Comparing Transit Alternatives After Recent Developments in Bus Rapid Transit in Latin America

This paper describes how new developments in Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in Latin America show very high capacity and ridership levels at relatively low capital and operational costs. Based on this experience, transit alternatives are compared using several criteria and with specific application to developing cities conditions. The concept of High Level Bus Rapid Transit (HBRT), is used to distinguish it from other bus based improvements. The comparison shows that no alternative is superior to the others in all aspects. Capacity considerations indicate that HBRT can be evaluated as an option to Heavy Rail Transit –Metro, in the range from 20,000 to 40,000 passengers per hour per direction, which is not often the case in alternative analysis. Financial and socio-economic evaluations also indicate that High Level Bus Rapid Transit might be preferred to Heavy Rail Transit. Given that input variables are uncertain, a sensitivity analysis using Monte Carlo simulation is performed. The analysis indicates that, from a socio-economic perspective and developing cities conditions, HBRT results a better option than Metro 4 out of 5 times for a demand level of 35,000 passengers per hour per direction. The analysis also shows that large socio-economic losses arise when decisions are delayed and inefficient operations are maintained, and that replacement of these inefficient operations is the most important benefit of transit improvements in developing cities.