for construction will put your country in huge debt and protesting march will guarantee happening
I am glad you mentioned Guangzhou's BRT. As one of the larger (and earlier) adopters of such systems in mainland China, it also attracted a considerable amount of criticism despite the high quality infrastructure (fare gates, screendoors and level boarding for all corridor sections). BRT creep (like the picture you showed in video) was a real complaint, the fact that it takes up 4 lanes (though necessary), and the fact that with ridership in the millions a subway should've been built from the get-go (but won't because a BRT was already there). If memory serves, Guangzhou isn't building a new BRT corridor after the first one.
Interesting information and presentation. Thanks. For the work. People argue that public transit is under utilized. But so are roads but roads never get critized for under capacity.
San Francisco has a "BRT" now that I assume was intended to stop people requesting more BRT service. It is a somewhat faster way to get standard motor coaches down a busy street, but if there are people in wheel chairs or people with bikes it bogs down. It was supposed to serve 2 city bus lines plus buses from the county to the north, but one of the 2 city buses has yet to return from the COVID shutdown. What was really needed in this corridor was something more like Seattle's transit tunnel.
The Metropolitano in Lima Perú, another BRT system, was a major upgrade from the informal local bus systems that the city has. The problem is that it started operating at max capacity almost immediatly. Even during the pandemic and lockdown of 2020 there were huge boarding lines that went from the platforms themselves, up the stairs,through the rest of the station, past the turnstiles and entry, and finally onto the street. Also, the companies that run the buses are constantly asking for fare increases or subsidy increases.
Mexico City have a lot of BRT lines that were planned as metro, e.g. the path of the first BRT line was originally thought as a metro line (the 10nth never build), because is setted in the longest avenue of the country place of many workplaces (offices, universities, malls, etc.), almost since it's aperture runs overcrowded. Now the government has the idea of make an elevated BRT trolleybuses system in a place where also the studies have shown that the best solution is a new metro line. It's an absurd. Meanwhile, they are killing the metro, almost everyday we see images from multiple lines failing (trains catching fire or even buildings, collapsing viaducts, crashes, or a plethora of daily fails). The BRT comes to the city to kill the metro.
Metrobus is just a mediocre alternative to the Metro that they have promised us since the Plán Maestro de 1985. Actual heads of federal and CDMX governments ditched updates to that plan,the one of 1996, and the other the one of 2018.
I'm not a huge fan of the giant stations we see with new rail lines, but with buses I do like the proper stations you see in Ottawa and Mississauga. Particularly in Canada, since the surface levels routes can be very cold in the winter.
I don’t disagree but you’re spending a lot for not a lot of use!
@@RMTransit Idk Ottawa transitway stations were generally pretty well used.
I feel like a fully enclosed shelter with a heater isn't excessive.
Thanks for the great video and the balanced commentary.
@@RMTransit The Ottawa transitway was HEAVILY used prior to the LRT. Especially the east/west transitway that the LRT replaced. The problem is that it became so successful that it ran into capacity issues.
@@RMTransit and Ottawa’s Transitway suffered heavily from “BRT Creep”, as you call it. They cut that (originally very comprehensive) system to the bone. Gigantic empty (largely open to the elements) stations with no services, no washrooms, and no heat. Lovely in February.
Could you talk about the "Trolebus Elevado" of Mexico City? A new elevated BRT system built to replace what would be an extension of an existing subway line and a proposed Light Rail line
In São Paulo, Brazil there are Expresso Tiradentes it is look like Trolebus Elevado in Mexico City. It were built 25 years ago.
@@marcoshenriquesaat3121 Funny how our mayor swears it's the first one of it's class in the world 💀💀 and like nobody asked for that they all wanted metro or at least metrobus but it's already done
Operators have an incredibly hard job and need a massive raise.👍
Excellent video! The biggest issue I have with "BRT" is the fact that having frequent busses that don't get stuck in congestion doesn't need a fancy name, its the standard in well run public transport services. Far too often the only time BRT is mentioned is in discussions arround trams or metros as an "alternative" which completely misses the point that differing transport modes compliment each other, they're not in competition. The larger (gold tier) systems with large amounts of infrastructure just seem like a missed opportunity to go the last mile and build a tram / metro and don't make good use of the flexibility that busses are useful for
I'm from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and we have seen exactly what you described Our government doesn't want to spend the money on extending the metro lines or building the new ones that were already planned, but instead they put the normal buses on sections of special lanes for them, making it a sort of BRT light. It didn't alleviate the congestion in most places, the buses are not articulated, and in some places you have HUNDREDS of buses passing by every few minutes, making the waiting A VERY AWFUL EXPERIENCE. It's so loud I can't even explain it, I HATE IT. Also, in our case, we don't have specific stations, so we wait in somewhat regular bus stops, only with a platform, so it's hot in summer, cold in winter, and wet when it rains. It's also more easy to get mugged since you're still on the street technically. So yeah, the only pro is that in the dedicated lanes you save time if you compare yourself to the cars, but it will never rival a metro
Haha, my own route on the thumbnail to get to work & school. Ottawa’s 99 is the perfect example of how not to do BRT: it is called a rapid route and yet it runs on low frequency (every 30min) and it’s unreliable at best. I can’t remember the last time the 99 was on time, busses are commonly cancelled and it simply isn’t mentioned 🙃 I’ve had to find alternate ways of getting to school because of it
don't forget the always crowded and late 88 from Bells Corners and the 111. I was hoping for a better LRT system than what we have
Portland just opened BRT Light on Division from Portland to Gresham. It's a good addition to an already good light rail and streetcar system. Tacoma is building two BRT Light lines, which I think is just going cheap, but it's better than what they have now, which is nothing but a short downtown streetcar to nowhere.
BRT is very rare in Germany. The only contenders I know are the Oberhausen transitway, which serves express buses and trams, and maybe the Essen guided busway, if that counts. Most of the time, the role of BRT is filled by trams or LRT lines here, and I‘m surprised that something like Oberhausen‘s transitway even exists. It‘s certainly an unusual experience for someone who‘s never ridden any BRT before.
France has got rid of most of its trams and rebuilding them more recently in the last decades. And many BRT-like projects (so long buses on dedicated lanes) have been built and are planned.
@Zaydan Naufal Straßenbahn, Stadtbahn, U-Bahn, S-Bahn, Schwebebahn, Regionalbahn
@Zaydan Naufal Busbahn, so... BRT ftw? :D
@Zaydan Naufal Mainly it rebuilt its tram and interurban systems after WWII, whereas many other countries in Europe didn't.
The interesting thing about it is that you can use the same ticket on those systems on the Hauptstrecke Rhein Ruhr S-Bahn lines S1 Duisburg Dortmund via Essen S3 Oberhausen to Hattingen Mitte service splits from the S1 at Essen Steele Ost
I teach urban planning and for me Curitiba is one of the best examples of how to implement an integral plan, specially taking into account the ups and downs of latin american politics. Everything in urban and regional planning is interconnected. You can´t just work on solving a transportation issue without addressing other problems. When he became mayor of Curitiba he took a holistic approach to urban planning which completely changed the city for the better (it´s always at the top of livable cities not only in Brazil but in Latin America) He was years ahead in sustainable principles implementing social, economic and environmental programs. For example, he not only was a pioneer with the BRT system, he convinced Volvo to open a factory in Curitiba in exchange for the high number of articulated busses that the city was going to buy.
As a Brazilian, it's funny hearing about BRTs using São Paulo as an example instead of Curitiba (arguably the first BRT system in the world).
One bad example of BRT usage is in Rio de Janeiro. The local politicians decided to build a BRT system from stratch over building subway lines in preparation for the Olympics, even going as far as converting old (and much needed) subway projects to BRT corridors (Metro Line 6, connecting the International Airport and the Federal University to the new downtown of Barra da Tijuca, while passing through major comercial centers and transversally connecting all the suburbian train system lines with Metro Line 2, was demoted to the Transcarioca corridor).
The system was overcrowded from the start, and after the 2016 Olympics it was basically abandoned to its own luck. The situation became so dire that, in 2021, the City decided to take over the BRT Consortium and inject loads of money to try to save the network.
I could go all way talking (and ranting :V) about Rio's transport network. I live in São Paulo now, and even though this city has its own share of problems and abandoned projects, it's still miles ahead of Rio or any other Brazilian city when it comes to mass transit.
I will probably make a dedicated video for Rio
I remember when it launched in my neighbour, the Transolimpica was very good, I could get to the Metro in one hour. But as of today, I tend to go to regular buses to do the same route, because the arrival times are beyond ridiculous (it can get up to 40min in the middle of the afternoon, and in rush hours isnt that better, going for more than 20minutes). And its so crowded, that if im not in a hurry, I just go and take the traffic jams, because BRTs are overcrowded and has terrible air systems.
I live in Taguig City, Philippines. Yes, we have also the only BRT that is a feeder from our MRT-3 of Epifanio Delos santos Avenue, but the BRT is longer than four stations of LRT-1 and all stations of MRT-3 combined. Though, we just call it as busway as we do not have even single journey tickets to that busway, unlike the MRT an LRT lines. Recently, our transportation department put signalling on 13 out of 19 stations of our "busway". Plus, the free rid can last until 31 December this year. This is not only the first time that the busway had offered free rides, but for the third time.
Our "busway" just started on 5 September 2020, and I am not certain that the busway can fail as the other countries or not. But one thing for sure that the busway is more expensive than riding the MRT and LRT along EDSA.
My favourite form of BRT is of the sort that gets built without the BRT label or any fanfare, because it is a routine city bus improvement, not a big project. The best city buses I've ever taken have all been in countries that do not have the term ‘BRT’ in their local languages, because they simply don't need it
someone (NotJustBikes i think) recently made a great point along the lines of “city planners usually know all this stuff already, but it’s the politicians who actually make the decisions”. as a part of that, many (uninformed) citizens and politicians will opt for the cheapest option because the alternative can seem ‘unnecessary’ or ‘mismanagement of public funding’ and so on; which can make the governing local politicians less popular. in addition; there often isn’t that much money to go around - as we know, the USA especially is full of cities that are going bankrupt due to the financial pressure of unsustainable suburban sprawl. i suspect there is a significant amount of preference for BRT in these circumstances simply due to the lack of upfront capital.
as an anecdote: i’m led to understand that a few years ago, Brisbane chose to move forward with upgrades to the existing bus network (called Brisbane Metro - don’t be fooled by the name; it’s just battery-electric articulated buses running mostly on the existing busway corridors with some stop changes and upgrades) instead of a proposed light rail or tram system that would have been about 40% more expensive, simply because they were already struggling to secure funding. even then, the plan may have been cut back from its proposed form. based on the number of new vehicles they are getting as part of this; some analysts think it’s unlikely to have significant improvement for Brisbane commuters, and may even *add* vehicle changeovers on existing commute journeys where there was none before. to be fair, the project is also designed to reduce congestion from buses at BRT hubs in the inner city, since the platforms are at capacity at peak, but light rail would have reduced the same congestion in the same manner, with its own benefits.
Here in the UK, my Geography class had the Bogota BRT as a case study. My teacher made Bogota sound like the perfect city!
I had a similar case study in mine nearly 10 years ago, but ours was Curitiba instead of Bogata
It's interesting that the BRT darling is now building an automated elevated light metro.
@@Croz89 True, and it’s not just light metro, it’s a full scale metro (pretty sure the Chinese would call the trains that Bogotá is using “6B” or something like that)
@@alexjenkins1079 yes it is a full automated heavy metro, we have 10 almost 11 million in our urban core and maybe 13 million or more in the metro area
As a resident of Bogota, this statement gave me a giggle
As someone who has followed Latin America's politics, and in particular public transit, for decades, it is easy to forget that even building a BRT in the first place was highly controversial. In Bogota, for example, buses and bus lines are independently owned, and would often compete against each other, and also cars, while spouting pollution. BRT was brought in to deal with real pollution, congestion, and safety issues and were not expected to be so popular so fast. In Latin America's past, before BRTs became a thing, most governments pushed for all the typical problems you see in car dependent countries, from car parking minimums to car ownership as a status symbol.
One of the first things you saw in Bogota after BRTs were brought in, was a huge cultural shift. People were leaving cars at home. Rich and poor began to take transit together, pollution and congestion went down, crime went down. High riderships were achieved in months what were originally thought to occur in decades. Many other BRT systems in Latin America, from Mexico to Argentina received a lot of pushback as lanes were taken away from already gridlocked cars, but now their successes have shifted the views of so many people. Building a metro and streetcars are now being pushed by people, as well as walkable neighborhoods. Bike storage buildings accommodating them are becoming so full, new bike storage buildings near the stations are being built every year. This awareness started, in small ways, in the early 90s but really really exploded because of BRTs. So you should take this into account when talking about BRTs. In Latin America, more and more money is spent on public transportation and trains are coming back (as long as they are democratically run and not have revenues siphoned off by various corrupt governments.
I do agree that in Europe and North America they are not always built or designed well, but that goes for trains as well. They are still too car focused. And I do agree that in many cases a metro or street car line would be better, but it is the popularity and change in perspective of BRTs that have largely started the Metro Line to be built in Bogota. And despite what you might think, getting funding is hard, especially when so much corruption is present, it is hard to get the money to actually be spent properly instead of being put in pockets. Argentina, for example spends a lot of money, much more than it should, for every train car or "improvement" but most of these have been mostly ego boosting political endeavors and do very little to address real issues while costing massive amounts of tax dollars while these same politicians enrich themselves on these "public works" projects. Which is yet another thing good about BRTs, they got people demanding more and more (as the demand outstrips the BRT capacity) and they get more involved in the economics of it all, asking for more BRTs, street cars and metros while demanding more transparency, especially as the wealthier and more educated citizens begin to take BRTs themselves.
I'd love to see you analyze the Hamilton old BLAST proposal (especially in light of population forecasts) and what modes of transit could best suit it's various lines.
This would be great
Perhaps!
We have BRT lite in Bristol. There are some genuine infrastructure improvements like new roads, concrete bus stops, information points, faster boarding and alighting, priority traffic signals. I believe it's well used but it's been criticised for being a compromise, with plans for a tram network scrapped decades prior. It's become a bit of a motto that any planned public transport improvement will just end up being another bus.
I would love to hear your "moonshot" ideas for transit development, say in an ideal environment.
I'm partial to the idea of testing on small scale, long-term planning, and incremental construction vs. ultra-large "overhaul" projects. For example (similar to this video), significantly increase busses along a corridor (no other changes). Eventually build better shelters along the route. Then construct dedicated lanes. Then begin laying track for tram in a way that DOESN'T disrupt traffic flow (eg. prefab track installation per night when traffic is not flowing).
This type of idea amortizes the costs, and are perhaps less jarring, it is less disruptive, and instantly beneficial. It also justifies shrinking of lanes as the busses are likely to offset traffic in the corridor.
If I were being honest, I would start this on the 401, between the city proper and outlying suburbs. I bet that ridership would be high as sitting in traffic on the 401 each day, in a coffin on wheels, is torture.
I'm not even that worried about disrupting traffic flow. Sure, it should be avoided as much as possible, but if disrupting traffic temporarily is necessary to build proper infrastructure improvements, that's just life.
Edit: but if it's feasible to do this stuff at the same time as other maintenance or road repaving, that's obviously a nice bit of synergy.
The problem with a piecemeal "testing" approach to building out rail is that you almost certainly aren't going to see stellar results right out of the gate, since you won't have network effects in play. This will allow people who don't care about public transit to claim that it "isn't working" and scrap the project before there's any chance to build out a rail network.
@@alex2143 I'm with you on my personal preferences in this regard. My thoughts with minimzation of disruption, is that people are unlikely to complain (or even notice) that things are improving. The costs and disruption remain low through the life of the upgrade.
@@alex2143 You get a lot more push back though from car drivers, and since they unfortunately are allowed to vote this matter.
@@sinisterdesign Sure. Regardless of the implementation their will be challenges. I'm guessing that if costs and disruption are low, pushback will be minimized.
I lived in Jinan, China for 5 years (2010-2015). They got a subway system opened less than 2 years ago. They had 5 lines of BRT and I lived less than 500m from a stop. Truthfully, it rarely went where I wanted to go, so I didn't use the service often. It also didn't go to many places that were in most need of the service. That meant using taxis or regularly city buses. I haven't been back since 2017, so I don't know if it is being used the same way. Stations there were in the middle of the streets and BRT did have low-slung flat floors and were articulated. The price for any ride was 2 yuan (about $0.30 CAD). Using the transit card was the preferred form of payment for all public transit.
I'm currently in Shenzhen, China and have been here since 2015 and use the metro here, including the system that crosses over to Hong Kong (pre-pandemic).
Another excellent video Reese. I used to live in Ottawa and the Transitway with one huge exception worked extremely well. (The exception: Downtown, hence LRT replacement.) But as you argue here getting a BRT in a large city doesn't make sense. I recently watched a video arguing that Atlanta shouldn't build a LRT in an old railway right of way. The arguments weren't very persuasive compared to yours here.
I think Ottawa actually might’ve been able to get away with it if it thought long and hard about how to better optimize the net work
Honorable mention should be made to the O-Bahn in Adelaide, South Australia.
Brisbane Metro was supposed to be a proper metro system (with automated trains) until they decided to save money and just upgrade their BRT system with longer busses
And it's probably gonna suck again, though the decision makers will always be able to say "it's better than the terrible bus network we had before, therefore the expense is justified!"
seattle is building a BRT that is now costing equal or more than our light rail lines, and it's been BRT-creeped so much to the point where it's mostly just an upgrade for cars using the express toll lanes (which you don't even have to pay the toll if you have at least one passenger)
If they are willing to shill out money on a separate roadway, why not electrify it and run BRT with trolleybuses?
why not add rails to make those busses more efficient?
takes a bit more money and commitment (and possibly a bit trickier on weak bridges), but we’ll get there
I Live In Jakarta I use BRT (Transjakarta) + Commuter Train (KRL Commuter Line) a lot is because is really cheap and sometimes than driving unfortunately some people who use Motorcycle and Car Oftentimes use the line to break through traffic jams making BRT In Jakarta not always ontime
I guess we can say that there’s no silver bullet when it comes to good transit. Each city will do what it needs and work with what it has; be that metro, light rail, trams, OR brt.
I really like some of the hybrid elements of BRT. You can make a true grade separated BRT line through busy downtown, but then use the same busses as branching local busses out in residential neighborhoods
That's the most sane solution. Darmstadt, though not a city with a BRT, puts buses and trams on exclusive lanes on major arteries (i.e. Rheinstraße, Neckarstraße and Bismarckstraße) which goes into the direction of your idea.
Mexico's city BRT is quite good. I use it everyday. It's slower than the subway but still often preferable
Chicago has one BRT line called the Loop Link that only serves the Chicago Loop area. It’s actually pretty useless and no one in Chicago likes it or uses it. It only connects one train station with the Chicago Loop and that’s pretty much it. It was actually supposed to be a streetcar system consisting of three lines but CTA and the Chicago government got all caught up in bureaucracy and it ended up being demoted to a BRT and it even fails at being an efficient one
I'm not against the idea of just building a metro instead, but there are corridors where BRT makes perfect sense. Montreal is currently turning an 4 lane (both ways) stroad instead a two lane (both ways) street with a BRT down the middle, for instance. Sure, you could build light rail there instead, and I'd like that better, but it's still going to be a huge improvement over the current buses that get stuck in traffic.
But this project required so much construction and rebuilding when painted lanes would’ve probably sufficed
@@RMTransit I don't entirely agree, for instance one thing you often mention is the visibility of transit being important, and a simple painted bus lane with faster service... That's just an express lane, it's not exactly exciting or even visible.
There's also the issue that painted lanes aren't as enforced as something that's separated by the curb, so I wouldn't be surprised if cars occasionally slowed service by dipping into the bus lane illegally, something that'll be much less frequent if they have to go into a separated section of the road.
Given the downsides, I don't see why you'd prefer BRT over a Tram. You can build trams in the same places as BRTs and they can share the road with cars in lesser-congested streets if need be, but the capacity is much higher and noise and emissions are lower. The Hague is a good example of this.
Saw a video yesterday about the Boston silver line and how they wanted to have let but couldn't get the federal funds for it at the time and ended up with brt lite, although the lack of bus lanes in some spots ends up causing very significant delays.
I think BRT is a good supplement to include in a city that already has mass rail transit. The metro being 🚇 the prime use of transit and BRT to cover areas where there’s more room and farther out.
Yes, it's thought Istanbul to convert its brt line to an lrt line. Probably it will never be a fully featured metro line because it will be too heavy for Bosporus bridge to carry.
And there are now also a lot of metro lines!
@@RMTransit yes, there are, and there will be more! Istanbul has a long term transit plan. The goal is reaching the 1100 km long railway transit in next 2 decades. The reason Istanbul is building lots of metro lines so quickly is the municipality of Istanbul and the government's ministry of transport have a huge competition at this topic. (they are from different political parties). Competition is always benefits the public I think.
You should look at Auckland’s rapid busway the northern express
France has a problem with BRTs, the city council might not want to invest in trams and trains and sees BRTs as a cheaper solution you can just call a "tram-bus". Aix-en-Provence tram A line is a good example with battery powered buses, and another example in Nîmes with the tram line being a diesel bus at least it's high floor but still suck a bit when a train had been proposed
BRT can be a nice "first stage" for a new transit line. The Jokeri tram line in Helsinki would never have happened without the BRT-type service that was created there first. The bus passenger numbers was steadily growing for a few years until there was an induced demand that validated a tram line.
That’s true but in this case, I would call it BRT lite!
@@RMTransit yeah, I hesitated to call it actual BRT, and went with "BRT-type service". There are a few stretches that are exclusive for this particular bus line (oulunkylä to viikki for example) but most of it is shared with other traffic or buses 🤔 and of course it has regular bus stops, and none of the massive constructions mentioned in this video.
Look at the O-Bahn in Adelaide, BRT that seems to work.
The O Bahn is actually something I’m almost more skeptical of - but it is a good conversation topic!
Fun fact, there is plan to build one BRT line in Prague. It would connect several villages south from city to Háje metro station. Reason why BRT is considered is that there are no tram lines anywhere near Háje and while there is intention to change that they are still far from being builded.
To me BRTs are awesome if they are used as feeders to a Metro System. But in Latinamerica they have been sold as the panacea and stops the development of metro (like what happened in Bogotá). Here in Santo Domingo BRT is being developed (although we still don´t have any real BRT yet) as a complement of the metro, not as the protagonist.
BRTs work the best in lower density areas with more space as “feeder”
There is a short BRT in the suburbs of my city
Also work better in warmer climates where you don’t have to worry about plowing snow and fixing potholes
@@otterofglory8140 oh we do have to worry about potholes, we get massive amounts of rain during hurricane season and maintenance isn't really the strength of the government. I think it has to do less with climate and more to do with density and budget, a tram would be way better but some countries can't afford that
@@josecarvajal6654 oh yeah that too
I’m used to being in the Northeast US where ice creates the potholes
Still, a reason I like trains better than BRT is that steel tracks done get potholes
Curitiba, in the south of Brazil, where almost 4 million inhabitants live in the metropolitan region, invented the BRT, the first Articulated and Bi-articulated in the three Americas.
Would you consider doing an Explained video of Kuala Lumpur's Metro (Rapid KL)? It includes, among other things, a fully elevated BRT line, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on it. Thank you!
Yes, but I need to find some footage etc first! I want to do it!
There is an excellent example of BRT Lite in China. Bus route 77 in Changchun, Jilin Province, was opened in 2022 with dedicated lanes but without off-board payment. It received negative reviews at the beginning because of the dedicated lane but gradually attracted passengers and received a passenger flow record of 35,038 on May 24, 2024. But the construction cost of it is very low, for this 27km bus route, it only costs 5.5 million RMB(around 800,000 USD)
I see BRT as a thing that contains characteristics from both bus and metros - high operating cost and high fixed cost......at the same time.
Yes that’s accurate I think
In Perth it was this higher operating cost that convinced bureaucrats to choose a rail line over BRT (for the line that now runs to Butler).
Curitibanos watching São Paulo footage as an example 👀
I loved this video. BRT light is (maybe) my overall favorite form of Transit due to its versatility. Investing in GoLd BRT is just dumb, if you're going to build a transit way, build tracks.
PS. Sorry for spamming the comments, I don't usually I swear.
A lot of the highways connecting Montreal's exoburbs have widened shoulders that during rushour are BRT lines that buses can use but only if there's congestion
Hey nice video, i think you should look at Jakarta takes on BRT and integration with metros and regioal feeder such as small bus and suv based transit. Thanks
Here in Montreal we have a new BRT on the centre section of Pie IX Blvd. It can't be a subway because there are 3 directions past the last Montreal stop. People staying on the BRT will go straight to Laval incentive parking, others will go northeast in Montreal and a final bunch will go northeast in Laval using a Laval-people-only bus line. Half the people go to Laval and half to go the East of Montreal North. It will have dedicated trafic lights for buses and passengers and cuts the travel time. So that's 3 final destinations out of the same BRT. Buses will stop beyond intersections not before them so it's technically impossible for a bus to hit a passenger. The project will be complete next year with the connection by pedestrian tunnel already built to a future blue line extension at Pie-IX/Jean-Talon.
Hey Reece, have you mentioned your thoughts on the BRT that TransLink is going to be implementing? I think they are going to be converting some of the RapidBus routes into more fleshed out BRT. It did seem like a good move to me to increase capacity/frequency on these corridors before necessarily committing to something like light rail or SkyTrain.
We have maybe a half dozen BRT routes here in Calgary. The main two routes are widely known to be nothing more than a temporary measure while we wait for an LRT line to be built.
BRT isn’t always budget friendly, Gatineau spent nearly $200mill on adding BRT lanes right next to train tracks
If they had bus like vehicles with steel wheels that could run on the existing tracks, they could save themselves a lot of money.
@@alex2143 if only such a thing existed
I still can’t believe they did that tbh. They even MOVED the rail tracks a few meters in some place.
Absolutely even in capital costs!
Gatineau would have spent in the billions to do this as LRT with no plan to get the trains into downtown Ottawa. We will see how a future LRT plan deals with the downtown issue, which is still up for debate.
BRT is a tool that makes sense in particular circumstances - when busses are reasonably full but getting caught in car traffic. Not as a replacement for high-capacity rail corridors.
I'd like to hear about open BRT - where only part of a route has dedicated lanes, stations, then the busses go out to different braches as local service
commenting to promote your channel
the reason why they built a BRT in istanbul was that some places on course were too steep to build a railway. now they are thinking of implementing rubber tired metro for the corridor. there is also the bosphorus bridge and they might use battery charge to pass it