Commentary by Tom Farmer
You have no doubt heard opponents of the Durham Orange Light Rail Transit line (DOLRT) claim that bus rapid transit (BRT) could provide the same service at a small fraction of the cost of light rail.
First, what is BRT? It takes many of the things that make riding light rail transit (LRT) attractive, but uses buses in dedicated exclusive roadways. A true BRT system has stations with shelters and raised platforms like LRT. Fares are paid in advance to speed loading and buses come at regular intervals. Most importantly, a true BRT system has its own exclusive roadway. If the bus is stuck in the same traffic with cars, it’s not really BRT. It’s just a bus.
It is indeed true that BRT lines can cost less to construct than LRT if you already have road lanes you can take away from cars. The cheapest proposed option for Chapel HIll’s planned North South BRT system costs around $12 million per mile. However, that plan would save money on construction costs by taking away two travel lanes for motorists along Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to create a BRT exclusive roadway.
So why is it wrong to claim we can replace DOLRT for only $200 million with bus rapid transit? The big reason is that using existing road lanes is not an option for the Durham Orange transit corridor. Take a drive during rush hour and decide for yourself if we can lose two lanes on NC-54 or 15-501. Building new roadway for BRT significantly increases the cost. According to the Federal Transit Administration approved alternatives analysis, building BRT along the Durham Orange corridor instead of a light rail train would only be about 30% cheaper.
Once the Bus Rapid Transit system is up and running, those 30% savings on construction costs can vanish quickly. BRT is less expensive to operate only up to about 2,000 riders per hour. At that point, light rail becomes cheaper to operate and this cost savings increases with more passengers. Then come the maintenance costs. Buses typically wear out after 12 years, but light rail train cars typically last for 30 years. BRT costs also don’t include dedicated maintenance facilities like LRT. Factor in the potential for rising diesel fuel costs and the BRT system can easily become more expensive than the train after only a few years of service.
There is yet another financial benefit of choosing light rail that is not factored into the construction and operating costs. Light rail lines have a proven track record of spurring tax-paying private investment, typically generating 4 times the economic development than the original construction cost. Visit Charlotte, where they are doubling their light rail investment, to see the new development for yourself. Unfortunately, BRT doesn’t spur the same kind of economic growth as light rail. The meager construction cost savings in building BRT is easily lost in the diminished economic growth and tax revenue light rail generates.
BRT can only approach the capacity of light rail by increasing the frequency of service which impacts other traffic with increased at grade crossings. Even so, BRT also has lower peak capacity than light rail. Further, solving the capacity overload can prove more expensive than building light rail in the first place. Consider the cautionary tale of Los Angeles’ Metro Orange line, the 18-mile BRT line that opened in 2005 along an abandoned railroad corridor for its dedicated roadway. With over 28,000 boardings each weekday, the Orange Line BRT has reached its capacity and is now considering a $1.7 billion conversion to LRT, a cost far higher than simply building LRT in the first place.
There is a role to play for BRT in our regional transit plan. However, as the anchor of a transit corridor that links 3 major medical centers, 55,000 university students, 100,000 jobs, and two fast growing urban environments, a system based on buses isn’t up to the job.
So, can we really replace the efficiency and capacity of Durham Orange Light Rail with $200 million of BRT? Sit in traffic on NC 54 or 15-501 and you will realize that it’s not even close.
Let me make some corrections about this presentation. I’ve provided a factual correction for each of the misrepresentations.
Fake fact: BRT favorable cost comparisons to LRT requires repurposing existing roadways. In most BRT implementations, additional roadway capacity is introduced and included in the project costs. The proposed North-South BRT in Chapel Hill will add dedicated roadways for a majority of the MLK corridor. Only once in downtown close to Franklin street will they have to use existing roadways, unless they can find more space to widen the right of way. The $125 million / 8.2 mile project will cost approximately $15M per mile, including additional roadways, stations, fare collection, etc. http://nscstudy.org. You can look at many other BRT systems across the US where the cost of expanding the roadways for dedicated BRT services with all of the other BRT elements is well under $25M per mile. A transit system with BRT as the main technology would serve more transit riders in Orange County!
Fake fact: NC-54 cannot be widened. NC DOT is already planning to widen NC-54. And let’s not forget that the DOLRT requires a 50’ right of way, as opposed to 12’ for each BRT lane (x 2 or 24’). Building new roadways in included in the BRT project costs.
Fake fact: BRT ridership can’t handle our ridership. The author cites 2,000 riders per hour as a BRT threshold, without citing reference to support that claim. With the estimated 27,000 daily trips for Light Rail in 2040 (over 18.5 hours during the day) is well below the cited BRT number of approximately 720 riders per hour in each direction.
Fake fact: LRT outperforms BRT. GoTriangle’s Alternative Analysis concluded that “Based on the information presented in Table ES‐1, The BRT‐High and BRT‐Low Alternatives clearly rate well in their ability to meet the first three project goals. Both BRT Alternatives outperform the LRT Alternative in their ability to meet Goal 1: Improve mobility through and within the study corridor, Goal 2: Increase transit efficiency and quality of service, and Goal 3: Improve transit connections.” page ES-6
http://ourtransitfuture.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/573_DO_AA_Final_Report_8_Jun_12_web.pdf
Fake fact: BRT requires diesel. Chapel Hill is now looking at electric buses. In fact many communities are introducing cleaner electric BRT including the IndyGo (Indianapolis, Indiana). There are some areas that are beginning pilots with solar roads (where solar panels are embedded in the road surface) and wireless induction charging (where the vehicle can charge while in motion without requiring the bus to be plugged in to recharge the batteries).
Fake fact: BRT costs more than LRT. LRT requires large ongoing maintenance. Charlotte LYNX had to refurbish all of the 16 LYNX trains after 4 years of operations at a cost of $400,000 each (for a total of $6.5 million). A new bus costs approximately $500,000. http://www.wsoctv.com/news/repairs-for-lynx-trains-to-cost-65m/329915899
Fake fact: Los Angeles is replacing BRT with LRT. The Los Angeles Orange Line BRT opened in October 2005 with a construction cost of $325 million / 18 miles or $18M per mile. Los Angeles has not decided to replace the Orange BRT with LRT, but they have received unsolicited proposal from Fluor Enterprises (estimated at $1.6 billion). In addition, the Orange BRT in Los Angeles (ironically) was originally a rail line that they chose to convert to BRT due to it’s lower construction costs and ridership exceeds anticpated DOLRT … “averaging 28,263 weekday boardings so far in 2015”. Los Angeles has been operating BRT for over a decade with ridership exceeding our most optimistic DOLRT riderships for 2040.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Line_(Los_Angeles_Metro)
http://thesource.metro.net/2017/03/07/metro-receives-unsolicited-proposal-to-accelerate-orange-line-conversion-to-light-rail-through-a-public-private-partnership/
If you want to seen BRT in action in Chapel Hill, check out this video.
http://ourtownchapelhill.org/study-areas/transportation/
Rapid transit shows record growth in 2016
20th March 2017 Nick Michell
https://cities-today.com/rapid-transit-shows-record-growth-2016/
Over 530 kilometres of rapid transit was constructed in China in 2016
Over the last year, there has been international record growth in fixed-route transit, according to a comprehensive collection of rapid transit data compiled by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP). ITDP looked at bus rapid transit (BRT), light rail transit (LRT), and Metro built in 2016 in 373 urban areas around the world.
“These numbers do indicate to us that, despite all the hype of private transit such as Uber, and the excitement about automated vehicles, cities are, of course, continuing to see increasing demand for transit,” Michael Marks, Transport Research Associate for ITDP, told Cities Today. “In fact, we have seen progress in rapid transit development in cities in the Global South that have traditionally been dominated by informal and private transit modes, such as minibuses.”
BRT was a marginal mode until around the beginning of the new millennium, but has since become an increasingly popular choice for cities around the world.
More than twice as much bus rapid transit was built in 2016 compared to light rail transit, continuing the trend of BRT growth outpacing the increasingly less-popular option. 2016 marked the fifth straight year where more BRT opened than LRT, and while there are more kilometres of LRT, BRT is rapidly catching up. At this rate of construction, the total length of operational BRT should catch up by 2030.
“Cost and construction speed are perhaps the biggest selling points of BRT, and largely explain why it has become a popular transit solution for cities, especially in the developing world,” added Marks. “If built correctly, BRT can achieve capacities that are almost on par with Metro corridors at one tenth of the cost. And while some cities prefer the aesthetics of light rail, even the highest performing LRT corridors do not match the capacities of their BRT counterparts, and tend to cost around twice as much.”
Brazil, which for most of the past two decades was stagnant or declining in terms of its rapid transit, in the past five years has seen a notable improvement, driven mostly by a spate of BRT construction. Since 2012, 171.6 kilometres of BRT have opened in Brazil. This period of transit expansion coincides with the preparation for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, and indeed 70 percent of BRT built in Brazil during this period was built in the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area. However, over this same time frame, Brasilia and Belo Horizonte both opened their first BRT corridors, indicating a nationwide trend towards BRT.
The author makes numerous unsubstantiated claims, devoid of facts and unconstrained by today’s fiscal realities … and far, far too many to refute in a single posting. And while the author would like for you to believe that BRT (or Bus Rapid Transit) is some sub-par, fringe concept, here are some facts to consider.
Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) continues to expand globally, with over 400 BRT lines in 195 cities serving approximately 32.4 million people daily. BRT is a high-quality, high-capacity rapid transit system that improves upon traditional rail transit systems at a significantly lower cost. Vehicles travel in dedicated lanes with traffic signal priority thereby avoiding competing traffic. Passengers walk to comfortable stations, pay their fares in the station, and board through multiple doors just like a train. So BRT takes advantage of all of the best attributes of LRT, while providing additional flexibility of sharing with other wheel-based (not rail-based) systems and the ability to reconfigured routes to adjust to our changing population and commuting patterns.
Closer to home, the NS BRT for Chapel Hill with 80% dedicated guideway is projected to cost $125M for 8.2 miles (~ $15M per mile) to be in passenger service in 2022 (7 years before DOLRT). Wake County building 20 miles of BRT at a cost of $20M per mile to be in service in 2024 (5 years before DOLRT).
Compared to DOLRT now projected at over $3,000M (with interest) to build 17.7 miles of DOLRT or $169M per mile to be in service in 2029.
The estimated Chapel Hill BRT operating cost of $3.4M vs DOLRT annual operating cost of $29M.
And the Alternative Analysis concluded that “Based on the information presented in Table ES‐1, The BRT‐High and BRT‐Low Alternatives clearly rate well in their ability to meet the first three project goals. Both BRT Alternatives outperform the LRT Alternative in their ability to meet Goal 1: Improve mobility through and within the study corridor, Goal 2: Increase transit efficiency and quality of service, and Goal 3: Improve transit connections.” page ES-6
So let’s have a fact-based, community discussion rather than the faux, ‘progressive’ faith-based argument. BRT provides a more cost-effective, public transit system that can be deployed more quickly and serve more people in the community. Rather than waste $70M to fund more DOLRT studies, we need to pivot to a plan B that builds a sustainable and affordable public transit system for our communities and builds on Chapel Hill’s NS BRT plan.
Does the author have any conflicts of interest? Unlike a true journalist I see no disclosure.