Bus Rapid Transit - Suburban Implementations
Because buses can run both in mixed traffic and on dedicated busway, bus rapid transit has the ability to provide more one-seat rides than a fixed corridor system and is an ideal transit mode for many suburb-to-suburb and suburb-to-downtown trips. Buses can pick up passengers on local roads, then enter a dedicated busway to bypass congestion. They can then either discharge their passengers in an urban core or leave the busway to drop passengers off close to their final destination. This quality reduces the need for transfers and the need for parking near major stations.
The Tappan Zee Bridge/I-287 Corridor Environmental Review project team found that, because of this flexibility, bus rapid transit would attract more riders traveling across the I-287 corridor than commuter rail. In study documents, the project team has projected that full-corridor BRT would attract 53,200 daily east-west riders, compared to 32,300 for full-corridor commuter rail, and concluded that BRT "would provide greater
transit access to residents and businesses in Rockland and Westchester [Counties]."
Two international case studies demonstrate BRT's effectiveness in the suburban context. The first is Ottawa, one of the best known and most cited examples of BRT in the world. Outside of
its central business district, Ottawa is a city of suburban character;
it is in fact less dense than many municipalities along the I-287 corridor, including Suffern, Nyack, White Plains, and Port Chester. Yet 20% of all travel within the city—and 70%
of commuting to downtown—is done via public transit. At the heart of the system is the Transitway, 16 miles of dedicated busway and 1.2 miles of downtown bus-only lanes. The system also has 6.6 miles of freeway shoulder bus lanes. (Pictured is a busway station serving a suburban mall.)
Many of Ottawa’s most popular BRT routes connect suburban and
rural neighborhoods off of the Transitway with employment centers
on the Transitway. In residential areas, the BRT acts more like a
traditional bus, stopping more frequently to collect passengers.
The bus then enters the Transitway to avoid congestion and brings
commuters to job sites. 95 percent of Ottawa residents who use
transit live within a quarter-mile of a bus stop.
Another relevant example is Adelaide, Australia, which uses a 7.5-mile "O-Bahn" guided busway for service on a corridor connecting suburbs and the central business district. Adelaide's "guided busway" uses bus-mounted rollers and a specially constructed "track" so that the driver does not need to steer while on the busway. However, the key to Adelaide's success is not its fancy busway but the ability of buses to leave the busway to pick up and drop off passengers in suburban areas. Indeed, 81% of O-Bahn passengers board at street stops, not busway stations.
The O-Bahn carries 27,000 passengers per weekday, halved travel time to the CBD, and was built for half the cost of light rail. It is also more efficient than the three commuter railway corridors which connect other suburbs and the Adelaide CBD; the O-Bahn handles nearly ten times as many passengers per kilometer per year as the rail corridors.
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