Curitiba City in Brazil was the first to develop a BRT, growing from a simple bus system in 1974 to a network of six lines by 2009. The system uses 70km of busway corridors to enable the buses to move rapidly around the city, with customers paying a flat fare to travel wherever they wish across the network. This article summarises the development of the system, including useful images and a video. As it concludes, this scheme has shown the world how creativity can lead to successful low-cost solutions to improve city transport.

Bogota’s rapid growth in the 1990s led to concerns about the safety and efficiency of public transport. In 1999, the Mayor proposed building the TransMilenio BRT system to tackle these problems and reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Busways now cover 207km, and the TransMilenio is the largest BRT in the world. This case study presents information about the city’s problems in the 1990s, the implementation of the system and the benefits it has brought to the inhabitants. Many of these benefits can be linked to the urban poor, including reductions in time spent in congestion, respiratory diseases, noise pollution and accidents. There is a very useful section on lessons learned, which lists six factors that led to success. Students could be challenged to use these criteria to analyse other BRT systems or assess each factor’s relative importance in the context of the TransMilenio.

This resource considers the benefits of BRT systems to be time-saving, pollution reduction, improved traffic safety and increased physical activity. It also has a useful video on BRT systems in Mexico City and Istanbul. If students are looking at a particular BRT, it would be helpful for them to investigate the extent to which these benefits are being realised in their chosen location. It would also be useful for them to link these benefits to the problems they are tackling in urban areas, categorising them as social, economic, environmental and political (SEEP).

The Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) in Uganda’s capital city began its quest towards creating a BRT system in 2012, with Pioneer transit buses introduced under the ownership of a private company, but financial problems put the company out of business within a year. The World Bank and KCCA produced a feasibility report into a BRT in 2010 but found that most roads were too narrow to convert into bus lanes, and only 38% of roads in the city are tarmacked. Other barriers to the BRT include a lack of collaboration between the government and private organisations and the lack of investment in road infrastructure. Students could use the six factors for success listed in the article about the TransMilenio BRT system to analyse the proposed Kampala BRT – how can the problems be overcome, and how could the urban poor benefit?