Jarrett Walker shares news and analysis of a recent study by the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy (ITDP) finding explosive growth in the construction of bus rapid transit lines around the world in the last ten years.
According to the study released by ITDP in November, "[bus] rapid transit has grown by 383 percent in the last ten year…" To drill down that data to a more local level: "While growth has been strongest in rapidly urbanizing parts of the world such as China, Brazil, and Indonesia, there has also been substantial growth in the United States and France. China is the global leader in BRT, having added 538 kilometers of BRT in the last ten years, dramatically up from only one system of 14 km in 2004."
Jarrett Walker, however notes that the study "excludes many of the projects that the US Federal Transit Administration calls BRT." In fact, ITDP's BRT standard "thinks of BRT as something that matches the performance of rail using buses." Despite pointing out the discrepancy, Walker also expresses his solidarity with the choice: "I tend to agree with ITDP's concern that the overly weak use of the term BRT is making it hard to talk about the original point of the BRT idea, which was to mimic what rail does in terms of speed, frequency, and reliability."
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