Abstract Manager

As populations grow and traffic numbers rise, communities are looking to other solutions to better provide transportation connections that are attractive to riders in an effort to reduce passenger vehicle trips. Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is an elegant mix between the flexibility and ease of deployment of bus service and the reliability and permanence of light rail and is a popular choice that can serve many different communities. The term ‘bus rapid transit’ can encompass a wide variety of treatments ranging from queue jumps and enhanced stops to completely dedicated runningway. All of these treatments can provide a time savings and reliability benefit but dedicated runningway is often thought to provide the best of each.  This presentation will discuss why that might not be the case.

This travel time reliability comes at the price of space which must be taken from somewhere and can be especially impactful in highly constrained urban areas. Utilizing treatments such as RCUTs, signalized MUTs, and innovative interchanges can provide enhanced operations in a smaller footprint that typical capacity improvements buying back some of that typical section space we can use in other ways. A reimagining of a roadway typical section offers a great opportunity to make broader enhancements.

This presentation will use case studies from Oregon, Florida, and Montana to show ways where BRT projects were used to affect larger changes in land use, multimodal accommodations, and traffic movement and operations. Two of the case studies utilized innovative intersection treatments combined with BRT runningway to provide traffic calming and enhance pedestrian crossings.  The other case study demonstrates how a reconfiguration of traffic flow and removal of all traffic from a congested segment offered the opportunity for urban renewal while enhancing vehicular operations.