Transport is one of the burning questions facing society today, not just across Europe, but worldwide. Sustainable transport solutions are vital not only for the strength of the economy, but also for communities, and overlap with debates on energy, urban and rural planning, work-life balance and health. Urban development throughout the world is growing at an unsustainable pace particularly in Asia, India, Africa and South America. The recent global economic, environmental and energy crisis has highlighted an urgent need to explore the potential for public transport systems such as BRT to provide a low cost, high quality solution that will benefit citizens, cities, economies and provide a sustainable solution to encourage modal switch.
BRT is a simple concept which ties the speed and reliability of a rail service with the operating flexibility and lower cost of a conventional bus service. BRT systems are flexible and can be built economically and incrementally compared with other forms of rapid transit. An increasing number of cities are considering BRT as a cost-effective way of providing high-quality and high-performance transit to meet their mass transit needs. The actual costs of a BRT system, including capital cost and operation cost, vary and are dependent on the capacity requirement and complexity of the project. Operating costs of LRT might be lower than BRT, but the capital investment costs of BRT are generally significantly less than those for light rail by utilizing the existing road system.
The Centre for Transport Research is involved in several projects researching BRT:
Currently, Brian Masson (Projects Manager) and Brendan Finn (Honorary Research Fellow) are involved in the EU COST project. In order to better understand all these trends and to promote a useful way to enhance the bus image the COST Action - Buses with a high level of service - has been decided on this topic. 14 EU countries are involved in this COST action that began in October 2007 and should end on October 2011. This COST action is split into four work packages:
• WP1 : State of the art of best practices and conceptual approaches
• WP2 : Analysis of the best practices
• WP3 : Recommendations for decision-making
• WP4 : Dissemination
Tao Tao Deng (PhD Student) is undertaking a study into the “Impacts of Bus Rapid Transit on Land Development in China”. This topic is extremely important in the design stage as convincing stakeholders as to the true value of BRT is often a stumbling block.
The Centre for Transport Research is also a member of BRTuk. “BRTuk does not seek to promote bus-based rapid transit above all other modes but aims to enhance understanding of bus rapid transit and what it can do, and allow a fair and informed comparison against other modes”.
Over the years staff and researchers have attended numerous International events covering BRT, establishing links with organisations such as TRB, UITP, World Bank, APTA.