Categoría: News & Events

V International Mass Transport Fair

The V International Mass Transport Fair is the meeting place for suppliers, manufacturers, representatives and distributors of equipment, supplies, machinery and technology in the sector to make qualified contacts and exchange experiences, transfer knowledge and share products and services.
 
This event, uniting managers, planners and operators of mass transport systems through the world, seeks to create opportunities and alternatives for sustainable development of integrated public transport systems.
 
During this year’s event, held in Bogota, Colombia, on 16-18 November, Juan Carlos Muñoz presented a seminar regarding the challenges of intermodality when integrating public transport systems. This subject is especially relevant these days in Bogota, when the city is facing its own system integration.
 
You can download the presentation here (in Spanish).
 
 
 
 
 
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In 2011, 30% renovation for Curitiba buses (in Spanish)

Source: SIBRT
 
El alcalde Luciano Ducci ha entregado, el pasado 24 de Octubre, en un evento en el Parque Barigüi, 161 nuevos autobuses para la Red de Transporte Integrado de Curitiba. Fue la tercera entrega del año, con un total de 434 vehículos. Los nuevos autobuses son parte del proyecto de renovación del 30% de la flota hasta diciembre, sumando 557 autobuses.
 
“Se trata de autobuses más modernos que van a proporcionar mayor seguridad y comodidad a la población de Curitiba para el uso del transporte público”, dijo Ducci. “A lo largo de nuestra gestión estamos invirtiendo en el transporte público para ofrecer lo mejor para nuestra ciudad”, complementó el alcalde.
 
El alcalde citó los ejemplos de estas inversiones, el “Ligeirão Expresso” (en color azul) y los nuevos biarticulados para las líneas express (en color rojo), que son los autobuses más grandes del mundo. Además de las líneas express, los pasajeros de líneas alimentadoras e interbarriales se beneficiarán con los nuevos vehículos.
 
El presidente de URBS, Marcos Isfer, dijo que el transporte de Curitiba vive un momento muy importante, con una serie de inversiones. Además de los nuevos autobuses, las inversiones se están realizando para la implementación del “Ligeirão” Norte, Este y Oeste. “Estamos modernizando el sistema, según lo que nos ha determinado el alcalde. Curitiba transportará cada vez mejor”, dijo Marcos.
 
La renovación, además de reducir la antigüedad promedio para 4,5 años, también alegra a los operadores del sistema. Con 15 años de trabajo como conductor del transporte público, Joel Carvalho dijo que los nuevos autobuses son modernos, seguros y representan una mejora significativa, tanto para el usuario, que gana comodidad y seguridad, como para los conductores que pasan por un entrenamiento para conducir los vehículos más modernos.
 
“La renovación tiene beneficios para todos y valoriza nuestra profesión”, dice Joel, que está calificado para conducir cualquier tipo de autobús. “Para nosotros es un importante paso adelante, nos pone junto con las nuevas tecnologías, es una recuperación, no hay duda”.
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Mexico City’s Newest BRT Line Provides a Direct Link from Historic Center to the Airport

Source: ITDP
 
A city’s reputation is often shaped by how people perceive its center. Take New York in the 1970s. The iconic images of a seedy and downright dangerous Times Square were projected onto the city writ large. So too with Mexico City’s historic center, which contains some of the nation’s most iconic landmarks but had become neglected and rundown.
 
Since 2006, ITDP has worked with Mexico City to promote and provide technical advice on the restoration of the Centro Historico. In addition to the streetscape and pedestrian improvements they recommended, they also advised Mayor Ebrard that more transit would help make the neighborhood more accessible, and ultimately safer for all. They suggested a Bus Rapid Transit line that would connect the historic center with the airport and bring high quality transit to the neighborhoods west of the Centro Historico. And they pointed out how relatively easy it would be to take this line all the way to the airport, linking visitors to hotels and tourist attractions. ITDP provided assistance for a preliminary feasibility study for this line including passenger demand modeling.
 
The City began construction on Line 4 of Metrobus in July, and estimates it will take 6 months to complete. It will make a circuit through the historic center, running on two major north/south axes along Republica de Venezuela and Heroe de Nacozari in the north and Republica de el Salvador south of City Hall. The line will make vital direct connections to other transit including the Lines 1 and 3 of the existing BRT, the Buenavista commuter rail terminal, and both terminals of the Mexico City International Airport. The BRT is projected to reduce the travel time from the Centro Historico to the airport from 1.5 hours to just 50 minutes.
 

Metrobus Line 4 will have 46 Euro V, low emissions buses, and 8 hybrid buses. The buses will be low-floor, allowing passengers to board at sidewalk level, allowing for a lighter design treatment for stations, which was key for the narrow streets of the historic district.
 
Line 4 continues to open up transit options in the western part of Mexico City and will provide high quality, high-density transit in the Centro Historico. Over the past seven years Mexico City has made significant strides to revitalize its historic center. Metrobus Line 4 will make it easier and more pleasant than ever for people to visit and see for themselves, and might just change the way they see the entire city as well.
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Event wrap up: Thredbo 12

The 12th International Conference on Competition and Ownership in Land Passenger Transport
11-15 September, 2011 / Durban, South Africa
 
This is Juan Carlos Muñoz’ testimony regarding the CoE experience at Thredbo 12:
 
«We had a great week at the Thredbo Conference in Durban during the second week of September. Thredbo is a fantastic Conference, not only for its amazing blend of academics, operators, agency regulators and consultants, but also because of its Workshop-based structure which “maximizes” interaction among participants (at least in comparison to all other conferences I usually attend). This is why David Hensher likes to say that everyone attending Thredbo becomes Thredbo – dependent. During the conference we had the privilege to run one of the Workshops devoted to BRT future challenges which received the highest attendance among all Workshops offered. In this very active 14-hr long Workshop on BRT, several papers were presented and we had a very lively discussion. By the end of the Workshop, we gave a plenary talk summarizing our main discussion and findings. The talk also included some BRT-related questions that remain to be answered which should be of significant interest for our Centre of Excellence.»
 
You can download this Workshop summary presentation here or the report here.
 
More info regarding the other Thredbo Workshops at the official website.
 
 
 
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Graduate studies programs within our Centre of Excellence

We are inviting outstanding and enthusiastic students from all around the world to be part of our Centre of Excellence through research opportunities and internships from our institutions. These are the options available right now:
 
 
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC)
 
At PUC we offer a Master of Science, a Master of Engineering and a PhD program. In all of them students are involved with course work and a research dissertation. A graduate student involved with our Centre of Excellence would devote its dissertation to a problem related with designing, managing, operating or controlling a BRT-based transit system.
 
In our forthcoming research we expect to improve our understanding of economic aspects as subsidies and taxes; operational aspects as improving commercial speeds, interaction with traffic lights and avoiding bus bunching; demand aspects as route and mode choice modeling and origin destination inference from historic information; network design aspects as express service design and stop location; technological aspects as the use of cell phone information to improve our understanding of bus performance and passenger behavior. We will be offering dissertation topics on these areas to our graduate students in the coming years.
 
The Department of Transport Engineering and Logistics has eight professors that teach several courses in these and related areas, which can also be complemented by courses offered by other Departments. Scholarships from the Chilean government, the University and our Centre are available, as well as other financing options.
 
You can find more information in this document.
 
NEW: Two postdoc positions at PUC Chile. Find the information here.
 
 
Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, The University of Sydney (ITLS Sydney)
 
The Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies (ITLS) in the Business School at the University of Sydney is a dynamic and high-quality research environment. As Australia’s Key Centre of Excellence in Transport and Logistics Research and Education, celebrating its 16th year in 2011, ITLS is recognised as a centre of excellence within Australia and is ranked among the top five institutes in the world for transport and logistics research and education. Through the establishment of the Key Centre and a memorandum of understanding signed between the University of Sydney and the University of Johannesburg, ITLS is an international collaboration at three nodes: ITLS Sydney, ITS Monash and ITLS Africa.
 
ITLS offers a number of postgraduate coursework programmes including the Masters of Transport Management. This is designed to provide training in the field of transport with particular emphasis on management and planning. Individual units of study focus on topics including public transport policy and planning, transport economics, and transport policy, all of which are relevant to the understanding of the role of BRT in urban transport. More details, including the wide range of available units of study, are available at this website.
 
ITLS invites inquires from individuals wanting to pursue higher level research in the area of BRT, whether this is a focus on theoretical or applied research in the area. This would be supported through the strong links between the institutions which comprise the CoE and the interests of Professor Hensher and Professor Mulley in developing understanding in this important area. ITLS has the largest group of postgraduate students in transport and logistics management in Australia and our postgraduate research students have excellent research facilitates and supervision by internationally renowned academic staff. More information is available at this link.
 
 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
 
MIT’s Transportation group has provided leadership in the field of transportation research for many years by emphasizing an interdisciplinary systems approach incorporating engineering, urban planning, transport system management and public policy. We are now applying this interdisciplinary approach to the concept of sustainable transportation to address the critical issues confronting the world today.
 
The scope of our research has broadened from a focus on the operation of existing systems to include consideration of the interactions of transportation infrastructure and operation, urban spatial structure and land use, economic growth, resource and energy use, and environmental impacts at various spatial and temporal scales. These include issues of public health and environmental impact; the loss of livability of urban areas; the uneven distribution of benefits and costs of transportation projects among different geopolitical areas, social groups and generations; and the consequences of climate change. For more information, visit our Transportation research pages and view videos of MIT transportation researchers talking about their research on MIT World.
 
Our goal is to contribute to the conceptualization and realization of a system in which people can readily move and effectively transport goods while facilitating economic growth and reducing environmental impacts to sustainable levels. To read about current transportation research projects, please visit the CEE Research Projects website, the Transportation@MIT institute-wide initiative, and the individual faculty websites.
 
The interdepartmental Master of Science in Transportation (M.S.T.) degree program emphasizes the complexity of transportation and its dependence on the interaction of technology, operations, planning, management and policy-making. Faculty members and research staff from several centers, departments and divisions within MIT are affiliated with the program and serve as research advisors and mentors to M.S.T. students.
 
The interdepartmental Doctoral Program in Transportation provides a structured and direct follow-on doctoral program for students enrolled in the M.S.T. program or other transportation-related masters degree program at MIT or elsewhere. The interdepartmental structure of the program allows students greater flexibility in developing individual programs of study that cross both disciplinary and departmental lines. The program is administered by the transportation faculty through the director of the interdepartmental doctoral program, who is responsible for admissions, establishment and oversight of program requirements, and conduct of the general examination and thesis defense.
 
The Master of Engineering transportation track covers the analysis, planning, design, operation and management of transportation systems. It offers a broad range of subjects, including methods for transportation systems analysis, transportation demand analysis, urban transportation planning, transportation and environmental limits, comparative land use and transportation planning, and logistics systems and supply chain management. Also available are subjects focusing on urban public transportation, airlines, airports, intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and marine transportation systems.
 
Many Master in City Planning (MCP) students from the Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) elect to take one or several transportation-related courses within or outside the DUSP. Also, many MCP students write a thesis related to transportation, conduct transportation-related research, and/or are advised by transportation-related faculty.
 
Several PhD students from DUSP conduct advanced transportation-related research, working closely with faculty in DUSP and other Departments at MIT. Students tailor their coursework to prepare for the general examinations, which require a first field of study related to the systematic approach of social inquiry (such as urban and regional economics) and a second field related to an area of application (such as transportation and land use).
 
The MIT Portugal node also counts with education programs in Transportation Systems: Master of Science and Doctoral programs.
 
Students will work on projects related to ongoing MIT research programs with agencies, industries and government, such as Transport for London, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, and the Basque Regional Government; ITS, high-speed rail and airport planning for Portugal; and the airline industry.
 
The interdepartmental Master of Science in Transportation, Doctoral Program in Transportation and Master of Engineering transportation track are administered through the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
 
 
 
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BRT News from EMBARQ Brasil

Source: EMBARQ Brasil
 
September and October 2011 Highlights
 
Several recommendations to improve operational performance of planned BRT corridors in the city center of Belo Horizonte were delivered to BHTrans. Results came from simulations that replicated current project design and operational rules of the BRT corridors that will reach the city center in 2013. BHTrans is analyzing the recommendations.
 
CET-Rio, the traffic agency in Rio that is also in charge of road safety, praised the EMBARQ Brasil road safety audit work. In the words of CET-Rio ´s senior analyst Dr. Eng Henrique Torres, “the importance of road safety auditing of Transcarioca corridor is unquestionable. It is the first time that such procedure is conducted for urban transport projects in Rio; by anticipating problems, crashes and deaths will be avoided”. EMBARQ Brasil pioneer work on road safety in Rio and Brazil is starting to break paradigms.
 
Road safety inspections in São Paulo and Porto Alegre were completed. In São Paulo, the inspection was conducted along the 10 kilometers of the Santo Amaro/Nove de Julho busway. In Porto Alegre, 35 blackspots of the 7 main busways were inspected. Carsten Wass worked with the support of EMBARQ Brasil road safety team. Final reports with recommendations should be delivered in December.
 
BRT Brasil, a BRT coalition is set to qualify the next generation of BRT projects. NTU, the national association of urban bus operators, invited EMBARQ Brasil to join a BRT coalition. BRT Brasil, idealized by NTU, is also formed by ANTP, IEMA and the forum of cities´ secretaries for urban mobility. BRT will be the backbone of the urban mobility projects of the next federal package of investments aimed to cities between 300,000 and 700,000 inhabitants.
 
Toni Lindau was invited to participate of Sustentável 2011 in Rio, an event dedicated to consolidate the Brazilian version for the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) “Vision 2050 report”. Further to T. Lindau criticism of the Vision 2050 report, highlighting its inadequacy to the prevailing Brazilian urban mobility reality, he was invited by Mariana Meirelles, the deputy director of the Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development – CEBDS – to participate of a high level committee that will review Vision 2050 report. The aim of Vision 2050 is to rethink the roles that business must play over the next few decades to enable society to move toward being sustainable. This endeavor has resulted in a call to action that aims to encourage companies to reinvent themselves, their products and services to get where they and society want to be.
 
Toni Lindau mediated a BRT session dedicated to international BRT experiences at the 18° National Conference for Traffic and Public Transportation in Rio. The session convened an attendance of 200 people including national & international experts and Brazilian decision makers (operators and public authorities). Part of the discussions was dedicated to understanding the limiting performance of the Transmilenio system in Bogota, currently the highest bus capacity in the world. EMBARQ Brasil is supporting the development of the concept for Rio´s TransBrasil BRT corridor that will have demands close to Transmilenio.
 
 
 
 
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Two years of successful run

Source: The Times of India
 
AHMEDABAD: When chief minister Narendra Modi flagged off the first Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) bus on Chandranagar-RTO route on October, 14, 2009, there were slight apprehensions about its success. The BRTS experiment in New Delhi had just flopped. But, two years on, Janmarg has beaten all expectations and turned into a lifeline for lakhs of commuters in the city, ferrying 1.40 lakh daily in a fleet of 77 buses.
 
Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) officials say that 2012 will be a landmark year for the project as 44 kms additional route in and around Ahmedabad will be completed, thus doubling the capacity of current operations.
 
AMC also plans to introduce prepaid smart cards to commuters, a practice that’s globally prevalent. While the original idea was to provide the cards as Diwali gift this year, the scheme will now be materialized in early 2012. Utpal Padia, deputy municipal commissioner and executive director, Janmarg, told TOI that the trials carried out on the new corridors have been satisfactory. The barriers used along with the smart cards have been ordered from China and will soon be installed at the existing BRTS stops after educating people about their use, said Padia.
 
Talking about two years of BRTS, the official said, «We got good support from the citizens. BRTS has put Ahmedabad on world map and got us many laurels and awards in these two years. There were many challenges that we overcame and there are various issues on which the work is on.»
 
«We project the revenues from BRTS to go up to almost double to Rs 14-15 lakh and ferry 3 lakh to 4 lakh passengers on daily basis,» said Padia.
 
BRTS has won accolades from international experts. Walter Hook, executive director, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), who was one of the earliest transportation experts involved in BRTS project, gave thumbs up to the project during his recent visit and said that with some changes, the project can match gold standard of rapid transit systems world over.
 
 
 
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Five cities in the USA where mass transit riders are richer than drivers

Source: The Atlantic Cities
 
People who ride public transportation in American cities tend to have lower incomes than those who commute by car. But the general rule of commuter wealth disparity does have exceptions. Cap’n Transit performed a very smart analysis of 2010 American Community Survey data, freshly released by the U.S. Census, and found five metro areas where transit riders actually make more than auto commuters. A lot more. Like, in one case, nuclear physicist more. The data shake down like this:
 

 
When commute times are added to the picture, things get even more strange. The average commute for drivers in Idaho Falls is about 20 minutes, while transit commutes take about 70. In Torrington, drivers take about a half hour to reach work and transit riders take an hour, and that’s just about the case in Bremerton-Silverdale too, at 26 minutes by car and 67 by transit. The difference is even greater in Poughkeepsie — half hour by car and 80 minutes by mass transit — and things are similar in Kingston, which is farther north along the Hudson.
 
So what inspires a comfortably paid worker to ditch his or her car for a public ride? Well four of the situations can (most likely) be chalked up to the pull of a nearby major city. In these cases, the pay from city jobs is high enough to entice workers from afar, and the quality of public transportation is high enough to deter them from making the long drive. In addition, those who do drive to work probably stay local, which brings down the average drive time.
 
It’s easy to see how that’s the case with Poughkeepsie, which is located on the Hudson Line of the comfortable (by transit standards) Metro North commuter service. Residents of Kingston can commute into New York (or Albany) by bus or Amtrak. Bremerton-Silverdale is just across the Puget Sound from Seattle, which is accessible by ferry. Torrington is a bit harder to explain. Cap’n Transit suggests it forms an outer ring of New York City; if that’s the case, the commute should be longer than an hour, since it takes 45 minutes by bus to reach New Haven, which is still an hour and a half from New York on Metro North. Bus riders into Hartford may instead be the source the discrepancy.
 
The most interesting case is Idaho Falls. What would pull commuters away from the largest city in Eastern Idaho? Well there’s a clear answer: the Idaho National Laboratory, a leading research and development arm of the Department of Energy that employs roughly 4,000 workers. Much of the campus is considerably west of Idaho Falls, so the lab has an expansive fleet of buses to carry employees into and out of the city:
 
Today INL’s fleet consists of 103 buses, maintained and operated by 116 employees, of which 92 are drivers. The fleet logs more than 2 million miles annually (down from a peak of some 6 million miles yearly in the early 1990s). They haul roughly 2,750 passengers to the Site and back each day. And somewhere across eastern Idaho, an INL bus is on the road, nearly 24 hours per day, seven days a week.
 
The number of routes serviced by the fleet is incredible, though in late September the company announced it was implementing a park-and-ride program intended to shorten some of the trips. So INL has a tough question to ask itself: save on the cost of 100,000 gallons of fuel a year, or keep the top spot on the commuter income disparity rankings. Pretty, pretty, pretty tough question.
 
 
 
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Montgomery looks to busways to ease traffic

Source: The Washington Post
 
Montgomery County is considering building a 150-mile network of dedicated bus lanes to move its growing population more quickly while easing traffic congestion, but even supporters won’t use the “B” word.
 
Planners, developers and local officials analyzing how to build and pay for the express bus network say they are acutely aware that buses conjure up images of slow, unreliable, second-class transit. Their pitch: Picture these buses as trains on rubber tires.
 
“We want riders to view it much more like rail,” said Dan Wilhelm, who oversees transportation issues for the Montgomery County Civic Federation and serves on a county transit task force.
 
Supporters say that Bus Rapid Transit, or BRT, would provide the convenience, comfort and reliability of light rail without the heftier cost. Plush buses would run frequently, mostly in their own lanes in the middle of local streets, and get longer green signals at intersections. Stations spaced about a half-mile apart would have rain shelters and ticket kiosks. The buses would also be low to the ground to provide fast, level boarding directly from platforms.
 
BRT is the fastest, most affordable — and perhaps only — way to make a significant dent in traffic, advocates say.
 
“There is no other way you’re going to do it,” said Montgomery Council member Marc Elrich (D-At Large), who has been pushing for BRT since 2007. “You don’t have money to build a rail system. You’re not going to bulldoze neighborhoods to build new roads.”
 
Montgomery officials aren’t the only ones looking into BRT’s feasibility. Regional transportation planners have proposed building a network of high-occupancy toll lanes along local highways and major arterial roads that buses and toll-paying vehicles would use.
 
Toll revenue would pay for construction and subsidize the express bus service, said Ronald F. Kirby, transportation planning director for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.
 
“The driver here, really, is what can we do in the next 20 years that would make a significant impact?” Kirby said. “These are things that are doable — not easy, but doable.”
 
If Montgomery officials find the money for their own local network — and that’s a big “if” in today’s tight economic climate — they say all 150 miles of busway could be operating within a decade. One preliminary study predicted that the network would cost $2.5 billion in today’s dollars to build, excluding land acquisition. Although that price would make it one of the more costly transportation projects in the Washington region, supporters say, the money would spread further. Its estimated per-mile cost of $16.6 million would pale in comparison to about $120 million per mile to build light rail and $230 million to $270 million per mile to extend Metrorail.
 
The idea is gaining traction among key political players who are frequently at odds on transportation solutions. They include planners seeking to accommodate population growth, local officials hoping to lure new jobs, environmentalists trying to reduce carbon emissions, civic groups wanting traffic relief, businesses trying to improve workers’ commutes and developers who want to get building plans approved.
 
Montgomery officials say they also fear the county will lose jobs and investment to Northern Virginia, where a Metrorail extension is under construction, the Capital Beltway is getting 14 miles of new high-occupancy toll lanes and Tysons Corner is being redeveloped into a more walkable, transit-oriented community.
 
Supporters say Montgomery could form a “Science & Health Triangle” with BRT connecting major employers, such as the National Institutes of Health and Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, the emerging “science city” in Gaithersburg and the Food and Drug Administration complex in the White Oak area of Silver Spring. Developers in North Bethesda’s White Flint area say BRT would attract businesses and residents to clusters of high-rises being planned.
 
“People in high-rise buildings expect to drive less, and they need accessibility,” said Evan Goldman, a vice president for Rockville-based Federal Realty, which plans to redevelop the Mid-Pike Plaza shopping center in North Bethesda into about a dozen high-rises.
 
Even with growing support, Montgomery’s BRT proposal is still in its infancy, and much more detailed engineering will be necessary to determine routes and station locations as well as whether streets could accommodate a single, reversible bus lane or a double busway. Opposition often surfaces during that more detailed phase of planning, when residents learn who would lose parts of front yards. Task force members said they will recommend that bus lanes not take asphalt from motorists, which would snarl traffic even more.
 
The biggest question will be how to pay for it.
 
The task force appointed by Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) is expected to have a financial plan ready by February. Elrich said he expects most of a BRT network would be paid for with local money. That would include paying off long-term bonds through an additional tax on commercial property owners who would benefit from the system, similar to special taxing districts in Northern Virginia that are helping to fund construction of the Metrorail extension to Dulles International Airport.
 
The BRT plans are separate from a proposed 16-mile Purple Line light rail link between Bethesda and New Carrollton and a 14-mile Corridor Cities Transitway being planned for the Interstate 270 corridor in upper Montgomery. State transit officials plan to compete for federal and state funding for both.
 
Key to BRT’s success, local officials say, will be finding enough money to build and operate a system that will remain fast and reliable enough to lure motorists onto buses. Critics of BRT have said some of the 20 or so other U.S. transit agencies that operate what they call BRT lines erred on the cheap side, such as leaving buses mixed with traffic and giving riders little extra comfort or convenience.
 
Montgomery’s BRT advocates say they would market their BRT as premium public transit. David Anspacher, a senior planner on one of the county’s BRT studies, said that built correctly, BRT shouldn’t be a tough sell.
 
“When folks see buses running down Rockville Pike while traffic is stopped,” Anspacher said, “that will be our best marketing.”
 
The Montgomery County Planning Department will hold a community meeting about its BRT study from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Oct. 24 at its headquarters, 8787 Georgia Ave. in Silver Spring.
 
 
 
 
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¿Cuánto Falta?: Transantiago bus time estimation app for iPhone

A design student from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Radu Dutzanun, developed this iPhone app very useful for the ones living in Santiago, Chile. It is described as: «Find out when is the next Transantiago bus coming and how far it is from your bus stop. It’s easy, and you only need an Internet connection!«. It has improvements from the twitter service offered by Transantiago, such as the possibility of saving your frequently used stops.
 
You can download it here and obtain further information at the official blog (in Spanish).
 
 
 
 
 
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Opinion Pieces: The continuing saga on road pricing – can we convince the politicians?

Opinion Pieces: since 2007, Prof. David Hensher has written an opinion column in the Australasian Bus and Coach magazine, where he monthly discusses a lot of different transport-related hot topics. In this section we are revisiting these columns.
 
March 2011
 
Roads are possibly the most underpriced in terms of user contributions of all the public assets that we avail ourselves of. Regardless of whether some believe that governments should provide more road capacity to combat traffic congestion, it is an undeniable fact that if we provide more capacity under the existing road user pricing regimes (registration and fuel pricing only), then more cars will use the roads, quickly using up the additional capacity. The great sadness about all of this is that there is a presumption that we all have rights to enter the traffic and delay all other motorists, yet not contribute to the true cost associated with delay and lost time – the curse of congestion. It is estimated that over $9 billion a year is wasted in lost travel time or avoidable congestion costs, increasing to around $20 billion by 2020. This results in a predictable ‘tragedy of the commons’.
 
Many motorists argue that they pay enough anyway. But do they? There is enough evidence to suggest that they do not, for if they were being charged to use the roads at a level that is efficient then we would avoid much traffic congestion. Many politicians still believe (as a result of their actions) that roads should be free (toll roads being the exception); however “free” roads are not really free – the choice is between paying with time and frustration, or with money. Feel free to oppose it, but do not complain about the traffic. Opposing efficient pricing means you are choosing to endure continual congestion problems.
 
What we need to do in sorting out the pricing challenge is not to add a congestion charge on top of existing charges, but to undertake a complete overhaul of the entire charging regime, with options to replace some of the fixed charges (e.g., annual registration) with a usage charge based on kilometres driven by location (and vehicle emissions), so that those who obtain the greatest benefits (such as time savings) should contribute proportionally. This then would be a fair system in contrast to the current system of registration and fuel taxes, which is far from fair. Pundits who claim a congestion charge is not fair should carefully think about how fair the existing system is? Why should we all pay the same registration fee for a class of vehicle when we all travel different annual kilometres on the roads, at locations where congestion varies from nothing to significant?
 
The future of public transport must surely be linked to this tragedy of the commons if one believes in the adage that ‘to make public transport more attractive we have to make the car less attractive’.
 
Food for thought
 
 
 
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Universal Access to Bus Rapid Transit: Design, operation, and working with the community

Source: World Streets by Tom Rickert, Executive Director, Access Exchange International (USA)
 
The ability of Bus Rapid Transit systems to serve persons with disabilities in less wealthy countries seemed obvious at first glance. The earliest graphics of BRT trunk lines in Curitiba, Brazil, depicted wheelchair users crossing boarding bridges into articulated buses. Problem solved! Thus, years later, many may be surprised to find cities where wheelchair users are unable to access one or another BRT system.
 
Other beneficiaries of universal design – including older persons, women, children, and those with hearing or sight impairments – are often not heard from. They just quietly decide they cannot use Bus Rapid Transit to get where they need to go.
 
What happened? Why have the apparent advantages of BRT systems become problematic in many cases? It turns out the devil is in the details. But first, the positive news.
 
Bus Rapid Transit trunk lines are indeed a historic step forward, especially in cities in developing countries where they may represent the first large-scale application of inclusive design to any public transit system. Accessible sidewalks, curb ramps, grade-level crossings, tactile guideways and tactile warning strips all make their appearance, along with visual and audio signage and, above all, floor-level boarding – features which are there to be witnessed and copied elsewhere for decades to come.
 
Along with these advancements come safer and better lit stations, easier fare payment, and other features that meet the needs of seniors, women, children, tourists, blind persons, those with low vision, and people who are deaf, deafened, or hard-of-hearing.
 
From this perspective, a well designed BRT system can appear to be an island of accessibility in the midst of a sea of inaccessibility. And therein lies part of the problem: the different elements of universal access are often considered in isolation from each other when, in fact, they all form the social, operational, and built environment required for an accessible trip chain from trip origin to the BRT trunk line, into the bus, and on to the trip destination.
 
To illustrate how the details of design, operation, and outreach interact, we are presenting three composite case studies* of the experience of typical passengers in Latin American, Asian, and African cities.
 
* Click here for full article from Access Exchange International in San Francisco.
 
 
 
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Opinion: China's transit historic opportunity

by Juan Carlos Muñoz
 
China is missing a historic opportunity to change a western-based paradigm that is causing tremendous problems worldwide. Cities are supposed to be efficient solutions for people’s interaction. However, once cities are structured around the private car, these efficiencies are threatened by the congestion, pollution, accidents, stress, obesity, little social interaction that cars cause and the significant energy consumption and urban space that they demand. At the city level, the car is an individualistic transport mode that often prevents more efficient collective modes from flourishing. Thus, cars take the city as a hostage benefiting mostly the more affluent social classes. The high densities and the political and administrative system in China offer a big opportunity to promote collective and non-motorized transportation modes. In cities with the size of Shanghai and Beijing this is the only possible path to structure the cities towards sustainability and a very attractive one.
 
Cities in China should not be organized to satisfy car users, but instead around the people and their children, fostering non-motorized and public transport modes, and providing infrastructure for parks and social interaction. Thus, car use should be hindered in large cities, particularly in peak periods that define the infrastructure and the fleet required to provide the mobility demanded. Many instruments are available, such as congestion pricing, parking prohibition and higher fuel taxes. This does not require investments, but a lot of determination, political will and good management.
 
A transport system is composed of infrastructure, vehicles and a management system. China has made a huge effort in the last decades to improve first its infrastructure and second its equipment. However, the management, control and regulation are lagging behind. The government should realize that the infrastructure and vehicles should be used wisely to obtain maximum performance.
 
In large cities, we should make every effort to leave the cars out of the equation and foster more efficient transportation modes. China has the density and the cultural philosophy to change the rules of the game and bring a new paradigm. It should resist the inertia of business as usual and give the western world a lesson by promoting a totally new sustainable (social and environmental) urban development alternative.
 
 
 
 
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Photo Essay: A Tale of Two Bus Systems in Bogotá

Source: The City Fix by Gwen Kash. All photos by Gwen Kash.
 

The TransMilenio’s distinctive red buses have transformed the landscape in Bogotá
 
More than a decade after its inception, Bogotá’s pioneering TransMilenio BRT system carries 1.6 million passengers every weekday. Its many successes, such as reducing pollution, improving safety and reducing travel time for Bogotanos, may be familiar to regular readers of TheCityFix and our website. However, TransMilenio has not been a complete solution for public transportation in Bogotá. Only 26 percent of transit trips in the city are made on TransMilenio. The other 74 percent of transit trips are made on what is known locally as Collective Public Transport, a chaotic network of buses operated by thousands of individual owner-operators organized into 66 different private companies.
 

Collective public buses operating on Carrera Séptima
 
This disorganized and inefficient method of providing public transportation has high costs for Bogotá’s residents. What most experts consider an oversupply of buses clogs the streets with excess vehicles and fill the lungs of residents with exhaust. Since drivers earn their living from the fares they collect rather than a fixed salary, they compete with each other in “the war of the penny.” This conflict results in unsafe driving as vehicles jockey for passengers. The problem is compounded by the fact that drivers commonly work 14- to 16-hour shifts. The results of this situation are lethal: a Bogotano dies from a collision involving a collective public bus on average once every three days.
 
Bogotá’s transportation network is about to undergo a transformation even more radical than that wrought by TransMilenio. The Integrated Public Transport System (SITP) is scheduled to begin operations at the end of this year.
 

One of the buses that will continue operating as part of SITP
 
The SITP represents a fundamental shift from a decentralized, chaotic network to a true coordinated system. The business structure will be modeled on the successful example of TransMilenio, with responsibility for providing service shared between 13 companies who were awarded zonal concessions through a competitive bidding process. In addition to continuing the management of TransMilenio BRT and constructing several new BRT lines, TRANSMILENIO S.A. (a city-owned company) will coordinate operations between the SITP operators. The employment of bus drivers will become formal, with a fixed salary and bonuses for safe, effective operating replacing the era of survival of the fittest.
 

Many collective public buses emit visible clouds of smoke upon acceleration
 
SITP is expected to significantly reduce emissions in Bogotá. Rather than being allowed to operate for as long as two decades, buses will be retired after a maximum of 12 years. The oldest, most polluting buses will be taken off the streets as Bogotá reduces the size of its vehicle fleet by 30 percent. The fleet will be gradually upgraded to newer, more efficient models. The remaining buses will operate when and where they are needed rather than all day every day.
 

Passengers exiting a bus on Ave. Boyacá
 
SITP will also increase the organization of transportation in Bogotá. Currently, passengers flag down buses as if they were taxicabs. When passengers request a stop, buses grind to a sudden halt whether they are at a designated bus stop or in the middle of traffic on a crowded artery. After SITP is implemented, passengers will enter and exit buses only at designated stops; more than 2,000 are scheduled to be built. The increased order on city streets will likely result in fewer deaths from preventable collisions.
 

Passengers exit into traffic at a designated bus stop on the Autopista Norte
 
In order to function effectively, the SITP will require a transformation of the culture of transportation in Bogotá. For example, users must become accustomed to walking a few extra blocks and drivers must work as part of a team rather than as enemy combatants. SITP’s operators will conduct extensive driver training, and TRANSMILENIO S.A. is planning an education campaign to communicate the message “user by user,” as SITP director Javiér Hernández puts it.
 
User information will be greatly improved. Currently, the only known publicly available bus map is more than 300 pages long. SITP is streamlining routes with feedback from local resident committees and developing strategies to ensure that people don’t feel “lost” in their own city, an issue with a similar reform in Santiago, Chile. The improved user information and reliability of service, as well as an integrated farecard, are expected to improve convenience and ease of use for passengers.
 

A Collective Public Bus on Ave. El Dorado during rush hour
 

TransMilenio’s 76 Street station during rush hour
 
To secure these impressive benefits, the SITP will entail some trade-offs. The largest of these is increased occupancy in buses. As shown above, many collective public buses run nearly empty, even at rush hour. At the other end of the spectrum, the buses of TransMilenio are packed beyond capacity. Last year’s bus strike in Bogotá was notable for the extreme crowding and long lines to board TransMilenio. However, the photo below, taken on a normal weekday evening, is strikingly similar to this view of the same station on the day of the strike.
 

TransMilenio’s 100 Street station during rush hour
 
According to an annual survey by Bogotá Cómo Vamos, dissatisfaction with TransMilenio has been steadily increasing; this is largely due to crowding. As of 2010, users reported higher levels of satisfaction with collective public transport than with TransMilenio. Whether SITP alleviates crowding on TransMilenio with improved service in the rest of the city or increases crowding on collective public transport to the same level remains to be seen. Hopefully, SITP will successfully strike a balance between efficiency and comfort.
 

A collective public bus parked on a city sidewalk
 
SITP will transform Bogotá in more subtle ways, as well. For example, with the construction of formal bus depots, public space currently used for bus parking will be returned to city residents. Less aggressive driving and buses in better repair may improve the comfort of the ride. Bus operators will be held contractually responsible for maintaining adequate results on user satisfaction surveys; the link of these surveys to compensation will strengthen accountability for quality of service. Finally, many hope that the SITP will usher in a more humane era of what Carlos Cordoba, former director of Bogotá Cómo Vamos, calls “dignified public transportation.” While many things are still uncertain, one thing is for sure: after SITP, Bogotá will never be the same.
 

A TransMilenio bus depot near Portal del Norte
 
 
 
 
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Nigel Wilson as Keynote Speaker in XV Congreso Chileno de Ingeniería de Transporte

The Chilean Conference on Transport Engineering (Congreso Chileno de Ingeniería de Transporte) is the main activity of the Chilean Transport Engineering Society (Sociedad Chilena de Ingeniería de Transporte – SOCHITRAN).
 
Nigel Wilson was invited as keynote speaker in this relevant event, and he presented the following topic: «The Role of Information Technology in Improving Transit Systems». You can download the presentation here. The other keynote speaker was the Chilean Transport Minister, Pedro Pablo Errázuriz, who Nigel had previously met in another meeting.
 
 
 
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Rio de Janeiro's Transoeste BRT Corridor Still On Schedule

First 32 kilometers to be partially operational by May 2012
 
Source: EMBARQ
 
Photo by Prefeitura do Rio, Transoeste under construction
 
EMBARQ Brasil performed a one-day roadmap framing workshop to promote knowledge and get commitment among the stakeholders involved in implementing the first bus rapid transit (BRT) corridor in Rio de Janeiro, known as Transoeste («Transwest.»)
 
The roadmap framing workshop convened 21 people who discussed the project’s risks and mitigation actions, created the opportunity statement, and developed the timeline of the project.
 
By May 2012, the first phase of the Transoeste corridor (32 kilometers) is scheduled to be operational, and by 2013, the 56 kilometers should be completely operational.
 
The Transoeste corridor will link the area of Barra da Tijuca with the districts of Santa Cruz and Campo Grande. When it is completed, the corridor will measure 56 kilometers long, with 53 stations. The high-performance BRT system is expected to reduce travel time by half between the districts it serves, which are located in the West Zone of Rio de Janeiro.
 
The roadmap framing workshop was held in the auditorium of the Municipal Secretariat for Transport, with the participation of the technical team, operators and project managers. Luis Antonio Lindau, director of EMBARQ Brasil, led the event, with the support of Daniela Facchini, project and operational director, both members of our CoE.
 
 
 
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Improving Lima's public transport (in Spanish)

Source: SIBRT
 
Un futuro limpio, ordenado y amigable con el medio ambiente es el que la Municipalidad Metropolitana de Lima impulsa para la capital peruana a partir de enero de 2013.
 
Un futuro limpio, ordenado y amigable con el medio ambiente es el que la Municipalidad Metropolitana de Lima impulsa para la capital peruana a partir de enero de 2013, a través de la ordenanza municipal Nº 1538 que establece, entre otras cosas, la circulación del denominado ‘Bus Patrón’ como vehículo de transporte público.
 
Con estas unidades, se contará con un mejor servicio de transporte público, pues estas unidades deberán caracterizarse por el respeto, la comodidad y calidad para los ciudadanos. Así lo anunció la alcaldesa de Lima, Susana Villarán durante la exposición del ‘Bus Patrón’ realizado en la Plaza de Armas el pasado 22 de julio.
 
“Estos buses son fruto del esfuerzo de empresarios y propietarios del transporte para modernizar el parque automotor destinado al transporte público. Estos autobuses son el fruto del trabajo de cientos y miles de transportistas” precisó la alcaldesa.
 
Anunció que Lima contará con estos buses que circularán a través de los corredores o vías que construirá la comuna limeña y que confluirán en un “Sistema Integrado de Transporte”, que trasladará al 40% de los pasajeros de Lima con los estándares de rapidez, comodidad, orden y limpieza que todos los limeños y limeñas necesitan, además que hará posible que los pasajeros hagan todas las conexiones que necesitan para llegar a su destino con un solo boleto/pasaje/ticket.
 
Características del ‘Bus Patrón’
 
La burgomaestre explicó las óptimas características de este tipo de vehículos, como por ejemplo un mayor tamaño físico y una mayor capacidad para transportar a pasajeros. En este caso, la ordenanza considera cinco tipos de vehículos, con longitudes de 9, 12, 14, 18 y 24 metros (los dos últimos son buses articulados) que transportan en 40, 100, 120, 160 y 240 personas, respectivamente.
 
Estos buses reducen la contaminación ambiental, toda vez que utilizan la normativa Euro 4, que reduce 50 veces la emisión de gases nocivos, tanto para motores a gas como para motores diesel. Asimismo, es un vehículo inclusivo porque favorece el transporte de personas con discapacidad.
 
Otro aspecto importante de destacar es que reduce la contaminación acústica, pues produce menos ruido debido al tratamiento de la carrocería aislante.
 
La alcaldesa de Lima, refirió que estos buses patrón o Euro 4 ya están siendo fabricados y/o ensamblados en el país.
 
La puesta en marcha de estas unidades de transporte no incrementará -de manera alguna- el costo de los pasajes toda vez que estos buses cuentan con la capacidad suficiente para albergar al número de pasajeros que requieren para cubrir sus costos de operación.
 
Sin embargo, este proceso de cambio será gradual para no afectar a los transportistas que vienen laborando en la ciudad, por lo que Villarán señaló que los buses Euro 3 seguirán circulando por vías seleccionadas de la ciudad hasta que recuperen su inversión y luego puedan adquirir los buses Euro 4 exigidos por la comuna limeña.
 
Los corredores complementarios a los que se refiere la autoridad edil son los de la Panamericana Norte – Sur, Javier Prado – Faucett, Tacna – Mercado de Flores y el de Independencia. En ese sentido, en el resto de rutas podrán seguir circulando buses Euro 3 y aquellos que han sido renovados.
 
 
 
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Meeting with Chilean Transport Minister Pedro Pablo Errázuriz

Last week, our member Nigel Wilson visited Chile for Felipe Delgado’s PhD defense, and the opportunity was used to have a meeting with the Transport and Telecommunications Minister. The main topic was the fare mechanisms for Transantiago system. Nigel presented the state of the practice and the MIT experience in this subject, and later a conversation was started to analyze the future improvements in Santiago’s fare system. We expect to continue participating in the discussion of this and other related topics with our transport authorities. This is a picture of the participants of the meeting:
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Ignacia Torres, Marco Batarce, Juan Carlos Muñoz, Patricia Galilea, Nigel Wilson, Minister of Transport of Chile Pedro Pablo Errázuriz, Undersecretary of Transport of Chile Gloria Hutt, General Manager of Transantiago Patricio Pérez and Ricardo Giesen.
 
You can download Nigel Wilson’s presentation here.
 
 
 
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Opinion Pieces: The economy wide benefits of public transport infrastructure investment – time to look outside the transport box

Opinion Pieces: since 2007, Prof. David Hensher has written an opinion column in the Australasian Bus and Coach magazine, where he monthly discusses a lot of different transport-related hot topics. In this section we are revisiting these columns.
 
February 2011
 
The transport sector faces many challenges, given its critical role in the provision of mobility services. In recent years a number of researchers have argued that there are an increasing number of benefits associated with public transport projects that go beyond the identification of benefits to public transport users and the transport sector in general. These benefits have become known as the wider economy benefits (WEBs) and define a new set of benefits attributable to some market responses that follow public transport infrastructure investments. The inclusion of these wider economic benefits in appraisal of transport projects will help to ensure that we do not miss key investment opportunities for enhancing productivity. It is therefore important that we incorporate the best information we have to include wider economic benefits in transport appraisal. The key WEBs are: (i) Agglomeration – bringing activities closer together is time and space, partly linked to the redistribution of employment opportunities and gains in productivity in the provision of goods and services from spatial concentration, (ii) Increased output in imperfectly competitive markets, and (iii) Labour market impacts – labour supply and the move to more productive jobs.
 
Firms and workers deciding where to work and live trade off various benefits and costs (wages, rents, congestion etc.). Their final location decision will be a contributing factor to the overall city size. When each firm or worker takes a location decision they consider the benefit to themselves such as the impact on profit or wage but (in most cases) do not consider the impact of their decisions on the productivity of others. A firm or worker’s location decision may generate agglomeration economies, which benefit not only the individual firm but also other firms and workers located in the cluster. There is therefore an ‘externality’ in addition to the private benefit.
 
The rearranging of activities in time and space also delivers improvements in levels of air pollution and emissions in general. Why might the transport sector care about this? There are obvious reasons, one most important one being that if we can identify a larger number of benefits associated with investment in public transport, then the transport portfolio of government can present a stronger case to Treasuries (State and Federal) of the value of public transport projects. While there are claims that such additional economy wide benefits can be as high as 60 percent on top of the traditional transport-sector modelled benefits (mainly gains in travel time), benefits associated with agglomeration look like delivering up to an additional 10-20 percent of benefits, an amount not to be ignored.
 
The identification and inclusion of these WEBs means that we can provide additional information to help inform prioritization of schemes for funding allocation. With higher returns to public transport projects, we could release more public funds for investment, as well as identify the impacts on gross domestic product (GDP) which always interests governments, and can help to support call for private participation in infrastructure investment.
 
Food for thought
 
 
 
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Transmetro from Barranquilla is the Colombian transit system with lowest accident risk index (in Spanish)

Source: SIBRT
Según evaluación del Fondo Nacional de Prevención Vial el índice de Transmetro es del 23,4% y está por debajo del índice nacional que es del 26%.
 
Transmetro es el Sistema con el índice global de riesgo en la operación más bajo de Colombia, con un 23.4%, por debajo del promedio nacional, que registra un 26%. Este es uno de los resultados más importantes de la evaluación que realizó el Fondo Nacional de Prevención Vial y que fueron dados a conocer hoy por su Directora Ejecutiva, la Dra. Alexandra Rojas, en reunión con el Gerente de Transmetro, Manuel Fernández.
 
El informe destaca que gracias a su política preventiva, Transmetro ha tomado medidas y controles para disminuir hasta un punto razonable la probabilidad de ocurrencia de incidentes de seguridad en la operación, por lo cual el FNPV considera que el Sistema ha tenido un alto impacto en los resultados de seguridad vial de Barranquilla, que mostró una disminución del 60% en el número de muertes en accidentes entre el 2006 y el 2010, según un estudio del Fondo.
 
La evaluación enfatiza que Transmetro es el sistema de Colombia que mejor gestiona y controla la operación de las rutas alimentadoras y que cuenta con buses en buenas condiciones y con los equipos de seguridad necesarios. El informe también destaca las buenas prácticas de Transmetro en cuanto a la formación integral de los operadores del Sistema y del equipo de atención al cliente, especialmente en relación con la atención a la población discapacitada.
 
La evaluación se realizó hace tres meses mediante la aplicación de un instrumento con 131 preguntas, en los temas: Infraestructura, institucionalidad, talento humano, equipo móvil y equipamiento estático. El Fondo Nacional de Prevención Vial planteó la elaboración de un plan de acompañamiento a Transmetro con el que se busca el mejoramiento continuo del Sistema.
 
 
 
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85% of Canadian drivers have never used transit

Source: CBC News
 
The vast majority of Canadians who drive every day have never attempted any other way of getting to work, according to a new survey published in August on the typical commute last year.
 
The survey by Statistics Canada found that 82 per cent of Canadian workers drive to work, 12 per cent take some sort of public transit, while six per cent walk or bike to work.
 
Of the 10.6 million workers who commuted by car, 15 per cent, or 1.6 million, had tried using public transit to get to work. But nine million had never tried any other way of getting to work.
 
 
 
A vast majority of drivers said their main reason for not trying anything else was because it would be inconvenient.
 
 
Cyclists, walkers fare better
 
As it turns out, they may be on to something: the survey also showed that transit users have longer than average commutes.

• The average Canadian commute to work was 26 minutes in 2010, the data showed.
• Those who walk or bike to work had the shortest commute, on average, at 14 minutes.
• Although there’s wide disparity, drivers could expect a 24-minute commute, on average.
• But those who rely on public transit took an average of 44 minutes to get to work every day — almost triple the amount of time it takes walkers and cyclists, and nearly double what drivers do.

Transit users who live outside of large urban centres fared even worse. It takes them an average of 51 minutes to get to work every day, compared to 36 for their big city counterparts.
 
Longer commutes had a correlation with stress levels and overall happiness, the survey found. But there are economic consequences too.
 
«The longer you spend driving in traffic (over an hour a day in Toronto) clearly means more personal household spending on gasoline, leaving less discretionary cash,» ATB Financial economist Todd Hirsch said in reaction to the report. »
 
As well, labour market productivity on the job could be affected if workers have to spend a great deal of time getting to-and-from work. Improved public transportation systems … in the coming years could help reduce congestion and commute times.»
 
Perhaps not surprisingly, average commute times overall are higher if the city is larger. Here are the cities with the longest average commute times in Canada:

• Toronto: 33 minutes
• Montreal: 31
• Vancouver: 30
• Ottawa: 27
• Calgary: 26
• Edmonton: 23

Across the country, 20 per cent of commuters of all stripes reported being in some sort of traffic jam on their way to work on a daily basis. But more than half reported they never experience traffic.
 
 
 
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Straight from the Source: What services should you operate in a bus corridor? And what can we achieve in time savings, reliability, and comfort if properly controlled?

Source: Volpe
 

The Volpe Center is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration and is an innovative, Federal, fee-for service organization. Their mission is to improve the USA’s transportation system. Their work is performed for U.S. DOT, as well as other Federal, state, local, and international agencies and entities.
 
Straight from the Source: This engaging speaker series enables an information exchange between the transportation community and today’s leaders in transportation. Straight from the Source events are held at the Volpe Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts and are also accessible via webinar.
 
Juan Carlos Muñoz presented on June 28 a seminar in the Straight from the Source series called «What Services Should You Operate in a Bus Corridor? And What Can We Achieve in Time Savings, Reliability, and Comfort if Properly Controlled?»
 
Watch the video presentation here.
 
 
 
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New plan works for transit, communities

Source: Editorial at The Chicago Sun-Times
 
Chicagoans over the years have concocted one pie-in-the-sky scheme after another to connect the city’s famously unconnected L system.
 
Snazzy names like the “Circle Line” and the “Central Area Circulator” rolled off officials’ tongues.
 
Then nothing.
 
Finally, a plan being released today may break that pattern of dream and bust. For less money and a bigger potential return on investment for city neighborhoods, we’re betting on a nearly 100-mile “Bus Rapid Transit” network proposed by the Metropolitan Planning Council.
 
In an analysis released Wednesday, the regional planning group envisions 10 dedicated bus lanes that would connect riders to L and Metra trains, speed up existing bus trips, improve transit choices in underserved areas and spur or enhance community development.
 
Buses traveling in these lanes — on such streets as Western Avenue, Garfield Boulevard and Irving Park Road — would go twice as fast as existing buses, run every 5 to 10 minutes, stop every half mile at pre-pay stations and get traffic signal priority. Any regular bus rider would say hallelujah to that.
 
But MPC’s plan isn’t only about moving riders more quickly; it’s also about making better neighborhoods. In selecting routes, MPC devised a formula that weighed access, or lack thereof, to retail, jobs, schools and other community anchors, as well as proximity to rail lines and existing travel times and ridership. Dedicated bus lanes can enhance thriving communities and, hopefully, give a boost to areas in need.
 
Dedicated bus lanes have downsides. Drivers lose a lane on key thoroughfares, invariably decreasing traffic speed. And some business owners will balk as buses speed by without stopping. Long term, these lanes will hopefully help reduce traffic congestion by getting drivers onto buses.
 
And while far cheaper than adding new rail lines, creating the bus lanes would cost money. The average U.S. per mile cost is $13.3 million, though MPC predicts lower costs given Chicago’s flat landscape.
 
But the beauty of the MPC’s proposed rapid bus transit system is that one line could be built at a time. That way, individual communities will benefit — and Chicago can test, refine and render a verdict on dedicated lanes.
 
The CTA already is taking that approach, with work under way on Jeffery Boulevard. The CTA also is planning for a Western Avenue lane and a route from Michigan Avenue to the train stations in the West Loop.
 
Mayor Rahm Emanuel is a big fan of dedicated bus lanes, committing to them in his transition plan, as is his transportation commissioner and his CTA chief.
 
It’s time to move beyond pie-in-the-sky and build a better-connected Chicago.
 
 
 
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Guangzhou BRT Reduces CO2 Emissions by 86,000 Tonnes Annually

Source: ITDP
 
System has also vastly improved travel speeds for motorists and bus riders alike
 
Guangzhou, China opened its first, 22.5-kilometer Bus Rapid Transit corridor in 2010 in an effort to cut congestion on one of the city’s busiest roads, Zhongshan Avenue, and to improve the efficiency of the city’s bus system. The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy issued preliminary findings from a new study showing the Guangzhou BRT has done this and more.
 
Key findings of the study include:
– Travel times have improved for motorists and bus riders along the corridor 20% and 29% respectively.
– The system now has 805,000 daily boardings. It is carrying more passengers per hour than any metro line in mainland China outside of Beijing, and more than triples the capacity limits achieved with any other BRT system in Asia.
– The system will reduce Guangzhou’s CO2 emissions by 86,000 tonnes annually, mostly through improved bus operations efficiency.
– The project includes a new greenway parallel to the BRT corridor and a 5,000 bike public bike share system. Bicycle ridership is up approximately 50% since the corridor opened.
 
Karl Fjellstrom, Vice Director of ITDP says, “The Guangzhou BRT system expands the menu of options available to mayors seeking high quality transit systems to address congestion, showing that BRT can meet the needs of even the highest demand corridors in the largest cities. The project has been a huge success with the public, increasing satisfaction with public transport in Guangzhou from 29% to 65% since the project opened.”
 
With rapid increases in wages and standard of living, private vehicle ownership in Guangzhou has increased 22% annually over the past five years (over 310,000 new cars in 2010 alone). Still nearly half of residents, or over 7 million people rely on mass transit. This project helps meet this high demand and maintains transit as an attractive option. It also serves as a model for other cities throughout China and around the globe, of a high-quality, cost-efficient transit solution.
 
The study is available online here. This is the first part of a longer-term monitoring and evaluation program for the Guangzhou BRT. It focuses primarily on the system’s impacts on CO2 and air pollution.
 
 
 
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BRT projects for Monterrey, Mexico (in Spanish)

Source: Milenio
 
El secretario de Obras Públicas, Luis Marroquín, anunció el arranque del proyecto que contempla carriles exclusivos para el paso de trenes ligeros o BRT.
 
Monterrey – A las obras federales, estatales y municipales en proceso, que generan un gran caos vehicular, se sumarán a partir del próximo lunes los trabajos de construcción de la Ecovía, sobre las avenidas Lincoln y Ruiz Cortines.
 
En reunión con integrantes de la Cámara Nacional de Comercio de Monterrey, el secretario de Obras Públicas, Luis Marroquín, anunció el arranque del proyecto que contempla carriles exclusivos para el paso de trenes ligeros o BRT.
 
La primera etapa, detalló el funcionario, incluye la construcción de once kilómetros, de un total de 30, que ya fueron licitadas por la dependencia estatal en las semanas previas.
 
«Estos primeros 11 kilómetros debemos de estarlos terminando por ahí de marzo del próximo año, ese es el período de ejecución, ojalá lo podamos hacer antes, pero también hay que tomar en cuenta que tenemos obstrucciones en líneas de servicio, que nos pueden llevar el primer mes en la reubicación de todo eso y ahora sí ya después vamos a ver cómo podemos entrarle con todo».
 
Marroquín dijo que la segunda y última etapa iniciará en un período de dos meses y medio, para concluir los 19 kilómetros restantes del proyecto, cuya inversión no fue precisada por el funcionario estatal.
 
Lo que sí estimó es que los trabajos deberán estar listos para el mes de mayo del próximo año, de acuerdo al calendario de obra trazado.
 
«Bueno, las etapas han venido dándose de acuerdo a la disposición de los recursos, en este caso el primer recurso de Banobras fue, es eso, estamos trabajando ya en la segunda etapa, en la aprobación de la publicación de la convocatoria, que se hará próximamente, para los 19 kilómetros restantes».
 
Durante su exposición ante los miembros de Canaco, el secretario de Obras Públicas explicó que también se contempla un sistema de transporte similar a futuro en Morones Prieto y Constitución.
 
Revise más detalles del projecto en la siguiente página web.
 
 
 
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Alert warning system planned for Metrobus in Washington

Source: The Washington Examiner
 
Metrobus riders soon will be able to get electronic warnings about delays to their bus trips similar to the ones rail riders already receive, according to the transit agency.
 
Metro is hiring a three-person team to add to its communications staff for the sole purpose of sending alerts to riders about bus service problems, spokesman Dan Stessel told The Washington Examiner. The team will work out of the agency’s bus operations control center in Prince George’s County, sitting alongside dispatchers and cameras to find out what is happening with the hundreds of buses out on the road.
 
The staff will send out email alerts about major disruptions such as motorcades, nasty traffic jams and the like that keep buses from getting where they are supposed to go.
 
«The thinking is that customers will be able to sign up for their bus service by line or lines,» Stessel said.
 
The push comes as Metro tries to make riding the bus more appealing to take the pressure off the rail system. It also has been trying to improve its communication with riders systemwide, a sore spot for years.
 
Currently rail riders can sign up to receive e-alerts that let them know about delays along the train lines they ride. Recently, the agency rolled out an elevator alert system, as well, so riders who need to use the elevators can better plan their trips.
 
But so far bus riders have been left out. It’s a far more complicated system in some ways as Metro has more than 1,200 buses on the roads during the daily rush.
 
In July 2009, Metro created the NextBus system that uses GPS technology to predict when the next bus is coming. But that system cannot take into account disruptions along the line, nor does it reach out to riders directly.
 
The new bus alert service will be active only on weekdays to start, Stessel said. But the staffers will be on-call at other times to post alerts for major disruptions, he said.
 
Stessel said the agency has posted the jobs listings and has received resumes. They hope to have it up and running by the end of the year, he said.
 
 
 
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Chennai: Hopes about BRTS still persist

Source: The Hindu
 
Inadequate?: An overcrowded bus on Rajiv Gandhi Salai where a dedicated bus lane is being proposed.
 
Where will Chennai, India figure if its public transport bus system is compared with other large metropolitan cities? The sad truth is: somewhere at the bottom of the pile. The Metropolitan Transport Corporation’s (MTC) operational fleet of 3,000 buses is one of the lowest among any major metropolis in the country. The comparison with Delhi’s fleet of 8,000 or Bangalore’s 6,100 buses is even more telling because both the cities transport fewer passengers every day than Chennai.
 
Most major city bus services in the country account for a ridership of 40 to 50 lakh passengers a day. The MTC carries 56 lakh passengers a day with less than half the number of buses as other cities. Overcrowding during rush hour is rampant.
 
Since its days of glory in the 1980s when the then Pallavan Transport Corporation was considered one of the best in the country, public transport in the city has taken a major hit due to persistent neglect, say experts. One attempt to reverse this trend in favour of public transport is the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) proposal which is under the consideration of the government. The move is long overdue. Surveys to build dedicated bus lanes were undertaken in 1967, 1975 and as recently as 2009. Every time, private vehicle traffic was given preference and diverting a lane exclusively for buses was found unfeasible. This, despite the fact that MTC buses transport over 50 per cent of the passenger volumes on major arterial roads.
 
“There is an element of social equity involved when deciding who gets to use the city’s road space,” says Shreya Gadepalli of the Ahmedabad-based Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP). MTC buses plying through both Anna Salai and Grand Southern Trunk Road have a carrying capacity of about 11,000 passengers per hour per directional (pphpd), which, interestingly, is almost the same as a monorail corridor. “The BRT being proposed on Rajiv Gandhi Salai will have a capacity of 14,000 pphpd,” says Ms.Gadepalli.
 
Buses can shuttle through the proposed corridor at 25-30 kmph, instead of the current average speed of 6 kmph.
 
The amount of overcrowding and delay due to congestion will soon become too much to even sustain bus operation in Chennai, says Sudhir Badami, an urban transportation expert and a member of the Mumbai BRTS technical advisory committee.
 
“Studies show that bus passengers get exhausted by the amount of crowding as well as side sways and lateral forces even for a 2-3 km journey. Why should the majority of people suffer just because a few people can go in cars? It is the duty of the government to ensure equitable living standards and a respectable, dignified life for everyone,” Mr.Badami adds.
 
Insisting that no amount of road building can accommodate the vehicle growth rate that the city is going through, R.Balasubramanian, a former Managing Director of MTC, said “Proposals for a dedicated bus corridor on OMR were made way back in 2006. But we never do things until it has become too late. Our city planners have largely failed to provide residents a better quality of life.”
 
 
 
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Opinion Pieces: On public transport investment and fair payment for road use

Opinion Pieces: since 2007, Prof. David Hensher has written an opinion column in the Australasian Bus and Coach magazine, where he monthly discusses a lot of different transport-related hot topics. In this section we are revisiting these columns.
 
January 2011
 
Language and words are powerful ways of communicating simple but important points of view. If we could agree on the meaning of sentences then we will be making great progress in communicating the points of relevance in contrast to the points of misleading commentary. Let me illustrate this. In the debate between light rail (LRT) and bus rapid transit (BRT), supporters of LRT are often heard to say that LRT can carry far more people than BRT per hour, and when we drill down to get clarity they really mean that LRT can carry more people per carriage (or carriage set) than a bus or BRT. When it is pointed out that trunk capacity per vehicle is not the issue but service capacity per hour, and that much more bus service capacity can be delivered per hour than LRT service capacity (in addition to flexibility in service in connecting with feeders), there is a glazing over of the LRT eyes. Simple point – talk service capacity per unit of time, not vehicle capacity.
 
Another example, laden with emotion, is the reference to road pricing and especially the variant correctly called congestion charging. Immediately this is mentioned, the uninformed respondent refers to a congestion tax and assumes it is added onto all existing taxes. There is little hope to sell the merits of reformed road pricing when the word ‘tax’ hits page one of the media every time we try and have a sensible debate on the need to change the current charging scheme (namely fixed registration charges and fuel excise). A careful listening to what we are trying to say to educate the population is that we need to do something to contain traffic congestion, and that we have a real opportunity to review existing charging mechanisms and to align charging closer to the costs that users impose on the network through using their cars and trucks and buses (in contrast to owning their cars and trucks and buses), and that we should be able to design a pricing mechanism that is much fairer, but includes a way of charging for congestion that is contributed to by users of the road network. This would involve dropping some charges as we add in some new congestion-related charges and importantly show how the revenue raised is put back to useful causes that are supported by society. It is possible (yes – believe me) to design a system in which many users of the roads are financially better of with a congestion charge and even an emissions-related charge, where the cost of using the roads is lower when congestion is absent and vehicles are environmentally cleaner. Who would disagree with this? After all time is money although you would wonder sometimes when people complain about delays but will not support possible ways of aiding improved travel times. Few indeed I suspect; however until we can get away from the clutter of emotional misleading language like ‘being slugged with a congestion tax’, what hope is there. The media in particular needs to be more responsible.
 
Food for thought
 
 
 
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Amman Bus Rapid Transit Project Faces Delays

Source: The City Fix
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) may no longer be pursuing a bus rapid transit (BRT) system because of opposition from within government circles, according to anonymous sources interviewed for an article in the Jordan Times. The major transport project has received a positive assessment from a government-appointed review committee, but recently the committee has faced “political pressure” to drop the project altogether, another article reports.
 
The Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) may no longer be pursuing a bus rapid transit (BRT) system because of opposition from within government circles, according to anonymous sources interviewed for an article in the Jordan Times. The major transport project has received a positive assessment from a government-appointed review committee, but recently the committee has faced “political pressure” to drop the project altogether, another article reports.
 
The project was initially received with much anticipation. In a 2010 news article, Prime Minister Samir Rifai cited the BRT as an important step towards developing a comprehensive public transportation system in Amman and described the project as a “great achievement.”
 
Amman Mayor Omar Maani showed similar enthusiasm in the initial stages of the project. “The public transportation sector in Amman will see tangible progress in quality in the next four years,” Maani said in an interview with the Jordan Times. Maani added that the BRT will show improvements in the rehabilitation of sidewalks and car parking spaces.
 
The initial plans of the BRT called for three routes, totaling 32 kilometers (20 miles.) The BRT service was designed with premium, high-capacity buses running along Amman’s busiest corridors on exclusive and completely segregated lanes, each one carrying 120 passengers and running on three-minute intervals during rush hour.
 
GAM secured a $166 million loan from the French Development Agency to finance the BRT’s implementation, and construction began last year. According to an anonymous source from the GAM, the project faces opposition because of fears that the BRT will add to the existing financial burden of the municipality.
 
GAM’s budget for 2011 was approved to be JD406,556,000 (about US $573 million) with a deficit of JD11 million (about US $16 million). During the budget approval, GAM also adopted a financial policy to reduce the budget deficit to JD5 million (US $7 million).
 
When the Mayor of Amman reviewed this budget back in 2010, he accounted for the BRT project. The budget was also meant to focus on other projects that sustain and implement open and bright roads, enhance sanitation and preserve the environment.
 
The project was expected to be operational in 2012 with a capacity of 7,000 passengers per hour in each direction. The system was anticipated to have a major impact on reducing traffic congestion.
 
 
 
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Transportation: The Rapid Expansion of Bus Rapid Transport

Source: Americas Quarterly by Dario Hidalgo
 
The concept of bus rapid transit (BRT) is not new, but in the past decade urban planners began to focus on it as a way of increasing transportation efficiency and getting cars off the road in highly congested cities. And they are increasingly turning to Latin America—the cradle of BRT— for ideas that work.
 
While there is no single definition for BRT, the systems generally involve dedicated and separate bus lanes, permanent stations similar to those of rail transportation, longer distances between stops, and the use of information technology to improve operational efficiency. The goal is to offer fast and low-cost urban mobility through a system that provides service approaching rail quality, but at a fraction of the cost to build and operate.
 
Curitiba, Brazil, became the first city in the world to implement dedicated bus lanes when 12 miles (19 kilometers) of service was introduced in 1974—an initiative upgraded to a fully functioning BRT in 1982.
 
Since then, 31 additional cities have launched BRT systems across Latin America, serving 17 million passengers daily. Systems include: El Trole in Quito, Ecuador (1995); TransMilenio in Bogotá, Colombia (2000); Metrobús in Mexico City, Mexico (2005); Metropolitano in Lima, Peru (2010); and Metrobús in Buenos Aires, Argentina (2011). Additional BRT operations are running in other cities in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, Panama, and Venezuela.
 
The world has followed Latin America’s lead in BRT. As of January 2011, at least 118 cities globally—from Los Angeles to Istanbul to Guangzhou, China—have launched BRT systems, with 27 cities doing so in the past 10 years alone.
 
But while transportation planners increasingly look to BRT to reduce congestion, pollution and road fatalities at a time of reduced city budgets, its implementation in Latin American cities has not been without difficulties.
 
A Magic Bullet?
 
The main driver of BRT is its low price tag. Capital costs range from one-tenth to one-third of comparable rail systems. Systems also can be implemented in a short timeframe. For example, Macrobús in Guadalajara, Mexico, began operations in March 2009—just two years after the idea was proposed. Such quick turnaround makes these systems an attractive option for city mayors wishing to show results before the next election.
 
Across the region, BRT systems also get high marks for their performance. Bogotá moves 45,000 passengers per hour per direction at a speed of 16 miles (26 kilometers) per hour. Guayaquil boasts more than 13 passengers boarding its Metrovía buses per kilometer driven, and in Mexico City, 3,000 passengers ride each bus on an average day. High performance brings low operational costs.
 
BRTs also save time, emissions and accidents. For instance, with the implementation of TransMilenio, Bogotá enjoys an average commuter time savings of 31 percent. Add to that the 302,000-ton reduction in carbon dioxide per year and the 16 lives saved and 260 injuries prevented from road accidents. Similar results have been reported in other BRTs.
 
As the concept advances, interesting trends are emerging. BRTs can increasingly count on integrated citywide bus systems, improved processes for private-sector participation in operations, increased funding from national governments, and a rise in the number of bus manufacturers and technology providers. These changes are already being seen in countries like Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico.
 
New information systems that enhance bus quality and performance are also coming on line. For instance, passengers using select BRT systems are now able to plan their route online and to receive real-time information about bus arrivals on their cell phones. At the same time, global positioning systems and advanced control systems are improving system reliability.
 
But challenges remain for BRT implementation.
 
First, there is the political hurdle. A mayor needs to be firmly committed to the concept. Inevitably, detractors and opponents—some of them quite powerful politically and economically, such as private bus operators and car users—will emerge. In Quito, Santiago and Bogotá, private bus owners and operators—afraid they would be pushed out of their routes by the new systems—staged protests against the local BRT.
 
Bogotá car owners—organized by community and business groups—blocked the dedicated bus lanes in the Carrera Séptima BRT corridor to protest the reduction in traffic lanes available for private use. In every case, strong leadership in the mayor’s office and special provisions that allowed existing groups to be part of the new programs preempted opposition.
 
The second difficulty is institutional, both in the public and private sectors. The public sector needs to develop new institutions and attract a labor force to manage and work on these relatively complicated and technical systems. For its part, the private sector must develop formal companies with the capacity to retain and train drivers, mechanics and operational personnel.
 
Finally, cities need to find new revenue sources to support construction and maintenance of BRT infrastructure, such as transfers from state or national governments, new taxes, bonds or privatizations.
 
One key decision remains: should governments provide subsidies for students, the elderly and the poor so that they can use the more expensive BRT system? Santiago and São Paulo subsidize public transportation riders, including those who use the BRT. In Quito and Guayaquil the system offers discounted fares for students, elderly and the handicapped, using the revenue from their overall fare collections.
 
But subsidies largely remain out of the question, since systems typically operate on tight budgets that rely on the revenues generated by user fares.
 
Other issues seen in BRT systems across Latin America and other developing countries include lack of maintenance, insufficient user education, low quality of service, high occupancy levels, and safety and security concerns. These issues are mostly the result of institutional and financial constraints and are not intrinsic to the BRT concept.
 
But still, overcoming these issues is critical for the future of BRT systems and will only come with political leadership, adequate funding levels and good planning and management.
 
A Promising Future
 
BRT operations will continue to grow, with innovation and adaptation of existing models in cities around the world. But progressive policies and greater knowledge sharing are still needed to address present and future challenges.
 
One initiative, the Asociación Latinoamericana de Sistemas Integrados y BRT (SIBRT) established in 2010, provides a forum for agencies to share experiences on how to foster BRT system development. In addition, the Center of Excellence in BRT, a research institution established in Chile in 2010, seeks to advance best practices in BRT design and implementation.
 
These types of new forums offer an important space to address critical issues, such as high occupancy levels, which must be resolved for the BRT model to become an increasingly important transit alternative in a budget-constrained environment.
 
Urban areas must find new solutions to traffic. With the right tweaks to its BRT systems, Latin America can be a model for transportation planners.
 
 
 
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Boxer, Feinstein Announce $9.7 Million for Bus Rapid Transit in Los Angeles

Source: Barbara Boxer, U.S. Senator website
 
Will create dedicated bus lanes along Wilshire Boulevard
 
Washington, D.C.—Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein both (D-CA) today announced a $9.7 million grant for Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority to enhance bus rapid transit on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. This award was the result of funding that Senator Feinstein secured in the fiscal year 2009 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act.
 
Senator Feinstein said, “This Bus Rapid Transit project will reduce travel time on one of Los Angeles’ most important transit routes and enhance the effectiveness of public transportation in Southern California.”
 
Senator Boxer said, “This important investment will help ease congestion along one of the busiest routes in Los Angeles, reducing pollution and helping thousands of residents get to school and work more quickly each day.”
 
This project will implement dedicated bus lanes along portions of a 12.5 mile section of Wilshire Boulevard between downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica. The bus-only lanes will be used exclusively by Bus Rapid Transit service during rush hour and are expected to reduce travel time by 25 percent compared to current service.
 
Wilshire Boulevard is one of the most important transit corridors in Los Angeles County with approximately 93,000 bus boardings each day.
 
 
 
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Lima's Metropolitano system improves level of service (in Spanish)

Source: SIBRT
 

A un año de funcionamiento en Lima resaltan el incremento de la demanda, mejoramiento de la operación, ampliación de rutas y de unidades.
 
Dentro de la política de mejora continua, Protransporte a un año de su puesta en funcionamiento, ha alcanzado importantes logros, destacando entre ellos el incremento de la flota de operación diaria de 96 a 123 buses alimentadores y de 176 a 192 buses articulados que transitan por el Corredor Segregado; es decir, el Metropolitano ofrece, en lo que va del año, 43 buses adicionales a sus usuarios.
 
El presidente del Directorio de Protransporte, Juan Tapia Grillo, explicó que este progreso constituye un paso importante en el mejoramiento del sistema y destacó que el próximo semestre se tiene previsto aumentar la flota de buses de acuerdo al incremento de la demanda, que hasta el momento creció de 220 mil a 350 mil usuarios diarios y que espera cerrar el año transportando diariamente a 500 mil usuarios.
 
Adicionalmente, se hizo una ampliación de rutas del Metropolitano entre las que figuran una Ruta Regular denominada “C” y un expreso ó servicio directos (Nº 4), además de 8 nuevas rutas alimentadoras, las cuales permitieron que desde enero hasta junio el sistema llegue a transportar 50 millones de pasajeros de los 22 millones que se transportó durante el 2010.
 
Para Tapia este incremento se debe, en gran medida, al retiro de las rutas de transporte público: El Rápido, Chama y Arco Iris que se superponían al Corredor en los distritos de San Isidro y Miraflores, así como al retiro de los 2 mil autos colectivos que circulaban por la Vía Expresa del Paseo de la República en horas punta.
 
Recordó que, se ha realizado la “Encuesta Origen- Destino” que permitirá rediseñar las rutas de acuerdo a las necesidades de viaje de los usuarios e implementar próximamente, a partir de agosto, nuevos servicios súper expresos (directos y rápidos) e incrementar la flota.
 
El titular de Protransporte enfatizó que se trabajó fuertemente en la seguridad de los peatones, ejecutando obras de mejora en intersecciones a lo largo del Corredor por un valor cercano al millón de dólares, las mismas que incluyeron cruces peatonales con instalación de semáforos, beneficiando así a más de 35 mil peatones que transitan por las zonas aledañas al Corredor Segregado. Asimismo, se efectuó una inversión de S/.2.7 millones para el mejoramiento de la accesibilidad a las estaciones Plaza de Flores y Tomás Valle.
 
Destacó el mantenimiento de las áreas verdes del Corredor en Convenio con SERPAR, que durante la gestión anterior no tenían presupuesto asignado, con la finalidad de optimizar el entorno ambiental de la población, para lo cual se realizó una inversión de medio millón de dólares.
 
Por otro lado, anunció que se culminó el perfil técnico del COSAC 2, el cual ha sido desarrollado por especialistas de Protransporte y mejorará la movilidad urbana de 1.9 millones de personas de Lima Metropolitana, continuando en los próximos seis meses con los estudios definitivos a nivel de expediente técnico.
 
Continúan las mejoras en el próximo semestre
 
Protransporte adquirió un sistema de video vigilancia compuesto por 359 cámaras que se pondrán en funcionamiento a partir de setiembre del presente año y que serán monitoreadas desde el moderno Centro de Gestión y Control.
 
Por otro lado, se iniciará la ejecución de obras en todo el Corredor Central las cuales están destinadas a la ampliación, mejoramiento del acceso y obras de seguridad vial y valorizadas en $ 25 mil, para las que ya se encuentran realizando los estudios de preinversión e inversión requeridos.
 
Se gestionó con COFIDE el bono del chatarreo para lo cual se cuenta con $ 6.5 millones y que paralelamente se viene trabajando en la convocatoria para realizar los estudios que permitan tasar el valor de buses en circulación que tienen una antigüedad de 20 años.
 
Tapia agregó que el Metropolitano, comparado con otros sistemas latinoamericanos similares, es el que tiene el índice más bajo de siniestralidad y accidentalidad, pues recordó que en su haber tiene solamente una víctima mortal que lamentar y por imprudencia propia del accidentado. “Estamos decididos a tomar las acciones necesarias para mejorar el funcionamiento de nuestro sistema y ofrecer una mayor calidad del servicio a favor de la ciudadanía” finalizó el Presidente del Directorio de Protransporte.
 
 
 
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Opinion Pieces: Expertise in government and industry – the major challenge facing the sector

Opinion Pieces: since 2007, Prof. David Hensher has written an opinion column in the Australasian Bus and Coach magazine, where he monthly discusses a lot of different transport-related hot topics. In this section we are revisiting these columns.
 
December 2010
 
Over the last year or so, it has been mentioned repeatedly to me that the biggest constraint the bus sector faces is the lack of expertise in the government sector in particular, but also a recognition that the industry of bus operators has not escaped this dilemma either. The expertise that has been highlighted relates to performance management, contracting processes and the strategic understanding of planning and monitoring bus transport as a system serving a network. Why has this occurred? There is a real problem in attracting new blood to an industry that undersells itself – there is no great sparkle when the community sees the industry as nothing more than a career in driving a bus, maintaining a bus, designing timetables and a bureaucratic career in managing bus contracts. It may come as a surprise to many in this industry that until new graduates actually work in the sector, they have no idea that there are challenging jobs in planning, strategic development, finance, marketing and dare we say strategic thinking.
 
It seems to be, observing from a distance, that there are too many people in the industry who lack a strategic focus and/or vision, are more concerned about the day to day operational issues and less concerned about the long term implications of such micro-detailing of issues that may appear important and urgent at the time, yet end up being non urgent and not important. I am sure all readers can relate to this. Compliance management has taken over from strategic commitment to worthwhile change. The level of detail in the growing array of documents that are produced in establishing formal relationships between the regulator and the operator might best be described as governance breakdown or institutional malfunctioning. Why do we need all this paperwork and detail when the requirements of service delivery are so much more simpler? Can someone please answer this question? It seems to me that it is worthwhile revisiting what I might describe as essential rules to ensure compliance, in contrast to the numerous rules that have been added over the years to numerous regulatory and implementation documents to ‘protect’ the transparency of a flawed process. My biggest concern is that despite all of this detail and unnecessary complexity (which produces nothing short of ambiguity and lack of clarity), we still remain somewhat data poor in understanding this great industry. My wish is that we start to recognize even more than we have to date, that there is so much wasted effort in competing bodies compiling data on the sector that is often in conflict in regards to the evidence. Can we one day sort this out.
 
Food for thought
 
 
 
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Event Wrap-Up: 1st Forum for Sustainable Transportation Technologies

Source: EMBARQ
 
EMBARQ Brasil presents on environmental benefits of bus rapid transit.
 
Brazilian BRT systems can significantly reduce carbon emissions and generate other important co-benefits, said EMBARQ Brasil President Toni Lindau at the 1st Forum for Sustainable Transportation Technologies in Rio de Janeiro. He also pointed out the need to evaluate the potential of alternative vehicle technologies and fuels using a life cycle analysis.
 
EMBARQ Brasil was invited to participate in the event by FETRANSPOR, the state federation of bus operators in Rio de Janeiro. This invitation was the result of the partnership between EMBARQ Brasil and FETRANSPOR initiated at the BRT Marketing Workshop held in May.
 
The forum was an important gathering of transport officials and members of the private sector, including the largest bus manufacturers and fuel providers. The forum focused on how to provide alternative energy sources for improved transportation systems, especially during the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics. Transport officials from across Brazil were exposed to the need to carefully consider vehicle and fuel choices in projects for both mega-events.
 
EMBARQ Brasil, together with EMBARQ Research and Practice, is now developing a holistic and detailed comparative study of alternative vehicle and fuel technologies, to help support the selection of technologies for the next generation of Brazilian BRT systems.
 
The forum was organized by FETRANSPOR and O Globo Jornal, with the support of EMBARQ Brasil. EMBARQ Brasil President Toni Lindau was a key speaker. Director of Development and Strategic Relations Rejane Fernandes and Transport Engineer Magdala Arioli also represented EMBARQ Brasil at the event.
 
 
 
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Goiânia, Brasil: online information for transport system users (in Spanish)

Source: SIBRT
 
La integración entre el sistema de localización de los autobuses y el medio ambiente virtual ayudan con la disponibilidad de información.
 
En 2009, con la implementación de un nuevo modelo de gestión del transporte público de la Región Metropolitana de Goiânia (RMG), Brasil, la información proporcionada al cliente ganó un nuevo formato: plataformas virtuales e interactivas. El Servicio de Información Metropolitana (SIM) tiene como base lo más moderno que existe en procesos y tecnología. Con una inversión de más de R$ 50 millones durante los últimos 3 años, se ha desarrollado e implementado una serie de productos en las áreas de gestión de la información y relaciones con los clientes.
 
El entorno digital se caracteriza por canales que proporcionan la información generada a través de la integración de dos herramientas principales: el sistema ITS4MOBILITY instalado en todos los 1.371 vehículos de la red (compuesto por GPRS y computador a bordo) y la cartografía de la ruta de las 276 líneas en funcionamiento y de los más de 5.700 puntos de parada. Con eso, la pantalla de puntos de parada, los caminos guión, i-Center, pagina web, WAP y SMS reciben información en tiempo real con datos como: tiempo para el próximo bus, las líneas para llegar de un punto a otro de la ciudad, su recorrido y frecuencia.
 
La opción más tradicional de servicio al cliente, el Call Center, también tiene buena aceptación del público. En el caso de la Red Metropolitana de Transporte Colectivo (RMTC), la peculiaridad de este servicio es el hecho de actuar como una herramienta para escuchar a los clientes, es decir, se transmite cada caso al área responsable, en busca de una respuesta para las cuestiones criticas, quejas o sugerencias y se refiere directamente a los clientes. En cuanto a la solicitud de información, las mismas se envían de inmediato por el empleado que habla con el cliente. Los elogios, por último, se envían al área o persona en cuestión con el fin de apreciar su trabajo. “Buscamos agregar valor a nuestros productos de información a los clientes”, dice el director general del Consorcio RMTC, Leomar Avelino.
 
Según el director de la empresa, que es el representante de las cuatro empresas de servicios públicos en el transporte de Goiânia y encargado de la gestión integrada de la operación, el diferencial del sistema desarrollada por el SIM es precisamente variedad de plataformas disponibles para el cliente. Además de los entornos virtuales, la planificación es estructurada para incluir informaciones donde los pasajeros tienen acceso en el cotidiano y la rutina. “No es suficiente la disponibilidad de la información. Es necesario información con estructura de manera que llegue a donde están nuestros clientes. Disminuimos los ruidos y la interferencia en el proceso, y, por supuesto, se ha hecho más fácil el uso del transporte público”, explica.
 
Más información
 
Página web
La primera versión del sitio de RMTC se puso en marcha en noviembre de 2009 con el objetivo de proporcionar informaciones pertinentes que puedan proporcionar al cliente una manera de planificar el uso del transporte colectivo de la Red Metropolitana de Goiânia.
En la actualidad son más de 60.000 accesos mensuales, en los cuales los visitantes pueden ver la ruta de cualquier línea de la Red, localizar e identificar el punto de parada deseado, planear el recorrido en bus con la herramienta “Google Maps” y tener acceso el tiempo de llegada de los próximos dos vehículos en cualquier punto de parada de la Red (en tiempo real).
 
Wap
Herramienta que proporciona, a través de la web en su teléfono, consultar, en tiempo real, los minutos restantes para la salida de los vehículos de un punto de parada en particular. El mensaje recibido ofrece, también, el número y nombres de las líneas que hay en el punto deseado.
 
Pantallas en Puntos de Parada
Tecnologia de primer mundo para el servicio al cliente RMTC. La pantalla utiliza la tecnología derivada de Volvo de Suecia – ITS4MOBILITY, instalada en todos los vehículos de la Red – permite al cliente realizar un seguimiento en las líneas y los minutos restantes para la llegada de los próximos dos buses en un punto de parada particular, así como el Wap.
En la actualidad hay 14 pantallas repartidas en ocho distritos de Goiânia y uno en Apareceida de Goiânia, instalados en lugares de intensa actividades, tales como supermercados, centros comerciales y universidades. La definición de los locales se realiza mediante el análisis del flujo de personas, para que el acceso a la información sea cada vez mayor por los clientes.
 
iCenter
Situados en los terminales de integración, es una gran pantalla interactiva que funciona al tacto (touchscreen). A través de ella, se puede planear un itinerario de viaje con la ayuda de Google Maps y ver los horarios y las rutas de cada línea.
 
SMS
Es un servicio innovador proporcionado por RMTC, único en Brasil en el área del transporte colectivo urbano. Con él se puede encontrar, en tiempo real mediante mensajes de texto en celulares, información acerca de cuantos minutos quedan para la llegada de los vehículos en cualquier punto de parada de la Red.
 
Call Center
La RMTC ofrece a sus clientes de Call Center gratis para las llamadas realizadas desde teléfonos fijos. El servicio se presta de lunes a sábados y recibe un promedio de 6.500 llamadas al mes, de los cuales el 90% son solicitudes de información.
 
Señalización de los Terminales
Proceso que proporciona información sobre los terminales de la RMTC de los medios de comunicación analógicos y digitales de una manera estandarizada y con reglas que tienen por objetivo facilitar la lectura y comprensión por los clientes. Todo el material gráfico de la Red es basado en proyecto de Diseño de Información, lo que explica los ajustes de color, diseño, tamaño y diseño de conjunto.
 
Enrutamiento
La herramienta permite al cliente planificar los viajes en transporte público. Mapas indicativos con los nombres de calles, puntos de embarque, visualización de la ruta elegida, el tiempo de viaje y el número de líneas disponibles para los usuarios del servicio.
 
 
 
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TransMilenio: The Good, the Bus and the Ugly

Source: The City Fix
 
The Colombian capital of Bogota has been praised for more than a decade concerning its dramatic transformation, which centered around the TransMilenio bus rapid transit (BRT) system, ushered in by former mayor Enrique Peñalosa. TransMilenio has been widely praised and imitated around the world and is considered the gold standard for BRT service. However, many consider the successful bus system to be struggling under its own success. What’s happened to the world’s most famous BRT? The myriad factors are complex, ranging from controversial public policy decisions, engineering mishaps, political contempt, marketing budget cuts and even earthquakes. This is story about TransMilenio in 2011: the good, the bus and the ugly.
 
“The big problem we’re facing now is nobody is talking about these system expansions, and it’s like this plan has been abandoned,” said Dario Hidalgo, former deputy general manager for TransMilenio and director of research and practice for EMBARQ.
 
The original TransMilenio plans for 2011 anticipated 170 kilometers of lanes. Instead, Bogota is currently coping with 84 kilometers of completed lanes, with an additional 20 kilometers under construction. While Phase I of the system was implemented seemingly overnight in two years, phases II and III have been delayed, taking 5 years and 7 years to start, respectively. The 20 kilometers of Phase III currently under construction are already 1.5 years behind schedule, with an estimated completion date of 2012, aggravating Bogotanos whose city is mired in public works projects.
 
The mayor of Bogota presides over nearly 20 percent of the Colombian population and consequently is one of the most powerful figures in Colombia. Colombian law limits mayors to three-year consecutive terms. As a result, politicians avoid fomenting their predecessors’ initiatives, knowing their rivals are waiting in the wings. Coincidentally, in Bogota, no project is more attached to a politician than TransMilenio is to former mayor Peñalosa. After Peñalosa’s ambitious term as mayor of Bogota from 1998 to 2000, he has been followed by three administrations unsympathetic towards TransMilenio.
 
“If you attach a project to a single character, especially a political figure like Peñalosa, then you’ll end up with the opposition attacking a project as a way of scoring political points,” Hidalgo said. “At the end of the day, it’s the citizen who is affected, not the politician.”
 
METRO ENVY
 
Since the 1950s, Bogota has been enamored with the thought of a metro, and this obsession has only grown since the mid ’90s, when Medellin, the country’s second biggest city (and Bogota’s bitter rival) began operating its above-ground metro service. Colombian federal finance funds 40 percent of all transit projects, while local government foots the rest of the bill. Bogota was close to getting federal funding for its long-awaited metro when those funds were diverted to earthquake relief and bank bailouts in 1999. While Peñalosa was willing to take federal funds to construct a metro system, his main intention as mayor was to create a sophisticated bus system. When the metro money dried up, so did his intentions of building it with city funds.
 
Bogota proves that BRT remains a cost-effective solution to mass transit challenges. Medellin’s metro serves 500,000 riders daily, while Bogota’s TransMilenio serves 1.7 million riders per day. Transportation experts recommend considering transit alternatives to provide the best use of limited resources. The estimated infrastructure investment for the metro was estimated at more than double the cost of the BRT system: US$4 billion versus US$1.97 billion. Moreover, the metro system would cover only 8 percent of the city, while the BRT system would cover 85 percent.
 
Hidalgo stresses that “BRT serves many more people, saving more lives, reducing accidents, pollution, and improving the quality of life of millions of people, as opposed to thousands of people.”
 
Hidalgo continues, “Metros are really attractive and no matter if you put the numbers on the table, how much it costs, how long it takes to build, how little coverage it may have, the general public just dismisses them by saying all the big cities in the world have a metro. It’s a just a question of image, not reality.”
 
According to a recent study performed by the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy, TransMilenio was awarded the gold standard in BRT service, receiving a score of 93 out of 100. If gold standard BRT becomes adopted in U.S. cities, such as the ambitious plans of Chicago, New York and in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, perhaps Bogota’s transportation envy will subside. Until then, TransMilenio’s accolades will most likely fall upon deaf ears.
 
“I strongly believe Bogotanos want better transport, and metro is the image of that; it embodies the promise, no matter the cost or the coverage,” Hidalgo said. “The fact that the TransMilenio has problems reinforces that idea.” Major problems include station crowding, poor road quality, bus frequency and passenger congestion in buses.
 
BUMPY ROAD AHEAD
 
Road quality along Avenida Caracas, the first phase of TransMilenio, has some of the worst road quality of the bus system. Foundations under concrete slabs were incorrectly designed and constructed. As a result, cracks and potholes proliferate along the route. El Instituto de Desarrollo Urbano (IDU), or the Urban Development Institute, is in charge of maintaining road infrastructure for the entire city, including the TransMilenio system, and has not been aggressive enough in road upkeep. Lack of maintenance has tainted the image of the system.
 
At peak hours, stations are uncomfortably crowded for passengers. People crowd around both the entrances and exits of the buses, making it nearly impossible for users to depart the bus at rush hour. Passengers at stations refuse to give right-of-way to exiting bus riders, creating stressful bottlenecks. It’s common to miss one’s stop because of the difficulty in exiting the bus. TransMilenio can currently serve up to approximately 45,000 passengers per direction per hour—a figure competitive with metro lines in Mexico City and London.
 
Most of the TransMilenio bus fleet is articulated buses, which have a capacity of 160 passengers, in addition to new bi-articulated buses, which offer maximum occupancy of 260. However, Hidalgo suggests occupancy should be less than 130 passengers per bus during peak hours to provide higher quality service.
 
“With 160 passengers per bus, you end up inviting a lot of users to motorcycles and cars,” he said. Bogota is expected to add approximately 300,000 new cars to its streets by the end of this year—an increase of 18.2 percent from last year.
 
Transmilenio is a public-private partnership that receives no subsidies from the government. The 1,700 Colombian peso fare (roughly US$1) is exorbitantly expensive for low-income users whose daily salary averages US$3.
 
“The way the planners, myself included, tried to fit the cost with the fare was to have a very busy system with a high occupancy of 160, but that doesn’t provide quality service, so we ended up shooting ourselves in the foot because we provided a system that is not high quality for financial reasons,” Hidalgo said. “If you don’t provide subsidies, the sustainability of the system is in jeopardy in the medium and long term.”
 
COMPETING PRIORITIES
 
During the implementation of the system, Mayor Peñalosa was adamant about not subsidizing TransMilenio, preferring to use those funds for other essential city functions, such as education, security, health and public space. Consequently, policy experts increasingly suggest a congestion tax at peak hours—akin to what’s being done in London or Singapore—to finance the subsidy. The city currently restricts drivers with a policy known as Pico y Placa, which restricts car use depending on license plate numbers on designated days of the week. Drivers have found a way around this policy by simply buying a second car and leaving it in the garage on restriction days. Instead of this money going to car dealerships, the money could be a tax that could be reinvested back in public transportation.
 
TransMilenio operators run a formal transportation system with electronic fare collection, state-of-the-art buses and tax payment, in addition to employing drivers for 6 to 8 hours per day with benefits. This is in contrast to Bogota’s collective bus system, whose drivers purchase routes from bus operators. These drivers are paid per customer and operate without formal stops. The city is currently developing the Sistema Integrada de Transporte Publico (SITP), or the Integrated Public Transportation System, an ambitious plan to integrate the collective bus system to TransMilenio. However, it comes with great risks, as the service under the TransMilenio agency’s jurisdiction will jump from 1.7 million users per day to nearly four times that size. TransMilenio’s planning and operational capacities are being spread too thin, focusing on the restructuring of the collective bus system, in addition to dealing with the struggling service.
 
While the TransMilenio agency has been upgrading service, Hidalgo senses the agency has not been aggressive enough. Station expansions have expanded capacity, and increasing farecard sales outside of stations has reduced pedestrian friction and congestion. But more aggressive measures are needed. The implementation of new trunk routes along Avenida Septima or Avenida Boyaca are needed to reduce demand along Avenida Caracas. Demand along this route is over capacity because of the stagnation of new routes, which would have connected the portal stations, thus reducing demand along the busiest parts of the system.
 
Part of the problem is bureaucratic: new infrastructure depends on the Urban Development Institute, whereas new routes and traffic measures depends on the Secretary for Mobility. Therefore, the TransMilenio agency’s role is limited.
 
FOCUSING ON THE USER
 
While many of the problems of TransMilenio are endemic problems requiring long-term engineering or policy solutions, issues involving customer morale and education could be implemented in a relatively short amount of time.
 
More maps and wayfinding tools are needed in both stations and buses. There are no maps located outside of TransMilenio turnstiles. Inside stations, there are typically two types of maps: a complex map detailing all stations and routes offered by the TransMilenio, and a more simplified map showing all routes leaving from the particular station where the passenger is located. These maps are effective and easy-to-use with practice, however, on average, there are only three to four sets of maps per station, and stations are typically three city blocks long, creating a scarcity of knowledge available to the rider. Inexplicably, bus interiors offer no maps whatsoever. The bus features digital displays alerting passengers of the two approaching stations, yet on a bus packed with 160 people, it can be difficult to see or hear the information.
 
Some users feel mistreated and, therefore, distrust the system. Education and courtesy programs could be implemented to aid and assist users about etiquette in the TransMilenio. “The key is first to improve the quality of the service and then user education, not the other way around,” Hidalgo said. “You can’t tell people to behave if they are mistreated.” Once service improves, marketing and advertisements to improve the branding of the TransMilenio might help to counteract the negative attention the media has given the system. (For more tips on marketing for mass transit, read EMBARQ’s guidebook, “From Here to There: A Creative Guide to Making Public Transport the Way to Go.”)
 
DRIVING TOWARD THE FUTURE
 
The triumphs of TransMilenio are well-documented. After a decade, Transmilenio has made great achievements to promote an affordable mass transit system that is a particularly successful and applicable model in developing cities where municipalities have finite resources and face numerous challenges. The success of TransMilenio explains why the model has been adopted in more than 100 cities on every continent. TransMilenio’s success is essential because it has served as a model for so many of the world’s BRT systems. Air quality has improved in Bogota, especially along TransMilenio routes. Road safety has significantly improved, too. Fatalities have decreased 60 percent from 1,299 in 1996 to 551 in 2007, according to the Ministry of Transportation of Colombia. Accessibility for the elderly, disabled, and mothers with small children has also improved, compared to the collective buses, which are not handicap-accessible. Furthermore, 1.7 million people per day use the TransMilenio and travel times have reduced by 32 percent. With the expansion of the system, this progress will only continue.
 
Filmmaker Woody Allen said, “A relationship, I think, is like a shark, you know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies.” The same could be said about the current state of the Bogota’s BRT: it needs to keep progressing to keep up with the demand of this growing city of more than 8 million people. The intention of this post was not to praise nor bury the TransMilenio. More needs to be done to address the issues confronting the decade-old system. The problems are complex and multifaceted, but a pragmatic and factual discussion must enter the public discourse in order to ensure the system’s success.
 
 
 
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Opinion Pieces: The continuing saga on corridors and networks and big project announcements

Opinion Pieces: since 2007, Prof. David Hensher has written an opinion column in the Australasian Bus and Coach magazine, where he monthly discusses a lot of different transport-related hot topics. In this section we are revisiting these columns.
 
November 2010
 
Almost daily we see media reports of State governments commenting on their transport priorities. While the political process is complicated and one respects the obligations of politicians to their constituents, it remains a great puzzle (dare I say frustration) that the focus is primarily on promoting a few big projects in a corridor in our metropolitan areas. If money was plentiful, then one might argue that we can go along with this (despite it not necessarily being the best spend in terms of value for money). Why is it that the message that the focus must be on the entire network and not on specific corridors simply is not getting through in at least two States of Australia? I guess the answer lies in votes that might be easier to capture with a couple of big ticket highly visible projects? Well, fair enough for those who might benefit from them (putting asides the date in the future when they may be operational); but what about the rest of the system that needs good accessibility (broadly defined by connectivity and frequency). At the end of the day the real test of value for money is system-wide – how are people benefiting in traveling from their origin (O) (where the trip starts – not a railway station or bus stop) to their destination (D) (where the trip finishes, not a railway station or bus stop)? It seems from my reading and listening, that opportunities to give all an attractive level of public transport service (in terms of OD connectivity and frequency) is simply not on the political agendas, except in fine words and aspirations – it certainly is not reflected in investment announcements (potential or actual). I look forward to the day when the political machine announces that we will be funding and investing in a fully integrated bus (on its own right of way – tunnelled or above ground) and rail network based on the OD needs of the public that is not defined by one or two very expensive (and likely to be poor value for money) projects in corridors. Think networks and systems please. It is no wonder that the car will reign supreme for the long future – even getting revised car use pricing on the agenda seems to be talked about but ignored as a sensible way forward to tame the car and fund public transport investment.
 
Food for thought
 
 
 
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Public Transport Comes With Densities

Source: Thoughtlines with Bob Carr
 
Proud to have been chosen as keynote speaker for today’s big public transport conference in Parliament House in Canberra, sponsored by a coalition that includes rail, bus and bike groups plus local government and ( interestingly ) the Heart Foundation. The Gillard Government and its predecessor have made commitments to public transport, reviving – I said in my speech – the work of the Whitlam Government in urban policy.
 
Not before time. Capital cities generate 84 percent of economic growth in Australia and they are growing. By mid-century we will see Sydney and Melbourne at seven million. They won’t work without higher densities. Sydney is the only Australian city where more than half of new housing starts come in existing areas. In Melbourne it is only about 50 percent.
 
Here was my first proposal for boosting public transport: make sure that the metropolitan plans for our capitals mandate that, one, we increase the percentage of the population within 30 minutes by public transport of a major centre (like Parramatta or Liverpool) within the overall metropolitan area; two, we aim to have 80 percent of new housing within walking distance of public transport. Call these two ideas “key performance indicators” for city planning. They will nurture public transport. They do exist in the Sydney metropolitan plan where urban density and public transport reliance are the highest in Australia.
 
The Henry report recommended we move towards abolishing vehicle registration charges and fuel taxes for a system that charges drivers for distance travelled and time of journey. One of my fellow speakers suggested research towards ways of persuading private motorists that they could be better off under this model. And another speaker said marketing and politics can deliver this reform – and that we talk about distance-based charging instead of congestion charging.
 
Henry advocates variable congestion pricing and that heavy vehicles pay ”for their specific marginal road-wear costs.”
 
I reviewed the success of Bus Rapid Transit systems – designated bus expressways – which are being recognized as by far the most cost effective way of delivering public transport. Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney offer good models. The Liverpool-Parramatta bus transit way, costing $346 million, boasts 35 stations and runs a bus every 10 minutes every peak hour. It has carved an hour off travel times. A speaker at the conference told me there was $1 billion allocated to light rail on the Gold Coast when an investment of only $50 million would have delivered an environmentally sound bus transit system. BRT gives you more kilometers of public transport.
 
The serious rail projects in Australian cities in recent years have been the $2 billion 13 kilometer Epping to Chatswood line, the $1.66 billion 72 kilometer Perth New MetroRail Project and the $650 million five kilometer South Morang Rail Extension in Melbourne. Heavy rail has its place where there are populations to support it – that densities argument again.
 
You cannot escape it.
 
Professor David Hensher, an advocate of Rapid Bus Transit, said that Sydney should not procede with the north-west rail project. He said that to relieve congestion it is better “to flood the system with buses”. Just a six percent shift away from cars ends congestion, he argues. And he argues that a single additional rail link – anywhere – won’t deliver the benefits that would come with more buses across the whole system. They offer flexibility and affordability. One restraint, however, is curb space. Already Brisbane is, according to one participant here, simply not able to accommodate more uses coming in from the suburbs at peak hours. There isn’t the space. A high standard of debate here.
 
 
 
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Troncal de Aguablanca, new corridor in Cali, Colombia (in Spanish)

Source: SIBRT
 
Con una extensión de 5.6 kilómetros, conectará al centro del municipio con el corazón del Distrito de Aguablanca, una de las zonas donde se concentra la mayor cantidad de población de los estratos socioeconómicos menos favorecidos.
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Una de las obras más ambiciosas que se hayan construido en los últimos tiempos en la ciudad colombiana de Cali, es la Troncal de Aguablanca del Sistema Integrado de Transporte Masivo – MIO. Con una extensión de 5.6 kilómetros, conectará al centro del municipio con el corazón del Distrito de Aguablanca, una de las zonas donde se concentra la mayor cantidad de población de los estratos socioeconómicos menos favorecidos y con mayor demanda de transporte público.
 
A su paso, ciclo ruta en ambos lados de la vía para favorecer el tránsito de los ciclistas, ocho estaciones de parada, una terminal intermedia y una de cabecera. Lafalse construcción de esta super estructura para el MIO genera dos mil empleos para los caleños, incluyendo oportunidades laborales para quienes habitan en las zonas de influencia de la obra e igualmente para personas en situación de discapacidad.
 
En su recorrido, la Troncal conecta hitos de movilidad tan importantes como las Autopistas sur oriental y Simón Bolívar, llegando igualmente hasta la ciudadela educativa “Nuevo Latir” ubicada sobre la Avenida Ciudad de Cali, facilitando de esta manera el futuro ingreso a los estudiantes.
 
Dos hundimientos viales hacen parte de los retos de ingeniería de la troncal para eliminar cruces semaforizados y permitir un eficiente flujo vehicular.
 
Pero la Troncal de Aguablanca significa más, porque le entregará a la ciudad 11 kilómetros de ciclo ruta, 30 mil metros cuadrados de espacio público renovado y 18.800 metros cuadrados de parques y plazoletas. Todo este paquete de renovación urbana incluye también la reposición de redes de servicios públicos.
 
La Troncal de Aguablanca es una obra desarrollada por Metrocali que representa una inversión aproximada de 85 millones de dólares.
 
Las obras avanzan a buen ritmo con la proyección de entregar en el mes de agosto la estructura de la vía y las ocho estaciones de parada para continuar con el proceso de la implementación tecnológica y así ponerla al servicio de los caleños.
 
 
 
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Bus Rapid Transit eyed as speedy solution for U.S. 36 in Boulder County, USA

Source: Daily Camera
 
It’s time to go home. You head to Market Street Station in Denver, where you work, to board a bus for Boulder, where you live. You just missed the bus. No problem — they depart every five minutes. You grab the next one. As traffic bogs down around you, the driver slips into the dedicated bus lane and motors at a steady speed up Interstate 25 to U.S. 36, passing bumper-to-bumper vehicles by the hundreds. On the way to Boulder, the bus stops at several full-service stations, picking up passengers who already have paid their fare at kiosks — no fumbling for change, no wasted time. Thirty-five minutes after leaving downtown Denver, you pull into the Table Mesa park-n-Ride.

The upshot: A rush-hour bus trip along U.S. 36 that just a few years ago couldn’t come close to beating a car is projected by 2035 to have a 17-minute advantage over a single-occupant vehicle. Welcome to the future of travel in the U.S. 36 corridor — the result of a $536 million effort by the Regional Transportation District and the Colorado Department of Transportation to build the first phase of a Bus Rapid Transit system, or BRT. Advocates say the system should make commuting between Boulder and Denver as simple and reliable as jumping on a subway train.

«In many ways, you’re going to get service that acts like rail service,» said Boulder County Commissioner Will Toor, an outspoken transit advocate who has worked on making improvements to U.S. 36. «We think BRT is going to be a real workhorse for this corridor.»

Some of the elements of BRT are already in place on U.S. 36. Pedestrian overpasses and slip ramps, which allow buses to simply pull over on off and on ramps, were built at nearly all of the interchanges in the last few years.

Other features, such as a bike lane and managed lanes that buses and carpools can ride for free and single-occupancy vehicles can ride for a price, are still on the horizon.

But the choices and investments transportation officials make in the corridor over the next few years are critical, because the highway will more than likely serve as a BRT model in the state.

«What we in the U.S. 36 corridor do will set the standard for what we do with BRT in the rest of the region,» said Nadine Lee, project manager for RTD’s U.S. 36 Bus Rapid Transit program. «We have to give people a reason to ride it.»
 
‘Rail-like service’
 
Bus Rapid Transit often is pitched as having the most desirable aspects of rail travel — exclusive lanes, rapid speeds, signal prioritization, high frequency and stations with easy boarding and real-time travel information — but at a much reduced price tag.

«It’s a high-quality service at a price you can afford,» Toor said.

Most transportation experts point to Curitiba, Brazil, as the birthplace of BRT in the 1970s, with many cities in South America since then building systems that now serve as the global gold standard.

More than a dozen cities in the United States, including New York and Los Angeles, have some form of BRT as part of their overall transit picture. In Colorado, transportation planners have proposed a BRT system for a 40-mile stretch of Colo. 82 between Aspen and Glenwood Springs, while in Fort Collins, the city is planning a BRT route along Mason Street.

But the U.S. 36 project is unique in that it incorporates BRT into a high-speed, multi-lane highway corridor that also is slated to one day have commuter rail service.

Earlier this month, stakeholders from RTD, CDOT, Boulder County and other municipalities and agencies with an interest in the project traveled to Los Angeles to study that city’s BRT system. They rode the Orange Line across the San Fernando Valley and the Silver Line in and out of downtown L.A.

Scott Page, manager of service planning for L.A.’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said since the city consolidated a hodgepodge of bus lines on the Interstate 10 and Interstate 110 freeways into the Silver Line BRT route 18 months ago, travel time across the 27-mile stretch has dropped by 20 minutes and ridership has risen by 37 percent.

RTD projects that transit ridership along U.S. 36 will go from 8,180 per average weekday currently to 14,600 by 2035. But Lee cautioned that trying to divine travel times and make comparisons over time is complicated by the fact that congestion will increase in the U.S. 36 corridor as the result of population growth.

Even so, the agency projects that in 2035 a BRT bus rider coming from Denver will arrive at Table Mesa park-n-Ride 17 minutes earlier than a motorist driving in the general-purpose lanes. A passenger on an express bus — which makes no stops between Denver and Boulder — should get there 24 minutes earlier, RTD predicts.

«We’re trying to get to rail-like service,» Lee said.
 
Improvements soon
 
And while most of the travel time savings projections go out 25 years, Lee said transit passengers will see improvements much sooner than that.

More than $300 million — largely a mix of FasTracks funds and federal grant money — has been secured to build high-occupancy toll lanes in both directions from I-25 to 96th Street at Interlocken. Construction could begin as early as next year and wrap up by fall of 2015.

Funding for continuation of the managed lanes out to Table Mesa park-n-Ride hasn’t been identified yet and there is no timetable for getting that part of the project done. However, a slip ramp and pedestrian bridge at Table Mesa is slated to go in by early 2013.

John Schwab, U.S. 36 managed lane project director for CDOT, said the high-occupancy toll lane will be operated similarly to how the toll lanes on I-25 are run, with motorists paying for access via a transponder they attach to their windshields.

Preliminary plans call for a painted buffer between the managed lane and the general-purpose lanes on U.S. 36. Without a physical barrier, Schwab said, toll-jumpers could be problem.

«We’ll be trying to minimize violators so we don’t lose toll revenues to pay back the bonds,» he said.

Another challenge, he said, will be getting buses to move from the inside lane through the bulk of traffic to the highway exits to make stops at the slip ramp stations.

«It’s important to have an efficient BRT system,» Schwab said.
 
Selling it to the masses
 
A large part of the system’s efficiency and success will come from buses that run on a high frequency schedule and are instantly recognized by passengers as part of a BRT fleet. RTD wants to run buses on the line every five minutes during peak periods so that people won’t feel the need to lug around a bus schedule.

«One of the things we’re trying to do right now is determine service identity and provide a user interface that makes it easy to ride,» Lee said.

She said there are no plans to change out the regional buses that currently run along U.S. 36 with new, sleeker looking vehicles, but that could happen down the road.

In the meantime, the existing fleet could undergo a makeover as part of a new BRT branding effort.

«There’s the possibility that there will be painting and bus wraps for branding,» Toor said.

RTD and CDOT are preparing for the future with plans to run fiberoptic cables along the entire highway corridor to light up real-time electronic signs at stations announcing the arrival of approaching buses and variable-message signs on the road to notify drivers of changing toll rates.

Bike lockers should also be available at stations to encourage people to use as much alternate transportation as possible.

Boulder County Transportation Department Director George Gerstle said that at its core, the proposed BRT system along U.S. 36 is all about providing people with choices about how to get from Point A to Point B on any given day.

«It’s not forcing people to say ‘I’m a bus person’ or ‘I’m a car person’ — it’s saying, ‘I can make the best choice for my day,'» he said. «Right now, people don’t have a choice for every type of trip.»
 
Meshing rail, BRT
 
One of the travel choices not directly tied to the BRT improvements, but critical to the conversation about public transit along U.S. 36, is the Northwest Rail line.

The commuter train line connecting Denver to Longmont, which voters approved in 2004 as part of the FasTracks initiative to build 119 miles of new rail throughout metro Denver, is in limbo — hampered by a $2 billion shortfall at RTD.

The transit agency is considering whether to put a measure to increase sales tax on the ballot next year so that the line could be open for business by 2019.

But Bob Greenlee, a former Republican mayor of Boulder and a Camera columnist, said discussion about the train is «stupid.» He said funding for the Northwest Rail line, which is budgeted at $895 million, is better spent on top-of-the-line BRT improvements on U.S. 36.

«It’s an entirely ridiculous idea and the money that’s going to be wasted on the heavy rail system should have been spent enhancing the Bus Rapid Transit program,» he said. «These people have convinced themselves they need to do this train.»

He said buses are flexible and can be routed where they are needed and where growth happens in the future, while the static nature of rail means that where it goes is where it stays.
 
Both needed
 
But rail advocates counter that the Northwest Rail corridor and U.S. 36 serve different markets and that both are needed.

Rail, they argue, performs better in poor weather, and people living in Louisville, Longmont and east Boulder, where train depots are being planned, would greatly benefit from a train line.

Longmont Mayor Bryan Baum said voters approved rail and that it’s presumptuous for public officials to override that decision.

«We’ve put a lot of money into it and voters spoke and you’re bound to deliver what was spoken,» he said. «We voted for this and we want to see it completed.»

RTD’s Lee agrees, saying that those who knock the Northwest Rail line are being shortsighted and thinking myopically. She said not only would Louisville and Longmont benefit from the line, but residents of Westminster, Broomfield and Denver would, too.

«There are stakeholders beyond the U.S. 36 corridor counting on that rail project,» Lee said. «One thing RTD is trying to do is give people choices of how they want to travel.»
 
 
 
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Event Wrap-Up: Forum for Sustainable Transport in Latin America

Source: EMBARQ
 
Newly signed Bogota Declaration establishes sustainable transport objectives for the region.
 
Last 24 June, 2011 in Bogota, Colombia, transportation ministers, delegations and experts from around the globe gathered to discuss the development of the Bogota Declaration, a new multinational agreement of sustainable transportation policies in Latin America.
 
The declaration was the result of the first Foro de Transporte Sostenible (FTS) para America Latina (Forum for Sustainable Transport in Latin America), which was organized by the Ministry of Transportation of Colombia, United Nations Center for Regional Development and the Inter-American Development Bank, with support from the Institute for Transportation Development and Policy, EMBARQ, and the Partnership on Sustainable Low Carbon Transport.
 
«The event in Bogota was successful in several ways, showing that Latin America is ahead of the game and can really ‘leapfrog’ in sustainable transport,» said EMBARQ Director of Research and Practice and member of our Centre of Excellence, Dario Hidalgo.
 
In the following video (in Spanish), Hidalgo calls on the responsibility of politicians to follow through on the goal of reducing emissions and improving quality of life in Latin American cities:
 

 
The Bogota Declaration was agreed upon by delegations from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay and Uruguay. It subscribes to the “Avoid-Shift-Improve” (ASI) paradigm of sustainable transport and establishes clear objectives for the region. Hidalgo, who is the former deputy general manager of Transmilenio, Bogota’s world-renowned bus rapid transit (BRT) system, outlined the ASI approach as avoiding long motorized and unnecessary trips, shifting the tendency away from trips in individual motorized vehicles and improving the technology and operational management of transportation activities.
 
The declaration emphasizes the importance of sustainable transport in improving public health and quality of life, consistent with the goals of the Decade of Action for Road Safety, a worldwide effort declared by the United Nations General Assembly to save 5 million lives over a ten-year period.
 
The agreement also establishes periodic meetings among the country delegations, with support from the United Nations Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and other NGOs and transport experts.
 
EMBARQ was one of the supporting organizations of the forum and instrumental to its success in influencing the national and regional agenda for sustainable transport. EMBARQ was commissioned by UNCRD to prepare a background paper about sustainable transport in Latin America (see draft), and helped in drafting and reviewing the final Bogota Declaration, in consultation with the country delegations.
 
According to the organizers of the forum, transportation is vital to give adequate support to the rapid economic and social development of Latin America, but the current patterns and trends aren’t sustainable. The concentration of transport in individual vehicles creates adverse effects in terms of congestion, pollution, health, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. It’s possible to confront these challenges and change the direction of transportation development with the current resources dedicated to transport. The result of these policy changes to sustainable transport would save lives, generate conditions for equitable economic development, and protect both the local and global environments.
 
German Cardona, Colombia’s minister of transport, emphasized his country’s focus on sustainable cargo and shipping, in addition to the creation of a new vice-minister of transportation position, which is currently filled by Felipe Targa. This position was created to exclusively oversee the sustainability of transport initiatives.
 
Distinguished guests elaborated upon the ASI approach. Adriana Lobo from the Center for Sustainable Transport in Mexico (CTS-México), gave a presentation on avoiding or preventing long and unnecessary motorized trips. Lobo presented a case study about Aguascalientes, Mexico, a new development outside of Mexico City whose residents often face 2- to 3-hour commutes and who spend approximately 30 percent to 50 percent of their income on transportation costs. Lobo stressed throughout her presentation how this model of growth must be avoided to improve the quality of life for people in cities. Lobo’s presentation emphasized the need for sustainable land use policies in order to avoid the construction of mono-functional communities that require individual car ownership. CTS-México made urban development and accessibility recommendations to improve the quality of life for the future citizens of Aguascalientes. The local government adopted about 70 percent of the design recommendations, which included mixed land use, improved public spaces, bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, and public transportation.
 
Eduardo Vasconcellos of the National Association of Public Transportation in Brazil, and also member of our CoE, elaborated on how to shift the traffic of passengers to non-motorized options and away from individual motorized transportation. According to Dr. Vasconcellos, developing countries’ public policy needs to change the axiom to tackle the problems of efficiency and inequality. Latin American countries need to worry about the deep ingrained issues caused by inefficient transportation through the consumption of energy, the use of space, congestion, pollution and how these externalities affect society.
 
Edgar Blanco from the MIT Center for Transportation Logistics and José Barbaro of IDB outlined the great potential for freight as a way of reducing carbon emissions in Latin America. Other expert speakers included the following:
 
– Dr. Anup Bandivadekar (International Council on Clean Transportation)
– Sergio Sanchez (Clean Air Institute)
– Harald Diaz Bone (GIZ)
– José Luis Moscovich (San Francisco County Transportation Authority)
– Cornie Huizenga (SLoCaT)
– Michael Replogle (ITDP)
– Edgar Enrique Sandoval (Sigma Consulting)
– Luis Alberto Moreno (IDB)
 
The next forum is expected to be held in Mexico City in 2012.
For more information, see the official press release and additional media clips.
 
 
 
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A new Metrovía corridor for Guayaquil in 2012 (in Spanish)

A buen ritmo avanzan los trabajos para la construcción de los carriles exclusivos. Se espera que todo esté listo para octubre del 2012.
 
Source: SIBRT
 
Guayaquil – Dentro de poco tiempo, los guayaquileños y quienes habitan en el puerto principal contarán con una nueva troncal de Metrovía; a buen ritmo avanzan los trabajos para la construcción de los carriles exclusivos de la troncal 25 de Julio, cuyo recorrido inicia en la terminal que lleva el mismo nombre ubicada en el sur de Guayaquil, hasta la terminal Río Daule.
 
La empresa a la que se le adjudico la construcción de los carriles, ha instalado parte de la simbología en las calles y avenidas comprendidas dentro del proyecto. Entre ellas las avenidas 25 de Julio, Quito, Machala, de las Américas y Pedro Moncayo. La construcción de los carriles durará 18 meses, según lo estipula el contrato y cuyo presupuesto referencial es de 20954190.74 dólares. También se construirán 30 paraderos. Se espera que todo esté listo para octubre del 2012.
 
Una de las cosas que más llama la atención en esta troncal es que habrá dos rutas. Una que recogerá y dejará pasajeros en todas las paradas y otra que solo lo hará en cuatro, a ésta se ha denominado express. Comprende: Las Acacias, Hospital Francisco de Ycaza Bustamante; Plaza Centenario y colegio Aguirre Abad.
 
Se prevé la movilización diaria de 250.000 pasajeros sólo en lo que corresponde a esta troncal, que sumadas a las 300.000 que actualmente lo hacen en todo el sistema, estaríamos hablando de unas 550.000.
 
El proyecto también incluye la construcción de cuatro pasos peatonales sobre la av. de las Américas en las estaciones del colegio Aguirre Abad, avenida Plaza Dañín, Juan Tanca Marengo y cdla. Simón Bolívar.
 
 
 
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Opinion Pieces: The one thing we know about forecasts is that they are wrong: but by how much?

Opinion Pieces: since 2007, Prof. David Hensher has written an opinion column in the Australasian Bus and Coach magazine, where he monthly discusses a lot of different transport-related hot topics. In this section we are revisiting these columns.
 
August 2010
 
I have just returned from New Zealand where I gave three addresses on various aspects of transport reform. Over the total of 5 hours of talks it occurred to me that we have not progressed very far in improving our ability to forecast patronage and project costs of new major transport investments. Don Pickrell in 1992 blew the lid off of the USA Federal Government subsidy program associated with capital intensive projects since the program did not require state and local governments to be accountable for their forecasts and hence preference by States was given to such projects over other projects. The big errors occurred in ridership forecasts and capital cost estimates.
 
In the mid 1970, Dan McFadden (who received the Nobel prize for economics in 2000) demonstrated that a major reason for forecast errors in ridership of public transport is in the nature of the transport models used to study demand for travel (by mode, destination and frequency). Essentially, the models that contribute to significant errors back in the 1970s, known as four stage models, typically using highly aggregate data (at a traffic zone level – as if the zone travels) such that much of the explanatory power (or variability in travel behaviour response) is assumed away through working with average people and average behaviour. Essentially, the models that contribute to significant errors back in the 1970s, known as four stage models, typically using data describing the travel activity of the average traveller living in a defined physical area (like a postcode or a traffic zone) in terms of the average income, household size, age, and average trip time etc at a traffic zone level as if the physical zone travels; such that much of the explanatory power of the forecasting models in explaining travel demand is assumed away by working with average people and average behaviour.
 
Disappointingly all the consultants in Australia (with very rare exception) still use essentially the same methods as developed and applied in the 1960’s. Back then, McFadden and his team at Berkeley California showed the limitations of such transport models. So here we are in 2010, observing what has almost become a “law” of errors – if you want to get your forecast closer to reality, then halve public transport patronage forecasts and double capital costs. This also applies to toll roads.
 
Given we have known this for many years, why is the practice still blind to the evidence? Some have suggested it is because the numbers on ridership look on the low side to get Treasury support and indeed to enable an ultimate healthy benefit-cost ratio when subject to an environmental impact statement assessment. Others have suggested that if we ever want to get public transport built then we must “exaggerate” the evidence since no one really knows the truth anyway. This is known as strategic misrepresentation (which colloquially is known as lying). Well what to do given those in the know are fully aware of this.
 
Maybe we are safer simply buying more buses because no one apparently asks the question – how many more bums of seats will this deliver? Have you ever seen a benefitcost analysis or a patronage estimate associated with any request or announcement to increase the number of buses by 1 or 100 or 300?
 
Food for thought
 
 
 
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A Look back at 1940s rail and freeway plans yields some surprises

Source: The Source
 
Los Angeles’ transit history often reveals something brand new: a map we never knew existed, an angle to a story that helps us connect the dots, or new information from the past that informs planning our future.
 
A closer look at competing transportation studies in 1948 turned up this hidden gem worthy of a double-take: the feeder routes for proposed rail lines running down freeway medians were referred to as “bus rapid transit.”
 
While the first bus rapid transit system was launched in Curitiba, Brazil in the early 1970s, plans for a local BRT were actually laid out a quarter century earlier…and more than 50 years before we launched Metro Rapid or the Orange Line.
 
The 1948 Rail Rapid Transit Now! campaign’s plan for building a comprehensive rail system in conjunction with freeway construction never materialized, but it set in motion other events in Los Angeles mobility for decades to come.
 
The full story can be found on the Primary Resources Blog produced by the Metro Transportation Library and Archive.
 
 
 
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New Siemens Electric Bus Rapid Transit system

Source: Gather – Electric Vehicles
 
The Siemens Electric Bus Rapid Transit system – or e-BRT for short – allows vehicles to run on electricity without overhead contact lines and without rails. The vehicles are quiet and comfortable, as they run on tires and electric motors.
 
Vehicles are equipped with electricity storage units that combine super-capacitors, batteries and converters, carrying enough power to reach the next stop. At each stop, the e-BRT vehicle is recharged for about 20 seconds, i.e. less time than passengers usually need to get on and off the bus. Electricity generated when the vehicles brake or slow down is also stored in the storage units.
 
While light rail, trams and trolley buses come with specific infrastructure and have restricted paths, e-BRT vehicles can travel on standard roads, sharing them with other users.
 
The only special infrastructure needed are bus-stops doubling as charging stations. In Siemens’ e-BRT system, such stations contain intelligence to help steer the electric buses in position as they approach the stops. This ensures more precise contact with the charging system and easy access for the passengers at a low-floor level.
 
Such innovations can also enhance the safety of bus travel. Bus stops can be equipped with automatically-controlled lights and announcements, complemented by warning signs at the stations in case passengers are standing too close to arriving vehicles. Video cameras and sensors on buses can help detect people and other vehicles, especially at spots that are otherwise hard to see for drivers.
 
The Siemens brochure e-BRT®: The sustainable development solution for Bus Rapid Transit lines describes its system as the ideal transport solution for medium-traffic routes, at a price a third to a half that of a tram line.
 
Check the following video, which shows how the system works:

 
 
 
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A BRT for the metropolitan area of ​​Asunción (in Spanish)

Source: SIBRT
 
Asunción – El área Metropolitana de la capital paraguaya se prepara para el lanzamiento de las primera licitaciones de obras del primer troncal de Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), que será incorporado gracias al prestado otorgado por el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo – BID, al Gobierno del Presidente Fernando Lugo. Coincidiendo con la visita de la vicepresidenta del BID, Julie Katzman, anunció la ampliación del primer troncal de BRT.
 
La representante del alto organismo financiero internacional, recorrió la zona donde se ejecutaran los dos proyectos financiados con aproximadamente U$S 160 millones compuestos por el BRT y el Proyecto Reconversión del Centro y Edificios de Gobierno, recientemente aceptado por el Gobierno Nacional, finalizando su recorrida por la zona de obras de la Avenida Costanera, el parque Bicentenario y la zona de Puertos donde existen componentes ambientales que serian de interés del Banco.
 
El proyecto de BRT, que inicialmente tenía previsto recorrer y conectar a tres ciudades en su recorrido, se amplía hasta la ciudad de Capiatá, ante la demanda de usuarios localizados en esa ciudad conforme a los datos arrojados por los estudios de Origen y Destino procesados en el marco de lineamientos que permiten hacer los ajustes al proyecto.
 
El proyecto, que inicialmente era de unos 18 kilómetros, en la actualidad fue extendido hasta Capiatá amplíando 10 Km su recorrido original debido a la demanda de usuarios desde esta ciudad cabecera de la capital paraguaya. En estos momentos se realizan todos los estudios que incluyen movimiento de pasajeros, origen, destino y nivel de demanda que propiciarán los horarios de los buses” remarcó el titular de la cartera de obras.
 
El Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Comunicaciones anunció que la licitación para el sistema BRT se realizará en julio y se espera su conclusión para fines de 2012 o comienzos del 2013.
 
 
 
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Across Europe, irking drivers is urban policy

Source: The New York Times by Elizabeth Rosenthal
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Pedestrians and trams are given priority treatment in Zurich. Tram operators can turn traffic lights in their favor as they
approach, forcing cars to halt. Photo: Christoph Bangert for The New York Times. More photos >>
 
 
ZURICH — While American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow and offering apps to help drivers find parking, many European cities are doing the opposite: creating environments openly hostile to cars. The methods vary, but the mission is clear — to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation.
 
Cities including Vienna to Munich and Copenhagen have closed vast swaths of streets to car traffic. Barcelona and Paris have had car lanes eroded by popular bike-sharing programs. Drivers in London and Stockholm pay hefty congestion charges just for entering the heart of the city. And over the past two years, dozens of German cities have joined a national network of “environmental zones” where only cars with low carbon dioxide emissions may enter.
 
Likeminded cities welcome new shopping malls and apartment buildings but severely restrict the allowable number of parking spaces. On-street parking is vanishing. In recent years, even former car capitals like Munich have evolved into “walkers’ paradises,” said Lee Schipper, a senior research engineer at Stanford University who specializes in sustainable transportation.
 
“In the United States, there has been much more of a tendency to adapt cities to accommodate driving,” said Peder Jensen, head of the Energy and Transport Group at the European Environment Agency. “Here there has been more movement to make cities more livable for people, to get cities relatively free of cars.”
 
To that end, the municipal Traffic Planning Department here in Zurich has been working overtime in recent years to torment drivers. Closely spaced red lights have been added on roads into town, causing delays and angst for commuters. Pedestrian underpasses that once allowed traffic to flow freely across major intersections have been removed. Operators in the city’s ever expanding tram system can turn traffic lights in their favor as they approach, forcing cars to halt.
 
Around Löwenplatz, one of Zurich’s busiest squares, cars are now banned on many blocks. Where permitted, their speed is limited to a snail’s pace so that crosswalks and crossing signs can be removed entirely, giving people on foot the right to cross anywhere they like at any time.
 
As he stood watching a few cars inch through a mass of bicycles and pedestrians, the city’s chief traffic planner, Andy Fellmann, smiled. “Driving is a stop-and-go experience,” he said. “That’s what we like! Our goal is to reconquer public space for pedestrians, not to make it easy for drivers.”
 
While some American cities — notably San Francisco, which has “pedestrianized” parts of Market Street — have made similar efforts, they are still the exception in the United States, where it has been difficult to get people to imagine a life where cars are not entrenched, Dr. Schipper said.
 
Europe’s cities generally have stronger incentives to act. Built for the most part before the advent of cars, their narrow roads are poor at handling heavy traffic. Public transportation is generally better in Europe than in the United States, and gas often costs over $8 a gallon, contributing to driving costs that are two to three times greater per mile than in the United States, Dr. Schipper said.
 
What is more, European Union countries probably cannot meet a commitment under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions unless they curb driving. The United States never ratified that pact.
 
Globally, emissions from transportation continue a relentless rise, with half of them coming from personal cars. Yet an important impulse behind Europe’s traffic reforms will be familiar to mayors in Los Angeles and Vienna alike: to make cities more inviting, with cleaner air and less traffic.
 
Michael Kodransky, global research manager at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) in New York, which works with cities to reduce transport emissions, said that Europe was previously “on the same trajectory as the United States, with more people wanting to own more cars.” But in the past decade, there had been “a conscious shift in thinking, and firm policy,” he said. And it is having an effect.
 
After two decades of car ownership, Hans Von Matt, 52, who works in the insurance industry, sold his vehicle and now gets around Zurich by tram or bicycle, using a car-sharing service for trips out of the city. Carless households have increased from 40 to 45 percent in the last decade, and car owners use their vehicles less, city statistics show.
 
“There were big fights over whether to close this road or not — but now it is closed, and people got used to it” he said, alighting from his bicycle on Limmatquai, a riverside pedestrian zone lined with cafes that used to be two lanes of gridlock. Each major road closing has to be approved in a referendum.
 
Today 91 percent of the delegates to the Swiss Parliament take the tram to work.
 
Still, there is grumbling. “There are all these zones where you can only drive 20 or 30 kilometers per hour [about 12 to 18 miles an hour], which is rather stressful,” Thomas Rickli, a consultant, said as he parked his Jaguar in a lot at the edge of town. “It’s useless.”
 
Urban planners generally agree that a rise in car commuting is not desirable for cities anywhere.
 
Mr. Fellmann calculated that a person using a car took up 115 cubic meters (roughly 4,000 cubic feet) of urban space in Zurich while a pedestrian took three. “So it’s not really fair to everyone else if you take the car,” he said.
 
European cities also realized they could not meet increasingly strict World Health Organization guidelines for fine-particulate air pollution if cars continued to reign. Many American cities are likewise in “nonattainment” of their Clean Air Act requirements, but that fact “is just accepted here,” said Mr. Kodransky of the New York-based transportation institute.
 
It often takes extreme measures to get people out of their cars, and providing good public transportation is a crucial first step. One novel strategy in Europe is intentionally making it harder and more costly to park. “Parking is everywhere in the United States, but it’s disappearing from the urban space in Europe,” said Mr. Kodransky, whose recent report “Europe’s Parking U-Turn” surveys the shift.
 
Sihl City, a new Zurich mall, is three times the size of Brooklyn’s Atlantic Mall but has only 225 more parking spaces than Atlantic’s 625, and as a result, 70 percent of visitors get there by public transport, Mr. Kodransky said.
 
In Copenhagen, Mr. Jensen, at the European Environment Agency, said that his office building had more than 150 spaces for bicycles and only one for a car, to accommodate a disabled person.
 
While many building codes in Europe cap the number of parking spaces in new buildings to discourage car ownership, American codes conversely tend to stipulate a minimum number. New apartment complexes built along the light rail line in Denver devote their bottom eight floors to parking, making it “too easy” to get in the car rather than take advantage of rail transit, Mr. Kodransky said.
 
While Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has generated controversy in New York by “pedestrianizing” a few areas like Times Square, many European cities have already closed vast areas to car traffic. Store owners in Zurich had worried that the closings would mean a drop in business, but that fear has proved unfounded, Mr. Fellmann said, because pedestrian traffic increased 30 to 40 percent where cars were banned.
 
With politicians and most citizens still largely behind them, Zurich’s planners continue their traffic-taming quest, shortening the green-light periods and lengthening the red with the goal that pedestrians wait no more than 20 seconds to cross.
 
“We would never synchronize green lights for cars with our philosophy,” said Pio Marzolini, a city official. “When I’m in other cities, I feel like I’m always waiting to cross a street. I can’t get used to the idea that I am worth less than a car.”
 
 
 
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Indonesia’s transport initiatives

Source: The City Fix by Itir Sonuparlak
 
Jakarta’s chief of Railway Certification Department, M Sardjoko Hendrowijono, is asking for greater federal restrictions on private vehicle imports in an effort to balance the success of TransJakarta, Indonesia’s first bus rapid transit (BRT) system. “Hendrowijono admitted that TransJakarta bus had helped to overcome traffic congestion in Jakarta since it first operated in 2004,” reports Berita Jakarta, the city’s online media forum. “But if it is not counterbalanced by stopping the imports of both two wheels and four wheels vehicles, congestion will still continue to happen.”
 
Although Indonesia may still be accepting private vehicle imports, the citizens have spoken loud and clear: more car free days! Similar to Bogotá, Colombia’s Ciclovia or Minneapolis, Minnesota’s Open Streets, Jakarta’s Car Free Day, first conducted once a month, has gained so much positive attention that the city government is considering implementing it every week. Encouraging individuals to leave their cars at home, Jakarta’s Car Free Day opens the city streets to pedestrians and bicyclists, with only vehicular traffic being TransJakarta.
 
And although Jakarta citizens are excited about Car Free Days and the success of TransJakarta, Governor Fauzi Bowo’s administration has received poor ratings in dealing with traffic congestion. According to the Jakarta Post, only 29.4 percent of respondents thought that the Governor had performed well in providing decent public transportation. Despite Governor Bowo’s positive contributions to TransJakarta, like calling for improvements in driver recruitment and installing tracking devices in vehicles, 70 percent of the surveyed group still think that the Governor has failed in managing traffic.
 
Road construction and its effects on traffic may be part of the problem. Jakarta had initiated two construction projects on elevated roads back in January. Jakarta’s Traffic Police and Public Works had predicted that these construction projects would have a negative impact on the city’s already congested traffic at least until September 2011. Although the construction takes place between 10pm and 5am, the blocked lanes of construction have taken a toll on traffic.
 
Part of this construction is to provide a platform for the city’s ongoing Mass Rapid Transit System (MRT) project. The MRT will be a rail-based transport system that services over 110.3 km (68.5 miles) of Jakarta’s roads. The administration is relying heavily on the MRT to solve Jakarta’s congestion problems. With 7.34 million private vehicles in Jakarta today and a 9.5 percent growth rate in vehicular traffic in the past five years, public transportation does not seem to be a popular mode of transport. But even though public transport makes up only 2 percent of all trips, these services benefit 56 percent of all trips in Jakarta.
 
According to Tony Ibanez from Harvard University, a professor of urban planning and public policy, TransJakarta alone is capable in reducing private vehicle traffic. In fact, he encourages the city government to focus in developing BRT-based public transport schemes. “Each bus can accommodate 80-90 percent of passengers, more routes and lanes of TransJakarta bus must be built to serve the citizens,” Ibanez explained.
 
 
 
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Opinion Pieces: Pricing must be a priority, so must keep mentioning it

Opinion Pieces: since 2007, Prof. David Hensher has written an opinion column in the Australasian Bus and Coach magazine, where he monthly discusses a lot of different transport-related hot topics. In this section we are revisiting these columns.
 
July 2010
 
The Henry Review tells us that we must rethink the charging regime for cars and trucks. The two specific recommendation is that “Governments should analyse the potential network-wide benefits and costs of introducing variable congestion pricing on existing tolled roads (or lanes), and consider extending existing technology across heavily congested parts of the road network. Beyond that, new technologies may further enable wider application of road pricing if proven cost-effective. In general, congestion charges should apply to all registered vehicles using congested roads. The use of revenues should be transparent to the community and subject to further institutional reform.”
 
This must be of interest to the bus sector since the adage ‘to make public transport more attractive we must make the car less attractive’ still holds. Anyone who thinks you can build a solution through an injection of investment in public transport alone is foolhardy since it will do little to ease congestion on our transport networks. You have to manage congestion and not assume you can build your way out of it. What we need is an integrated program of carrots and sticks, linked to network operating plans, HOT/HOV lanes, improved public transport to attract car users, better land use/transport integration, and crucially, pricing reform, as recommended in the Moving People documents produced by BIC and UITP.
 
I remain fearful that governments of all persuasions in Australia will continue to ignore the crucial role of pricing of car use as a non-blunt instrument (one of the few such transport instruments we have). This issue is squarely in the space of politicians and marketing – the economic and technical issues of efficient charging of car use are more or less solved.
 
We can be thankful that The Netherlands is doing something about it with a congestion charging scheme that varies the price by location and time of day. We watch and hope it works and we can learn and follow. NXP Semiconductors and IBM have announced the final results of a landmark road pricing trial conducted in the Netherlands, which demonstrated that with the help of technology, drivers can be motivated to change their driving behaviour, reducing traffic congestion and contributing to a greener environment. Key findings of the trial included (i) 70 per cent of drivers improved their driving behaviour by avoiding rush-hour traffic and using highways instead of local roads; (ii) On average, these drivers in the trial saw an improvement of more than 16 per cent in average cost per kilometer; (iii) it showed that a clear system of incentives is critical to changing driving behaviour; and (iv) instant feedback provided via an On-Board Unit display on the price of the road chosen and total charges for the trip are essential to maximizing the change in behaviour.
 
What we have to do is continue to build the case with examples that show the buy in from stakeholders. This is referred to as stakeholder acceptability and is tied up with how the revenue raised is spent. Road pricing can raise significant revenue. The distribution of this money is an important consideration in a road pricing program development, and one which transport professionals, who traditionally struggle to obtain rather than disperse money, may be unprepared to evaluate. Using revenues to fund transportation improvements and broad economic benefits to residents through reduced taxes, rebates or community programs may provide the greatest overall benefit and earn the widest political support. Persons who are much more aware about a definite introduction of road pricing generally develop a more positive attitude towards road pricing than less convinced persons, i.e., the strength of conviction about the introduction of road pricing has a strong effect on the attitudinal evaluation of road pricing. Thus it is clear that we must keep the debate alive in the popular press as well as in the professional outlets – as they say, the more we talk about it the easier it will be to make it happen.
 
Food for thought
 
 
 
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L.A. Council OKs bus-only lanes along Wilshire Boulevard

The 7.7-mile stretch between MacArthur Park and Centinela Avenue is expected to cut 11 minutes from the trip. Officials hope to begin construction of the lanes in the summer of 2012 and open them in mid-2013.
 
Source: Los Angeles Times by Ari Bloomekatz
 
Wilshire Boulevard, the most heavily used bus corridor in Los Angeles with lines running every couple of minutes and tens of thousands of passengers enduring lengthy and crowded rides, is about to get a facelift designed to bring riders some relief.
 
To streamline and speed commutes from MacArthur Park to Centinela Avenue at the eastern edge of Santa Monica, the Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to construct bus-only lanes along 7.7 miles of that stretch. Officials estimate that it will shave 11 minutes off a nearly one-hour trip.
 
«It’s a real breakthrough,» said Sunyoung Yang of the Bus Riders Union. «The city has taken a huge step forward to prioritize transit over single-passenger automobiles.»
 
Yang and representatives of other transit advocacy groups had hoped the council would approve a longer stretch for the bus-only lanes, but still felt the 7.7-mile route was an achievement.
 
The original proposal called for 8.7 miles of the special lanes, but a one-mile section west of Beverly Hills known as Condo Canyon was excluded after residents and some officials said the lanes would create difficulties for motorists entering their driveways and were not necessary in that section.
 
When the council approved the 7.7-mile route Tuesday, members made a point of supporting the full route and asking the Metro board to reconsider the Condo Canyon exclusion.
 
If the MTA does reverse course, the project would return to the council for a new vote. Officials with the city, Metro and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors must all approve the same project to be eligible for $23.3 million in funding for the bus-only lanes from the Federal Transit Administration.
 
The project is expected to cost $31.5 million, Metro officials said, with the remainder coming from other transportation funds.
 
Councilman Bill Rosendahl and some Brentwood and Westside residents had sought yet another alternative: a 5.4-mile stretch of bus lanes that would stop east of Beverly Hills. But Rosendahl found little support on the council for that proposal.
 
Some Westside speakers said they were worried that the new lanes would increase traffic congestion and decried claims that they were prejudiced and classist.
 
«We’re not NIMBY’s, we’re not racists, we’re not against bus lanes,» said Marylin Krell, president of the South Brentwood Residents Assn. «We’re against gridlock,» she said.
 
Allison Mannos of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition pushed for the full alignment and suggested that those «folks who say congestion will increase should get on the bus» rather than drive cars. Several council members, including Richard Alarcon, said exceptions made to the full alignment were driven purely by political influence.
 
Brad McAllester, Metro’s executive officer for long-range planning and coordination, said the bus-only lanes would be established on both sides of the street in the current curb lanes — which would be repaved.
 
Only a half-mile segment would need an additional lane, McAllester said, and there would be other improvements to the corridor such as widening in some areas, restriping, signal improvements and changes to some left/right-turn lanes.
 
Only buses would be allowed in the designated lanes from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays. Officials hope to begin construction of the lanes in the summer of 2012 and open them in mid-2013.
 
«We’re looking to make the best use of the transportation system as a whole,» McAllester said, adding that officials will look to Wilshire’s success — or failure — to see if similar efforts can work in other places in the county.
 
«I’m absolutely in favor of it,» said 40-year-old Jason Friedrich, who takes the Metro 720 Rapid from Wilshire Boulevard and La Brea Avenue to work in West L.A. each day. «There’s a huge bottleneck created by traffic coming off and on the 405,» he said.
 
His morning trip generally takes about 35 minutes, but sometimes after work it can take more than an hour because of traffic, he said.
 
«This city needs more people on transit,» Friedrich said. «We’re not getting anywhere in our cars.»
 
 
 
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