Managing Curb Space on Arterial Streets: Making the Case for Fast and Reliable Transit Service in a Mixed Flow Environment

How a city manages roadway right-of-way has a major impact on the character and function of transit service. Good transit service is a key part of any City’s growth management strategy and maximizing person moving capacity of existing roadways. Bus rapid transit has the potential to attract new riders to transit and provide an alternative to single-occupancy vehicle trips. To capture more riders, the bus rapid transit service will need to provide travel time savings and reliability, increase the frequency and span of service, and have a distinct identity and image. This paper examines some of the technical and policy support for a wide range of transit treatments and the critical criteria for decision-making. Examples from Seattle will be used to demonstrate how key transit treatments require buy-in and how these issues were framed for discussion. This paper will outline transit treatments available for making transit fast and reliable; show how these treatments where selected for implementation, with a focus on KC Metro Transit’s (Seattle area) method for RapidRide (bus rapid transit) improvements; discuss the proposed queue jump selection methodology for PACE Bus (Chicago area); and will include discussions from past projects relating to transit treatments which have led to an understanding about bus rapid transit in a mixed flow environment.