On the second day, planners, engineers, and other public officials participated in a full-day seminar to dicuss various BRT implementation strategies, including dedicated lanes, traffic signal priority, marketing and branding, and fare collection. Mayor Penalosa was featured as the luncheon speaker at this seminar, which was cosponsored by the Federal Transit Administration, King County Metro, Sound Transit, Community Transit, and the National BRT Institute. Click here for a PDF version of our presentation or visit the National BRT Institute to see all of the presentations.
First, cities must establish a vision for future mobility and quality of life. If a city chooses to make mobility by private car the highest priority, it will be very difficult to attract significant public transportation riders. It also will detract from quality of life in the urban core, because new highways take more space than public transportation options, create noise, air quality, and other impacts, and encourage jobs and residences to move to the suburbs.
Second, if cities choose to make public transit a high priority, bus rapid transit (BRT) is the best option. BRT costs significantly less than rail options, thus enabling more of it to be deployed for a given budget. Thus, more neighborhoods can be served with high quality transit using BRT than would otherwise be possible using rail. The more robust the network, the more useful it will become, and the more likely people will choose to use it. Mayor Penalosa noted that even though car ownership is a major status symbol in Bogota, roughly 20 percent of Transmilenio riders own cars but choose to use BRT instead.
Third, Mayor Penalosa noted that BRT can be extremely high capacity. Transmilenio is carrying more than 40,000 passengers per hour in the peak direction and over 1.2 million passengers per day. By contrast, a typical US light rail system carries a small fraction of that amount, often just 2,000 to 3,000 passengers per hour in the peak direction. The entire Washington DC Metrorail system carries less than 800,000 passengers per day.
Fourth, the Mayor noted that the cost savings associated with BRT enable cities to focus resources on other urban improvements. In Bogota, the city built or reconstructed numerous parks, added several new libraries, and created dozens of miles of new bicycle paths. None of these would have been possible if the city chose rail.
