Fighting Climate Change with Bus Rapid Transit

The New York Times looks at the system and it's clean-burning buses and discusses what other cities' transit systems (and officials) can learn.

"[S]leek, red vehicles full of commuters speed down the four center lanes of Avenida de las Américas. The long, segmented, low-emission buses are part of a novel public transportation system called bus rapid transit, or B.R.T. It is more like an above-ground subway than a collection of bus routes, with seven intersecting lines, enclosed stations that are entered through turnstiles with the swipe of a farecard and coaches that feel like trams inside. Versions of these systems are now being planned or built in dozens of developing cities around the world — Mexico City, Cape Town, Jakarta, Indonesia, and Ahmedabad, India, to name a few — providing a public transportation network that improves traffic flow and reduces smog at a fraction of the cost of building a subway.

But the rapid transit systems have another benefit: they may hold a key to combating climate change."