Setting a Higher Bar for Bus Rapid Transit

Paula Tanscheit and Virginia Tavares report that BRTData.org, the most comprehensive online database of bus rapid transit in the world, has updated its criteria to "align its corridor definition with the benchmarks and quality standards established by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy." As BRTData.org has grown, "a need to establish stricter quality standards has become apparent," according to the article. The hope in making the change is also to do a better job evaluating quality of service.

Following their recommendations, from now on, BRT corridors will be defined as one or more contiguous lanes served by one or multiple bus lines with a minimum length of three kilometers that has segregated or exclusive bus lanes. If the segregated lane is aligned to the curb, at least one of the following elements must be present: (1) prepayment of the tariff; (2) priority traffic signaling; (3) a boarding level or (4) a unique brand and logo.

Those changes mean 96 systems and corridors previously in the database are no longer included, although the post stops short of calling them out by name.