A new public transport system known as Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) has been kicking off worldwide. This system has dedicated lanes for buses to go through and stations similar to the ones in a subway. But is this a better method than traditional buses?
First of all, constructing these dedicated lanes and stations is expensive and involves heavy spending of taxpayers' money. For a regular bus, you would need to have small stations and the vehicles themselves, but for the BRT system, you need so much more technology and Equipment that it ultimately is too over the top compared to regular buses. You will need electronic gates, screens on stations and escalators and stairs as well along with lights. Is this really feasible?
Secondly. more money is spent on the maintenance of a BRT than on a traditional bus system due to the different stations and security at these stations. You need to hire guards to monitor the station along with maintaining the lanes and fences. This also means that it is less likely for them to become profitable, so maintaining them becomes a burden on poor countries such as Pakistan.
There is also the fact that you cant build a dedicated lane everywhere. Wherever a road exists, you can run a bus. But you can't just build 2 new lanes on every road. For example, on Jama Cloth Market, Karachi, you can easily run 2 buses but since it's such, a busy and congested area, building 2 lanes would worsen the situation by a lot and cause further congestion. The government has failed to build a lane here which proves the point. This is also why more passengers are taking advantage of the traditional buses and not the ones with dedicated lanes.
Moreover, once you build a lane for a BRT, that's it. You can't make the bus go farther or build on the route without spending a ton of money and resources. While on a normal bus without a lane you can make it go wherever you want without any limits. Only the road is the limit. Both the BRTs of Karachi are facing this problem in expanding their route.
In conclusion, having dedicated lanes for buses is a waste and it doesn't help solve the problem of traffic congestion, but ultimately it can make it worse. We should focus on building a strong bus network with small stations worldwide, with no dedicated lanes.
