Why Bus Rapid Transit Works

"WH: Like in many places, people in the U.S. associate buses with people of lower social status. Where there has been significant money available for public transport, it is put into core-commuter focused rail transit lines that usually provide disproportionate benefits to the upper middle classes, while the poor -- who make much higher use of transit for all their travel -- have much less invested in the bus services that they need. Interestingly enough, in Mexico City -- where there is a full featured, real BRT system -- the rich are willing to take the BRT, but they won't take the metro, which has more crime and is rapidly deteriorating -- the same historic phenomenon as the U.S. but in reverse!

Of course, you can mess up a BRT system, and Boston's Silver Line proved that you could waste almost as much money on BRT as you can on a rail system. Many of the BRT systems we've worked on are nowhere near as good as TransMilenio. For mainly political reasons, the risk of BRT being something far from optimal is pretty big, even here in New York City.

It's important to the world that New York City doesn't just build some low-quality bus improvement and call it BRT. This could really damage the already poor reputation of BRT as a serious mass transit option in the U.S. But what if New York were to hit it out of the park, with something amazing? The rest of the world expects no less from the greatest city in the world."