What is BRT, exactly? Reliable, for one thing

There's a lot of misunderstanding among the traveling public and beyond about bus-rapid transit, or BRT, according to a recent post on Mobility Lab, the website for a Virginia-based transportation research and development group.

The fact that BRT is highly reliable (read: on time) is often lost in the chatter, because the media, transit agencies and planners usually focus on the service's flashier elements, such as fancy buses with Wi-Fi, the group said.

The post goes on to state that research shows that reliability is the most important attribute among people using mass transit. In short, BRT is the Toyota Camry of transit, because it's reliable and sensible.

A definition of BRT might be in order, although this can be tricky.

The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy defines BRT as having dedicated bus-only lanes, which promote faster travel and ensure that buses aren't delayed because of traffic congestion.

Other BRT basics include: busway alignment in the center of the road or a separate bus-only corridor; keeping buses away from curbs; fare payment at the station, instead of on the bus; a ban on turns across the bus lane for traffic, and platform-level boarding, making it accessible for wheelchairs, strollers and carts.

Bus-rapid transit has proved popular in places such as South America and China, although there are a few "true" BRT lines in the United States, including the HealthLine in Cleveland and the Orange Line in Los Angeles.

Now, there's the $112 million Red Line, the Twin Cities' first BRT line connecting the Mall of America with the Apple Valley Transit Station along Cedar Avenue. And, there's the A-line, which connects the 46th Street Blue Line LRT station in Minneapolis to Rosedale Mall in Roseville. The A-line opened last summer and has enjoyed wide acceptance among riders, according to Metro Transit.

The $27 million A-line has BRT attributes — including payment before boarding, at-grade boarding, limited stops and signal optimization, which coaxes traffic signals to stay green at 19 of the 34 signals along the line.

But Metro Transit calls it a "rapid bus" as opposed to BRT because it travels in traffic along the busy Snelling Avenue corridor in St. Paul. Metro Transit plans at least a dozen more of these rapid bus lines in the next 15 years.

The planned $150 million Orange Line, which will connect downtown Minneapolis to Burnsville along Interstate 35W, is in the works. So is the C Line, which will travel largely along Penn Avenue between downtown Minneapolis and Brooklyn Center.

The first "true" BRT line in the Twin Cities will be the $485 million Gold Line, slated to have its own busway linking the Union Depot in downtown St. Paul to Woodbury. That's in the works, too.

Any way you look at it, Hinebaugh says BRT "is a lot better than local [bus] service."

Having a dedicated corridor for BRT is "a fine goal," he noted, but is often a difficult one to attain, since corridors need a fair amount of land on which to build.