Bus Rapid Transit: Benefits and Limitations
Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is not a regular bus service but a systemic optimisation of public transport services by using buses. Bus is the basic public transport mode that is affordable to most cities and towns. A public bus system can be as skeletal as having just buses, road, and bus stops. That of course means long waiting time, unreliable arrival, slow journey, and turn people away from public transport to favour the use of car and motorcycle. BRT concept revamps the system from fare collection, road usage, bus features, and bus station design to optimise the reliability and efficiency of bus to drive up people’s desirability to use public transport. The BRT concept was born in Curitiba, a city in Brazil in 1970s. It was later adopted and expanded into large scale system in big cities like Bogota, Colombia and Jakarta, Indonesia. The BRT in different shapes and sizes can be found in more than 170 cities around the world. Fiona Ferbrache (2019), lecturer at Oxford University