In my post on Brisbane’s King George Square busway station, I emphasized that the service pattern was of few routes running at high frequencies. Michael Setty commented
What is
really happening in Brisbane contradicts the marketing pitch made for
so-called “Quickways” (grade-separated busways) by
www.movesandiego.org, which emphasizes so-called “world best practices”
focusing on the ability of buses to operate directly from origin to
destination …
A basic duty of transit consultants like me is to show each city what other cities are doing, and help cities figure out which of those models are right for them. For example, most people have never seen Bus Rapid Transit done in a way that provides the complete “rapid-transit” experience that we expect from urban rail transit, with complete separation from traffic. So I thought I’d offer a tour of Brisbane’s South East Busway, which does exactly that.
When assessing your options for a particular transit market, it’s important to realize that many of the features that attract us to rail rapid transit can be provided in a busway setting, including an attention to design that’s too often absent from bus transit facilities.
It’s hard to pick much of a quarrel with the Environmental Defense Fund’s new report Reinventing Transit, which invites us to admire 11 US “case studies” where a major mobility improvement has been achieved fast and affordably. The cases are:
We could disagree whether these are really the “top 11,” but that’s part of the point, just as it is in those lists of “top livable cities.” By quarreling with the list we engage in the kind of thinking that the authors want to encourage. In this case, the goal is to inspire the general reader with the range of innovation occurring in the US transit industry. As the authors state:
Hello from Brisbane, the capital of Australia’s state of Queensland. I thought I’d offer some quick views of the city’s underground station at King George Square.