Bus rapid transit - a review

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) has been demonstrated to provide efficient and effective public transport that can even increase transit ridership and attractiveness within defined urban corridors in both developing and developed countries. The merit of the BRT system lies in its ability to provide a high quality public transit service with limited infrastructure and at a relatively low capital and operating cost. In this paper an attempt is made to review BRT characteristics in some detail. An overview of the elements of BRT systems: the running ways, vehicles, stations, as well as operational control, fare collection and passenger information systems is presented. This paper also discusses how these elements allows BRT services to achieve the speed, capacity, reliability, accessibility and operational safety characteristics that distinguishes such systems from regular express bus services. Each built BRT system is unique and depends on how these basic elements are designed and integrated. Environmental, social and economic impacts, users' perception and modal shift towards BRT have also been critically reviewed. With the presence of local land use and transport policies that support high-density and mixed developments, BRT has been found to attract potential developments around stations and along its corridor, increasing land values and promoting sustainable development. As reported in the literature, the infrastructure costs vary greatly depending on the costs of land acquisition, station design, degree of separation from traffic, technological features and material, labor costs. Thus, BRT capital costs cannot be generalized and must be transferred carefully based on the changes of the input costs that vary from one place to another. The barriers to BRT that block the achievement of significant success in customer satisfaction and ridership gains are mentioned with specific case studies. The review of BRT indicates that in some cases it has similar performance to higher order public transit; however, it still has its unique characteristics that set it apart.