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Report n°6: Urban Public Transport

Could the Bogotá model be transferred to industrialised countries?

A transfer of this model to Europe might be a little more difficult, because of urban morphology and high density gradient between the centre and the periphery, the size of conurbations and the existence of heavy networks inherited from the past which already provide a transport grid on built-up territory. It must be remembered that in Europe, conurbations of 5 to 10 or 12 million inhabitants are an exception. Everywhere in Europe, the most heavily used routes transport 50 to 60,000 passengers per hour and per direction (at peak times), the RER A in Paris on its central section being an example. These are the largest conurbations and the most heavily used routes. In average middle sized European towns, a very heavily used bus line transports 50 to 60,000 passengers per day, whereas Bogotá's "TransMilenio" transports as many in an hour. This 1-10 ratio must be kept in mind before indulging in dreams of transferring the model to Europe, even with downscaled intensity of service. The population involved remains much smaller and the competition provided by private cars is much greater. In Rouen, where TEOR provides an exclusive right-of-way route for buses (as we shall see below), there are 50,000 passengers per day for both directions, for a town of 400,000 inhabitants and a degree of private car ownership of the order of 80%.

And yet the model is based on a concept that would be transferable to cities in Europe and France since there are already some pioneering projects that owe little or nothing to Latin America. In France, Dijon (250,000 inhabitants) constructed in the late 70s a bus-based exclusive right-of-way system in the city centre. This was ten years before the return of the tramway in townships with double that number of inhabitants, i.e. Grenoble and Nantes. In Montpellier, in the mid 80s, a priority route including 3 km of exclusive right-of-way in the city centre opened the way for the tram which was put into service 15 years later. In Rouen, the east-west bus-based exclusive right-of-way system, installed in the late 90s, together with the Trans-Val de Marne in the southern suburbs of Paris (Créteil-Rungis), is the French (and probably European) model for a "European style BRT". The language itself seeks to follow closely the medium-sized town model by putting forward the notion of a "high level of service" line (line rather than network), the high level being frequency, amplitude, capacity and smooth flow, in particular due to the sections with dedicated right-of-way.

A very original example must also be mentioned: the new town of Evry, in the Paris area where the central business district was designed from the outset to be served by a dedicated BRT with exclusive right-of-way all along the line, which could later be renovated for use by a heavier system, such as a tram. On a very different scale, Evry can be compared to Curitiba, where the township was developed in a very structured manner along exclusive right-of-way routes for buses, for lack of sufficient financial resources to build metro lines.