Friday, July 10, 2009

Buses May Aid Climate Battle

Bogotá, Colombia, has implemented a bus rapid transit system, which improves traffic flow and reduces smog at a fraction of the cost of building a subway.



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Like most thoroughfares in booming cities of the developing world, Bogotá’s Seventh Avenue resembles a noisy, exhaust-coated parking lot — a gluey tangle of cars and the rickety, smoke-puffing private minibuses that have long provided transportation for the masses.

Carrera Séptima; we lived on it. And I remember those microbuses, VW vans.

But a few blocks away, sleek red vehicles full of commuters speed down the four center lanes of Avenida de las Américas. The long, segmented, low-emission buses are part of a novel public transportation system called bus rapid transit, or B.R.T. It is more like an above-ground subway than a collection of bus routes, with seven intersecting lines, enclosed stations that are entered through turnstiles with the swipe of a fare card and coaches that feel like trams inside.

rapid transit systems like Bogotá’s, called TransMilenio, might hold an answer. Now used for an average of 1.6 million trips each day, TransMilenio has allowed the city to remove 7,000 small private buses from its roads, reducing the use of bus fuel — and associated emissions — by more than 59 percent since it opened its first line in 2001, according to city officials. In recognition of this feat, TransMilenio last year became the only large transportation project approved by the United Nations to generate and sell carbon credits.

Fascinating.

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