Bus Rapid Transit Sketch Planning: Process of Building a Better Bus System for Miami-Dade County

The Miami-Dade Metropolitan Planning Organization undertook a comprehensive examination of planning rapid transit service for Miami-Dade County (MDC) in response to the People?s Transportation Plan which calls for rapid transit expansion in a number of corridors in MDC. The objective of the project was to conduct a sketch-level planning analysis of corridors where Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) could be implemented in a reasonable amount of time and at a reasonable cost in order to provide the public with an alternative to the privately owned vehicle. The sketch planning project detailed in this paper examined the implementation of BRT in MDC and, for the first time, used the Characteristics of Bus Rapid Transit for Decision-Making report. While some of the corridors might ultimately accommodate rapid rail at some point in the future, MDC believes it is important to determine if it is possible to have some form of rapid public transit service in place before such rail could be implemented (in most cases, this time frame is 8 to 10 years or more). The introduction of a higher-quality mode of public transit to MDC that offers faster travel choices to users was an integral part of the effort detailed in the paper. The recommended BRT treatments were the result of a common-sense process that stressed the examination and integration of the full range of appropriate solutions for BRT given the uniqueness of each corridor and fiscal and implementation timeframe constraints. This meant matching potential market and land-use characteristics in each corridor with the possible range of BRT elements to improve travel times and the image of transit to greatly improve the delivery of transit service to existing customers and to hopefully attract ?net? new riders to the BRT routes.

• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Baltes, Michael R
  • Hardy, Matthew
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 86th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2007-1-21 to 2007-1-25
• Date: 2007

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: CD-ROM
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 16p
• Monograph Title: TRB 86th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers CD-ROM

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bus rapid transit; Bus transit; Bus transit operations; Bus transportation; Bus travel; Mode choice; Public transit; Ridership; Transportation planning
• Geographic Terms: Miami-Dade County (Florida)
• Subject Areas: Motor Carriers; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01049308
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 07-0161
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: May 8 2007 12:42PM