Planning Support Tool

Transportation planning has been defined as the process of producing information that is needed for informed, objective and effective transportation decision-making. Successful transportation system development and subsequent operation require many different types of decisions to be made by many types of institutions and people working at many different levels of government and the private sector. The types of information needed to make them and hence the types of tools needed to help produce that information will vary.

The successes of various bus rapid transit systems, especially in the U.S. such as in Boston, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Orlando, have created significant interest in BRT throughout the country. Numerous large and medium-sized metropolitan areas have at least one BRT corridor project at some point in its planning and development cycle and more are emerging every week.

Transportation planners all over the U.S. struggle with the same set of five basic questions regarding BRT:

1. How to describe or define BRT for the public and elected decision makers;
2. What should the institutional arrangements be for BRT planning, development and operation?
3. What is the range of BRT elements that might be applicable to a given situation and how should they be evaluated?;
4. How to package individual BRT elements into a coherent, integrated system?
5. How should BRT be financed?

The appropriate answers to any issue or question in any of these areas depend on the given situation in terms of the

• Physical environment
• Market
• Institutional arrangements by under which transit is planned, constructed and operated
• Traffic operations environment
• Status/history of transit planning and decision making