Urban Transport Strategy. Management in Developing Countries John A Cracknell, страница 103

§  the problems of enforcement of “complex” bus lane schemes which require selective treatment for vehicle categories (buses versus other vehicles) are viewed as too great to overcome.  Enforcement of non-physically segregated bus priority, traffic management schemes has always proved difficult on a consistent basis (for example, in the past in Bangkok, Manila and other cities).  Enforcement problems have undermined confidence in bus priority.  Although bus lane enforcement is also an issue in developed cities, advanced technology is increasingly used with real time cameras to observe offenders and this coupled with high fines may alleviate the problem; the techniques may be applicable in more advanced developing cities;

§  lack of trained-experienced professional staff to deliver good designs and with sufficient vision to appreciate the benefits of road space reallocation to buses.  Poor planning and design of bus priority schemes has caused schemes to be abandoned either before implementation (such as busways in San

Jose or Caracas or bus lanes in Mumbai and others) or not to work well when introduced (such as EDSA bus lanes Manila or busways Puebla);

§  poor maintenance of simple schemes aspects (such as road markings, signs etc) has reduced the prospects of effective enforcement and eventually has caused schemes to be abandoned

§  some schemes have resulted in environmental problems arising from the poor standards of buses and their concentration onto confined busways e.g. emission-air pollution problems in Ave Caracas, Bogota and severance problems in e.g. Av 8 de Julho, Sao Paulo

Lessons – Bus priority comprises busways, bus lanes, bus priority at traffic signals, bus streets, and exemptions of buses from general traffic prohibitions (such as banned turns).  As with all traffic management, bus priority policy depends on specific city conditions but in situations where traffic congestion exists and where buses play a major role, there is strong case for bus priority.

In developing cities, where bus priority has been considered, most effort has concentrated on busways and bus lanes as the more management related measures (such as selective bus detection at signals and traffic metering-queue relocation-bus lanes schemes) are complex to design and manage.  Furthermore, in cities where the bus system is deregulated, it is impossible to organize (for examples to equip all buses with the necessary hardware).

It has been accepted in many developed cities that full and unrestrained car use cannot be accommodated.

This has lead to traffic management strategies which concentrate on the movement of “people” and not “vehicles”, place bus priority at the top of the hierarchy of traffic actions and positive reallocation of road space from general traffic to buses.  Developing cities are likely to have to adopt similar policies as traffic congestion worsens.  As buses are efficient users of scarce road space, bus priority is one of the most effective traffic management techniques to improve system efficiency, to assist demand management (by providing an alternative to car use) and to assist poverty alleviation; bus priority should be a fundamental element of any traffic strategy.  However, in developing cities, bus priority can be difficult to implement for both technical and political reasons and issues to be overcome include (i) political and local opposition to road space reallocation to buses, (ii) bus priority design and operation where small para-transit vehicles predominate, (iii) exceptionally high bus flows and bus-on-bus congestion which may mean the need to combine bus priority with bus system reorganisation and (iv) where bus systems are only just developing and buses are regarded as a second class mode.

In Latin America generally, and particularly in Brazil, Bogota (Colombia) and Quito (Ecuador), busways and bus priority is at a very advanced level.  However, in other regions, this is not the case.  There is a need to promote bus priority to the public, decision makers and politicians to convince them of the advantages; this could include (i) dissemination of planning and design guidelines to cities with little experience in the area to regions outside Latin America and (ii) visits by decision makers and by technical staff to cities with successful bus priority systems although care is needed to prevent direct and un-thinking attempts to translate the experience; for example, there have been cities which have tried to adopt the physical arrangements (the busways) of the “Curitiba experience” without recognition the Curitiba system is an integrated plan involving the bus organisation, the traffic system, a CBD traffic-pedestrian-parking scheme, land use planning and controls and has been under development for many years.  During planning, much greater public consultation efforts are needed (see Chapter 10) to explain schemes and to enable designs to respond to local concerns.