_ Exclusive bus lanes and busways were already

built during the 1970s in a number of cities. The

best-known successful busways were built in
North America in Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Washington,
DC, area (Shirley), Los Angeles County (El
Monte Freeway). In Latin America they were
introduced in Sa˜o Paulo (Comonor Project),
Lima, Mexico City (Ejes Viales), and Curitiba.
They were followed by the construction of an
O-Bahn (guided bus) line in Adelaide and busways
in Brisbane, Australia, and in several
French and British cities.
_ Bus vehicle design has had very significant advances:
new vehicle types, such as the articulated
bus, double-articulated bus, low-floor bus;
also increased comfort, large windows and improved
appearance, hybrid and other cleaner engines,
etc.
_ Applications of intelligent transportation systems
(ITS) for upgrading bus services have already
been significant, and there is considerable
potential for their wider use in BTS and BRT
operations, passenger information, and safety.
_ Introduction of BTS and, particularly, BRT as
system concepts have led to the fundamental
change of treatment of bus services. Instead of
conventional operation of buses on streets with
minimum infrastructure, a systematic planning
and operation of buses as a higher-quality, coordinated
system has improved existing bus services
and created the new BRT mode, which
maximizes separate facilities and gives buses a
distinct image.
_ The commuter busways concept was adopted
in several U.S. cities in place of busways for
regular BTS services. The extensive systems of
busways in Houston, Seattle, theWashington DC
area–Shirley HOV facility, and many others are
unidirectional roadways which provide efficient
commuter services to and from downtowns, but
they do not represent regular, all-day transit systems
which constitute an integrated network.
_ Bus lanes on streets have faced a similar problem
to busways: pressure always develops to let
other vehicles, such as taxis, HOVs, delivery
trucks, and others into bus lanes. In recent years
in the United States, even HOV facilities on freeways
are under attack by the SOV motorists who
see free-flowing lanes next to the congested
lanes in which they are traveling.
_ Progress with priority treatments at intersection
has been very slow. Although the technology
for signal and other priorities has existed for
decades, even today—in cities like Boston, Baltimore,
and Los Angeles—buses with 80 persons
and LRT trains with 300 to 400 persons are
treated at intersections with the same rights as
cars with an average occupancy of 1.3 persons.
Priorities for buses are operationally and politically
even more difficult to implement than for
rail systems because of their full technological
compatibility with street traffic. For example,
bus priorities at signalized intersections along
the South Busway in Miami have been suspended
following several accidents, and there
have been claims that the highly successful
Metro Rapid BTS line on Wilshire Boulevard in
Los Angeles has a negative impact on traffic
flow at intersections. This criticism is based on
the obsolete concept that the capacity of streets
and intersections is measured in the number of
vehicles rather than the number of passengers.
_ Guided bus or O-Bahn (see Section 5.2.2.8) has
had largely unfulfilled expectations with respect
to implementation. The Adelaide system has
been successful but remained the only major facility
with that technology. Even in the Seattle
and Brisbane bus tunnels, where such a system
had potential, guided buses were not introduced.

_ Interactions with surroundings and impacts

on the served areas have varied. Good coordination
between transportation and land-use planning
in Curitiba and Ottawa enabled BRT
systems to have positive impacts on land development around major stations and along the
served corridors. In Sa˜o Paulo, on the other
hand, the corridors along the highest-capacity
bus / trolleybus lines have deteriorated economically
and environmentally due to the intensive
noise, pollution, as well as physical and visual
separation of the two sides of the avenues. The
lines carry very large passenger volumes (in excess
of 20,000 prs /h) but have a much lower
image than the BRT systems in Curitiba and Ottawa.
_ Downgrading of busways: the concept of HOV
lanes or roads was introduced in the United
Staes during the late 1970s. Although such lanes
logically favor more efficient vehicles with
greater numbers of passengers and result in the
increased productivity of highways, this concept
has led to the conversion of most busways into
HOV facilities. This change benefited carpools
and vanpools, while the bus users experienced a
distinct degradation of service and image of
BTS. Moreover, the new phenomenon of ‘‘ad
hoc carpooling,’’ performed at the ramps of former
busways, resulted in direct ‘‘stealing’’ of
transit passengers. The decrease in transit ridership
eventually resulted in a reduction of bus
services. Today, several cities allow all vehicles
with two, three, or more persons to mix with
buses in the former exclusive busways. Thus, in
the United States, busways have virtually disappeared,
the exceptions being Pittsburgh, Miami,
and very few other cities where they are
owned by the transit agencies. This has been a
distinct setback for the BTS concept.
_ Many bus priority measures have been diluted
or eliminated due to inadequate police enforcement
as well as political pressures (Philadelphia,
Chicago, Mexico). The bus lanes on Santa Monica
Freeway, evaluated positively by detailed
professional studies, were eliminated in 1977 by
a legal action—i.e., by a judge who was a layman
with respect to urban transportation. A city
council sometimes forces the elimination of transit
priorities or enforcement of regulations of
parking and turning vehicles.
_ Deregulation of bus transit, as in Great Britain,
has resulted in the breaking up of bus systems
and made their technical and organizational upgrading
much more difficult or even impossible.
For example, in Mexico City, the replacement of
most bus services by deregulated minibuses during
the 1990s practically destroyed reserved bus
lanes and other BTS features.