Technology · Mobility

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)

1974 · Curitiba
An enclosed tube station and dedicated busway on Curitiba's BRT network, the city that invented the system in 1974
An enclosed tube station and dedicated busway on Curitiba's BRT network, the city that invented the system in 1974 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Mariordo (Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz)

What it is

Bus Rapid Transit gives buses dedicated, physically separated lanes, enclosed stations with level boarding and off-board fare collection, so that they perform much like a metro at a fraction of the cost. The first full system was Curitiba's Rede Integrada de Transporte, opened in 1974 under mayor Jaime Lerner, which ran high-capacity buses along radial 'structural axes' that also concentrated dense development. Pre-payment and platform-level boarding cut dwell time and let the buses carry metro-scale passenger volumes.

Why it matters

BRT delivered mass transit quickly and affordably to cities that could not fund underground rail, and tied transport directly to land-use planning. The Curitiba model has been exported worldwide, notably to Bogotá's TransMilenio and dozens of other cities.

Plans it shaped

See it on the timeline →
hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.