Introduction

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) signifies a concrete commitment to bus transit, encompassing coordinated institutional, financial, physical, and operational interventions. This commitment can catalyse wider urban development by improving local and metropolitan accessibility and urban spaces and streetscapes. This chapter explores prospects for such BRT-oriented development (BRTOD).

Transit-oriented development (TOD) aims to leverage the interactions between urban land use, mobility, and socioeconomic systems. This chapter examines how BRT corridors might spur TOD, structuring the city and its spaces towards more equitable and transit-conducive urban forms. Specifically, it uses results from a graduate level planning and design workshop in two regions, Boston, Massachusetts and Santiago de Chile, to explore how BRT corridors might catalyse cross-disciplinary approaches to urban development. Adopting an integrated approach to the design of transit routes and infrastructures, surrounding public spaces, real estate projects, public policy and governance, the students’ proposals for these two corridors highlight BRT's transformative potential across diverse urban settings.

The next section provides a brief theoretical and empirical background. The third section summarises the workshop's approach and contexts; the fourth presents workshop results, illustrating various possible design and planning innovations for realising BRTOD. The conclusion synthesises lessons learned.

Theoretical perspectives and empirical precedents

Basic economic theory suggests that households and firms make tradeoffs between travel costs, land area, and other relevant attributes in their location decisions. These interactions essentially occur between two urban subsystems: land use and mobility. Land uses determine the locations of potential trip origins and destinations and influence the relative attractiveness of different travel modes. Mobility, in turn, influences the relative desirability of different locations, improving ‘connectivity’, but sometimes with negative consequences such as pollution. The interaction of these subsystems defines urban accessibility: the degree to which people and firms can reach activities, services, and goods (Geurs and van Wee 2004).

A major transportation investment will change accessibility across a metropolitan area, impacting the relative attractiveness of locations. System users and residents may benefit from lower travel costs, higher quality of life/wellbeing (see, for example, Cao 2013) and possibly increased social capital (Kamruzzaman et al 2014). These effects should be capitalised in land values (Zegras et al 2013).