"Quasi-BRT"—A New Way to Improve the Efficiency of BRT Corridor

BRT is a certain mean of city public transport, not only large in capacity and fast but also flexible, which covers both the advantages of urban rail transit and bus transit. What is more, its costs are much lower than rail transit both in construction and in operation. Therefore it enjoys great popularity worldwide. With the challenges caused by rapid urbanization and motorization, big cities in China are facing the problems of traffic jams and congestion in urban transportation. It is impossible to build as many roads as needed because of the land and environmental resource constraints. The development of large-capacity public transport is undoubtedly the basic way to solve those traffic problems. Many cities have realized that and started to develop BRT. Since the BRT corridor takes up road resources, thus affecting other vehicles, it is necessary to study how to improve the efficiency of the BRT corridor, so as to enhance the public transport service level and to increase public acceptance of the BRT. This paper proposes a way of appropriately introducing some regular bus lines as the "quasi-BRT" onto BRT corridor under the premise that it does not greatly affect the service level of the BRT lines. The "quasi-BRT" routes can be divided into three categories, namely, on-line, off-line and merging-line, according to the position from where they enter and leave the BRT corridor. Taking Nanning as the background city, it also analyzes the necessity and feasibility of introducing ordinary bus lines onto the BRT corridor, and studies the way to guarantee bus priority at intersections in the presence of ordinary bus lines as well.