全球智库信息集成服务系统

Chinese cities are growing very rapidly, and the number of individual motorized vehicles is rising, with negative impacts on air pollution, congestion, and traffic fatalities. At the same time, demand for transit services is increasing. Chinese leaders have recognized public transportation as a key element for addressing all of these issues and helping the national government achieve its transport and climate change mitigation goals.

To guide planners as they prepare to expand China’s BRT, this working paper benchmarks China’s BRT systems against international standards. It identifies 11 design indicators on which Chinese systems score significantly lower than international counterparts and makes recommendations for improving them:

• Improve intersections, simplifying movements and providing traffic signal priority when appropriate.
• Plan multicorridor BRT networks to increase coverage, provide more options for users, and reduce the need for transfers by allowing buses to connect between corridors.
• Promote multimodal integration (e.g., integration between BRT and biking, which can cover the first and last mile to a BRT corridor).
• Add express, limited-stop, and local services, which increase average operating speeds and reduce travel times.
• Create high-quality BRT infrastructure (such as fully dedicated bus lanes) in segments with the highest demand.
• Provide passing lanes at stations to increase capacity, facilitate express services, and prevent bus bunching at stations.
• Set stations far enough back from intersections that at least one bus can line up, in order to increase the number of buses stations can serve at once.
• Balance coverage and speed by spacing stations optimally.
• Adopt cleaner vehicles, including electric buses, in order to reduce bus emissions.
• Improve pedestrian access to stations in order to improve safety of passengers and integrate BRT with the surrounding environment.
• Ensure that all passengers, including passengers with special needs, can access and use stations and vehicles.