Performance varies widely reflecting factors such as facility location, size of the urban area, and the type of facility (e.g. off-street or arterial).

The weekday ridership reported for existing systems in North America and Australia, ranged from about 1,000 riders in Charlotte, up to 40,000 or more in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Adelaide. Specific ridership figures are shown in Table 3.

Daily ridership in South American cities is substantially higher.  Reported values for specific facilities range from 150,000 in Quito and 230,000 in Sao Paulo to over 1 million daily trips in Bogotá. Reported system riders also exceed 1,000,000 in Belo Horizonte, Curitiba and Porto Alegre in Brazil.

Where there are no intermediate stops, peak-hour, peak direction bus flows on dedicated freeway lanes can exceed 650 buses per hour (e.g. on the New Jersey approach to the Lincoln Tunnel and the Port Authority of NY/NJ Midtown Bus Terminal.)  Ottawa’s Transitway system reports bus volumes of 180 to 200 buses per hour per direction along downtown bus lanes. These volumes result from high use of fare passes, an honor fare system on the Busway All-Stop routes, and use of multi-door articulated buses. Over 140 buses per hour use the busiest section of Brisbane’s Southeast busway.

Peak-hour flows of over 100 buses per hour are found in New York City’s Long Island and Gowanus Expressway Contra-flow bus lanes. Most other BRT facilities in the United States and Australia have fewer than 100 buses per hour. Flows of about 50 to 70 buses per hour are typical.

The South American arterial median bus lanes that have passing capabilities at stations, with a service plan featuring a variety of locals and expresses in each corridor, carry as many as 300 buses per hour one-way at the maximum load-point. These systems often use “platoons” of 2-3 buses moving, in essence, as a train through the system.

Peak-hour passenger volumes carried past the maximum load points exceed 25,000 on the approach to the Lincoln Tunnel in New York, on Bogotá’s TransMilenio four-lane busway, and along the Farrapos Busway in Porto Alegre. Peak-hour flows approach 20,000 on median busways in Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre. Ridership in Quito, Ottawa and Curitiba are in the 8,000-12,000 range. Brisbane’s South East Busway carries 9,500 people one-way in approximately 150 buses during the peak hour. Its capacity has been estimated at 11,000 persons per hour. The ridership seen in the international case studies equal or exceed the number of LRT and metro passengers carried in most U.S. and Canadian cities.

BRT operating speeds depend upon the type of running way and service pattern. Where buses run non-stop on reserved freeway lanes, revenue speeds of 40 to 50 mph are common. When the service patterns include stops on reserved or dedicated lanes, speeds generally average 18 (e.g., Bogotá) to 30 mph (Pittsburgh), depending on stop spacing and dwell times. Because of the importance of stop spacing and running way top speeds, BRT speeds are comparable to LRT speeds for the same type of operating environment even though the acceleration rate of contemporary buses are somewhat lower than LRT vehicles. The slower speeds recorded along Miami’s busway reflect stops and traffic signal delays at signalized intersections along the busway.

Average speeds for BRT operations along arterial streets in the United States and Canada range from 8 to 14 mph in New York City, 15 mph along Wilshire Boulevard and 19 mph along Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles.

“Express” operations along Curitiba’s one-way streets and Bogotá’s TransMilenio busway are approximately 18-20 mph. Buses making all-stops along median busways in South America average 11 to 14 mph.  These speeds are low when compared to BRT operations on dedicated busways in the United States and Canada. However they represent dramatic improvements over local bus speeds, and are often faster than auto speeds.

Author: Ian McNamara