U.S. Gets a Lesson From Developing Countries on Buses

U.S. Gets a Lesson From Developing Countries on Buses

WASHINGTON — The lowly bus is getting a makeover that could one day help U.S. workers whiz past traffic to their jobs on time while saving fuel in the country that is the world’s largest oil consumer.

For decades, most U.S. commuters have maligned buses as noisy, dirty and much slower than cars in city traffic, since they make many stops.

But about 120 cities in developing economies from Colombia to China that have invested in high-technology systems known as bus rapid transit, or B.R.T., have taken the transport mode to a higher level.

About 28 million commuters in cities including Bogotá, Mexico City and Jakarta rode B.R.T. lines every workday last year, according to Embarq, a global transport network at the World Resources Institute, an environmental research organization in Washington.

...............

Los Angeles, with its Orange line, and Cleveland, with its HealthLine, have adopted the systems, but they are the only U.S. cities that have developed full-blown B.R.T. lines.

New York recently opened a rapid Select Bus Service line in the Bronx and one on the East Side of Manhattan. But transport experts consider those “B.R.T. light” because they lack dedicated lanes and the buses sometimes get stuck behind vehicles that borrow or park in their lanes.

................

In Cleveland, the HealthLine gets financing from hospitals that competed to name the line. Leaders in other cities are working to persuade businesses to pay taxes for B.R.T. because it could cut commuting times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/business/global/07green.html?src=busln