From the “APTA conference” on BRT trends
Feed-back from the BRT conference held in Seattle, in October 2009
An overview of the USA context has shown that in EU the needs for high capacity are already mostly satisfied by suburban railways, metros, tramways. The need of rapid bus-based systems appears mostly for urban streets and « at-grade » urbanism.
On the other hand, in USA, the urban PT is based mainly on commuters needs from scattered suburbs to dense CBD ; the flexibility of bus systems is sometimes highlighted as an advantage. Moreover, we observe much more Bus lanes on highways in the 70’s-80’s (LA), transformed sometimes into HOV lanes. The width of these motorways (or highways) are much more wide than in Europe !
At last we observe a trend toward “BRT-lite”, as a first step in improvement, that could relies on greater stop-spacing, some queue-jumping, better headways and span, information, and always a good branding.
On this subject "BRT / BHLS" comparison, 2 articles have been published:
- one at TRB conference, 2010
- the other one on Built Environment review
By Sebastien Rabuel - CERTU (WG4)
The slides below:
- Feedback from APTA conference in Seattle
- By Sebastien Rabuel - October 2009