Order without Design by Alain Bertaud

Author:Alain Bertaud
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: An argument that operational urban planning can be improved by the application of the tools of urban economics to the design of regulations and infrastructure.
Publisher: The MIT Press

While the capacity of the best-performing BRT may overlap with that of the worst-performing subway line, no BRT can match the speed of a subway line. Hong Kong’s subway has a capacity seven times larger than Curitiba’s BRT and a speed about 75 percent higher.

The limited speed of BRT systems (figure 5.18) suggests that there is a city size beyond which BRT is too slow to provide the mobility required in very large cities. For instance, Seoul’s metropolitan area extends across a circle of more than 100 kilometers in diameter. It is obvious that at a speed of 25 km/h, even the fastest BRT would not be able to provide access to the full job market of a large metropolitan area like Seoul. BRT, however, might be useful for providing high-capacity mobility in a restricted area (like a CBD) or for joining two dense job clusters. However, trips in large metropolitan areas would have to be provided by faster means of transport. The argument that high-capacity public transport reduces congestion is not convincing if the resulting trip duration is longer than what it would have been in a vehicle subject to congestion.

In addition, BRTs and subways are usually designed to serve radio-concentric trips, from periphery to CBD with high job concentration. However, in large metropolitan areas, employment is dispersing into suburbs. The high capacity at relatively slow speeds provided by BRT lines are not well adapted to the newly emerged spatial pattern of dispersed employment. The increase in the number of motorcycles and collective taxis in cities as diverse as Mexico and Johannesburg suggests that commuters are selecting the modes of transport that are more adapted to their trip patterns: low capacity on many diverse routes at higher speed. Unfortunately, most city managers do not accept motorcycles and collective taxis as legitimate means of transport and consequently do not provide road design and lane marking that would increase these vehicles’ efficiency and safety.

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