Effects of new bus and rail rapid transit systems – an international review

Abstract

Cities worldwide are implementing modern transit systems to improve mobility in the increasingly congested metropolitan areas. Despite much research on the effects of such systems, a comparison of effects across transit modes and countries has not been studied comprehensively. This paper fills this gap in the literature by reviewing and comparing the effects obtained by 86 transit systems around the world including Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), Light Rail Transit (LRT), metro, and heavy-rail transit systems. The analysis is twofold by analysing i) the direct operational effects related to travel time, ridership, and modal shifts, and ii) the indirect strategic effects in terms of effects on property values and urban development. The review confirms the existing literature suggesting that BRT can attract many passengers if travel time reductions are significantly high. This leads to attractive areas surrounding the transit line with increasing property values. Such effects are traditionally associated with attractive rail-based public transport systems. However, a statistical comparison of 41 systems did not show significant deviations between effects on property values resulting from BRT, LRT, and metro systems, respectively. Hence, this paper indicates that large strategic effects can be obtained by implementing BRT systems at a much lower cost.

Public transport accessibility and housing value uplift: Evidence from the Docklands light railway in London

“…In addition, DLR is more unlikely to have as wide an influence on property prices as Underground investment or even tram LRT; however, London has very high property prices internationally (Hamnett, 2009), hence even a marginal change in accessibility might have a large property price impact. Therefore, the DLR case study is probably very different relative to the findings from previous literature (Ingvardson and Nielsen, 2018), for example, in North American (Black, 1993;Cervero, 1984;Kuby et al, 2004). This paper focuses on the station catchment areas of the south-eastern and northern branches of the DLR (Fig.…”

The Condition of Postmodernity. An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (an excerpt)

“…Privatization here should be studied differently in comparison with the deregulation perspective of Thredbo followers such as Gwilliam [2008]. In the same way, studies on the economic consequences of transport development suggest the need for another conceptual framework [Flyvbjerg, Mette, Buhl 2005;Shoup 2011;Ingvardson, Nielsen 2017]. In addition, a transport-oriented political economy perspective is considered a problem within the decision-making process [Klopp 2011;Minn 2013] rather than how mobility is actually produced.…”

Preferences in regional public transport: a literature review

“…Also, rail is generally favoured compared to buses in both local and regional public transport. For local public transport, this gap in perception can be bridged through high-quality bus services such as Bus Rapid Transit, which has been implemented in many cities and now becoming a well-established concept the world over [19]. Efforts for developing similar high-quality bus concepts on a regional scale are, however, rare.…”

“…Bus services are overrepresented in studies into customer satisfaction in local public transport [15], but when comparing the modes, passengers generally prefer rail modes, such as metro and light rail [18]. However, through implementation of high-quality bus concepts such as Bus Rapid Transit, bus services in urban areas can attract as many passengers as light rail and metro, and lead to significant modal shifts similar to those found when implementing rail-based systems [19].…”