01595136

Component

Bus rapid transit (BRT) systems have become an increasingly popular approach to addressing mobility and environmental problems in urban areas in Latin America and around the world. This paper presents lessons learned from an in-depth comparative case studies of BRT projects – in Lima, Cali, and Montevideo. Lima’s system garnered the highest travel-time savings and corridor-level emissions reductions of the three cases. Cali’s system also provided several benefits, including substantial travel-time savings for trips along the trunk lines and had a much wider impact on emissions reductions in the city because of its ambitious scale and more successful bus scrapping program. In Montevideo, because of poor design and corridor choice, as well as a lack of institutional and bus sector reforms, the system realized few if any mobility or environmental objectives; however, passengers benefited from improved sidewalks, a new electronic fare card system, integrated tariffs, and a system enabling passengers to access information on the best route combination from any origin to any destination in the city. Little or no diagnosis of mobility needs of the poor was conducted to inform their design with usage rates of the BRT systems by the poor lower than expected. The projects generated some positive land use developments; however, none incorporated a transit-oriented development (TOD) strategy in their design.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP050 Standing Committee on Bus Transit Systems.

01584066

16-6544

English

28p

2016

Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

References

Bus rapid transit; Case studies; Pollutants; Transit oriented development; Travel time; Urban transit

Cali (Colombia); Lima (Peru); Montevideo (Uruguay)

Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2016 Paper #16-6544

PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 12 2016 7:03PM