Thursday, December 4, 2014

Bus Rapid Transit Taking Off Around the World

If you've been paying any attention to Spokane Transit's plans for the future lately, you've probably heard mention of "bus rapid transit." Bus rapid transit (BRT) is longer distance transit service with few stops. Wikipedia says it's sometimes described as a "surface subway," combining the capacity and speed of light rail or metro with the flexibility, lower cost and simplicity of a bus system.

So why do I mention BRT? Because a post on Jarrett Walker's Human Transit blog from yesterday talks about a new study that shows that growth of BRT around the world has been explosive in recent years. It's growing fastest in Latin America, followed by middle-wealth countries like China, India, Mexico, and Brazil. 

Why these locations? For a number of reasons that you can find in the article here. Also, you'll be surprised I think at just how fast BRT has grown in a decade.



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About SRTC

SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.