The Asia LEDS Partnership, with significant contributions from Malaysia’s Land Public Transport Commission (SPAD), conducted a regional workshop June 24-25, 2014, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Over 65 representatives from China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, and Vietnam attended the workshop to quantify the environmental, social, and economic benefits from Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems.
Held at the SPAD Academy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the workshop was a direct response to demand for increased capacity in the region on sustainable transportation systems through the Asia LEDS Partnership. The event focused on sharing frameworks and tools to inform decision making on BRT systems in Asia, with an emphasis on quantifying the benefits that result from Asia-based BRT systems. The workshop specifically helped to address ongoing BRT development projects in cities across the region.
The participants, all actively involved in existing or planned BRT systems in Asia, left with improved understanding of tools and methods to quantify impacts, skills to apply these tools, and a stronger peer network to draw on in order to help address common BRT system design and implementation challenges.
In addition to SPAD, other technical partners included the LEDS Global Partnership Transport Working Group, World Resources Institute EMBARQ, Clean Air Asia, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), United Nations University – Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS), and Institute for Global Environmental Studies (IGES).
Background
BRT systems now serve more than 150 cities globally with nearly 4,400 km of dedicated corridors that have helped transform mobility in cities. Constructing BRT systems yields a stream of benefits including saving fuel, reducing travel time, increasing access to transportation services, reducing emissions, reducing the frequency of accidents, improving public health, and generally improving the liveability of cities.
However, many of these BRT system benefits are often not quantified due to barriers such as lack of knowledge, appropriate methodologies, and data. These barriers hinder decision making to develop BRT systems, with stakeholders not acknowledging the full impacts of the system. In recent years, tools and methodologies have emerged which now provide easy quantification of benefits, helping to better brand BRT systems and facilitate greater stakeholder support.
Contact
For more details please email Ms. Sandra Khananusit, Asia LEDS Partnership Secretariat, at: [email protected]