C-Tran, the Vancouver, Washington public transit agency, has awarded a contract to Parsons Brinckerhoff for a transit improvement project that will consider bus rapid transit (BRT) options.
The project involves performing an alternatives analysis (AA) using the Federal Transportation Administration’s Small Starts process to develop and evaluate a range of BRT build alternatives, including guideway treatments, station locations and concepts, potential new park-and-ride facilities, sizing and locations. In addition, the PB team is responsible for community outreach, conceptual engineering of the alternatives and station areas, and environmental analysis.
Bus service along the route being evaluated, the Fourth Plain Corridor, carries 27 per cent of C-Tran’s total ridership. However, schedule reliability is consistently compromised due to localised traffic congestion, closely spaced stops and increasing numbers of people using mobility devices. It is not uncommon to see riders standing on the bus, and even “bus bunching” due to the challenge of maintaining schedule reliability. With BRT operating with priority treatment and, possibly, in some form of a fixed guideway along the corridor, C-Tran believes that most, if not all, of these challenges could be successfully addressed, and attract new riders to the system.
