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Very interesting video. I agree that a lot of BRT projects are sometimes in practice just "priority bus" improved bus routes (better stops, some priority features, better buses) and not proper bus rapid transit (hence why so few systems get graded by ITDP). Question though, why can't police stop drivers without a reason in the USA? In both Canada and Australia, police do not need a reason to do a traffic stop in order to check a driver's license and fitness to drive (breath and/or drug test). Failure to comply with a request for a breathalyzer test is a crime in both countries with equivalent penalties to DUI including fines and license suspension. I don't see how a fare inspection by a police officer is any different. However, the best transit systems employ unarmed fare inspectors with customer service styled rather than security-styled uniforms to conduct fare enforcement, such as in Sydney, Australia.

*Imo, the only brt line considered a disaster in LA County would be the Metro J Line (Silver) 910/950 You've got the El Monte Busway in the East, and the Harbor Transitway in the south with DTLA in between said Busways and street running to San Pedro south of the Harbor Transitway, CAUSING A HEADACHE. MEANWHILE, the G Line (Orange) gets the whole Busway with signal priority (Hopefully). BUT METRO IS MORE FOCUSED ON TRANSIT AMBASSADORS*

Americans don’t know how to handle public transport and make it a success. These bus passengers will now get into cars and clog the roads more. Even if a city has decent public transport car drivers try to underfund it, obstruct it or claim the space for their cars and they succeed most of the time. Let’s all acknowledge that Americans don’t have the intelligence needed for better living conditions and leave it at that.

They're not going to bring back proof of payment. The Red Line is suppose to get fare validators for digital fares and gates once they close it down to start the work for the new trains (all the platforms need extended to fit). They're suppose to put up gates that only open if you scan your fare at the validator. This is assuming however they go forward with the idea of doing away with cash fares and bring in the cards you can pre-load like they're suppose to when they signed the contract with EZ-Fare. RTA has a huge fare evasion issue and a homeless problem also. Before W.117-Madison State closed for the bridge work, it was very scary and dangerous to walk thru the station. And the city likely DID turn off signal priority because just look at the mess that is Public Square. I feel like the old 4 way square from 10+ years (when Ontario was a thru street) ago flowed way better than today's Public Square. And technically the CSU Line is also BRT (cough, cough) on the 55, 55B & 55C routes but their are no scanners, you pay on the bus like normal and they do use small buses on some blocks for reasons. Night blocks use them because RTA likes getting the 60ft buses off the road by 7pm (excluding HealthLine). Also on weekends the 55 flips with the 90 downtown so small buses are used. And the 55 will always run late during the week because of where the reliefs are made, it's in front of the Key Bank building as soon the bus turns from Rockwell onto Ontario. So it's mid-route. And RTA from what I understand from people does NOT plan to order any more 60ft buses except for the Healthline because the mechanics DO NOT like them at all. This is why sometimes you will see almost none on the 22 or 55 because they're all at Triskett for maintenance. Hayden doesn't have this issue with the Heathline because they have extra buses incase that happens and only uses those on one route.

It's a shame how personal preferences of "important people" can ruin public goods. BRT is the right choice for many cities and it's residents. Political power shouldn't be allowed to say different. This can also extend to LRT and commuter rail, where headways grow, expansions are deferred, and auto centric development proliferates. Thanks for emphasizing the impact of signal priority and lane enforcement. These things shouldn't be political but are already an issue on our regular routes here in Dallas. We have even more challenges with BRT.

1:48 I love how their plans get progressively less ambitious as time goes on

Rapid Transit stations are extremely dangerous. There's no security. Police don't respond to bus drivers calling for help electronically. I've witnessed & managed to avoid some scary moments. Of course, both busses & the Shaker Rapid which runs like a trolley have had robberies happen @ stops on board. Gotta say the drivers by 2024 seem much nicer & responsible.

The station distancing point is so important - even on Denver's express/L buses, which are in mixed traffic, the stop spacing saves a ton of time. I save ~5 min on the 15L vs the 15. Fewer stops also makes for a better riding experience, since you don't have to hold on every two stops when the bus slides to a stop.

it's really more B and not so much RT. Cleveland just throws the bendy busses on the regular bus routes

Lovely video, but quite hard to hear your voice over the music and so on much of the time

Pittsburgh has different bus highways! The Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway serves Pittsburgh's eastern neighborhoods and suburbs. Originally a Pennsylvania Railroad line, planning for the East Busway began shortly after the Port Authority of Allegheny County purchased the Pittsburgh Railways Company in 1964. The original segment of the busway opened in February 1983, running between Downtown Pittsburgh and Edgewood, a length of 6.8 miles, and expanded to 9.1 miles in 2002! The West Busway serves western neighborhoods and suburbs, running for 5.1 miles (or 8.2 km) from the southern shore of the Ohio River near downtown to Carnegie, following the former Panhandle Route (called such because it served WV's northern panhandle) railroad ROW. The Airport Flyer uses the West Busway as part of its route, as there are dedicated ramps that connect the Busway to Interstate 376. The Airport Flyer has a stop restriction with buses outbound to the Airport only stopping to pick up passengers, with drop-offs along the busway prohibited. The South Busway runs for 4.3 miles (or 6.9 km) from the Mt. Washington Transit Tunnel across the Monongahela River from Downtown Pittsburgh to the Overbrook neighborhood. The Mt. Washington Transit Tunnel is pretty cool in that it's shared by both buses and light-rail, meaning it's one bi-modal tunnel with no levels separate for buses or light-rail, so they share the same section! The Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel in Whittier, Alaska is another road-rail tunnel in the US, serving as both a highway tunnel and the Alaska Railroad. The CTfastrak is another great BRT example. CTfastrak opened in 2015, and its services have initially run on a 9.4-mile (or 15.1 km) dedicated busway on an abandoned rail ROW from downtown New Britain to Newington Junction and alongside the active New Haven-Springfield Line from Newington Junction to downtown Hartford. Downtown New Britain is a sprawling complex with numerous bus bays and large shelters to support transfers between CTfastrak services and local CT Transit services. Flatbush Avenue and Sigourney Street have large island platforms and off-busway loops. There are center passing lanes to allow express buses to pass stopped local buses. Besides routes that do run on CTfastrak, there are feeder services that make stops at CTfastrak station platforms. From New Britain to Newington Junction, a fenced multi-use trail was constructed alongside the busway. This trail was not possible on the northern section, where all available room was needed for an access road for Amtrak maintenance vehicles. A great example of turning a bus line into a light-rail line is the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel. Before they built the tunnel, there were different proposals for a rapid transit line, with the most significant in the 1960s. For the first attempt in February 1968 when voters were asked to provide 385 million, it narrowly passed by 50.8 percent but fell short of the required 60 percent supermajority. A second attempt in May 1970 when voters were asked for 440 million, it failed with 46 percent, and the federal money was instead given to Atlanta for MARTA. Despite this, they still planned for a bus tunnel in 1974 that could potentially become a light-rail line. While the light rail plan was left unfunded at the time in the 1980s, provisions were made to accommodate a future Eastside light-rail connection. When the bus tunnel was opened in 1990, they already installed light rail tracks in anticipation, however they had to be replaced when the tracks were later found to be poorly insulated and unusable. And there was a scandal during the tunnel's construction when it was discovered in 1989 that the granite was quarried in South Africa despite a boycott of South African goods by the King County Metro Council at the time. For several years, service in the tunnel was provided exclusively by dual-mode buses, which ran as trolleybuses in the tunnel and diesel buses on city streets. Putting buses in the tunnel meant less traffic on city streets! The dual-mode trolleybuses were replaced by hybrid electric buses to prepare for the light-rail. And when the light-rail opened in 2009, the tunnel had operations where buses and the light-rail shared it, just like in Pittsburgh! That is until Convention Place station was sold to the Washington State Convention Center for redevelopment, closing Convention Place in July 2018 and closing the tunnel to buses two years earlier in March 2019 than the scheduled closure of 2021 (which was meant to coincide with the Northgate Link expansion). Making the tunnel light-rail only.

Well done!

Amazing quality dude, it reminds me of the Metroway "BRT" here in Northern Virginia, different problems but similar outcomes. Also what is that outro song😂?

7:40 oooh do I spot a fursuit? 👀 I've also noticed this about american BRT, it's really just a nicer bus with some branding, but that's it. And "BRT light" is literally just a bus. I've heard it described as "a slightly nicer bus", but I think it only seems that way because regular american busses are so horrendously awful. When I see footage of american BRT systems, they often just look like normal bus infrastructure does here in germany.

Since Denver’s DOTi is doing the engineering & construction (contracted), I’m hopeful that RTA’s BRT issues don’t migrate to RTD’s issues when the Colfax BRT opens. I’m not interested in foreshadowing in this case!

I feel like half of these issues could kind of be resolved just be reinstating the signal priority and MAYBE cutting the absolute lowest ridership stations on sections where the bus moves the slowest. That would cost very little (or even like, nothing at all since the tech is already there w/ signal prio) and would result in significantly faster trip times for people. That alone would draw ridership, even if frequency is just left at 15 minutes all-day, since OTP would also improve, along with the perception of reliability.

Very well done! Glad to cameo and contribute :) What software do you use for motion graphics?

One issue with BRT in the USA is that in most states, it is illegal to use camera enforcement for traffic laws. In Ohio, there is no way for transit agencies to use cameras to enforce bus lanes. This is why Cincinnati is proposing curb-side bus lanes for most of its BRT, which function as legal car turn lanes. This is also because of very limited street space on hilly Cincinnati streets (usually 4 11 foot lanes and nothing more) that make median stations difficult or impossible, but still. Painted red lanes are definitely possible though and could help. One smaller issue with the HealthLine is also that there are not dedicated lanes on the East Cleveland portion of it, which can mess with headways. I think that the HealthLine can definitely be fixed up, but it'll take doing the red painted bus lanes, fixing signal priority (when I rode it I thought it was at least partially working last year), maybe closing some of the lowest ridership stations, and revamping the RTA fare system. RTA really should adopt a TAPP card like Dayton Ohio did, and just replace all of their paper tickets with it. If they aren't willing to do off-board fare payment, at least use a TAPP card and put the readers on all doors so that you can still have all door boarding and not have to shuffle to the front of the bus. I feel like just fixing the fare system and signal priority is half the battle to improve this line. I hope that RTA gets told to put stations further apart for their new "BRT" lines.

*laughing in european*

Gotta like how transparent democracy works... when people can't even figure out whether buses still have signal priority or not, and nobody wants to answer their questions. It's not like trafic lights were a top-secret project of the NASA

ahahaha madison brt being used as a good example was the funniest joke of them all… half the route has no dedicated lanes, some of it the buses share the lane with cyclists in an uphill portion, maintenance issues and not enough employees means buses are canceled on a whim in frigid temperatures, the paint on the road has started to chip away in less than half a year, the plan was to have off-board payments, but that was quickly watered down to paying on board, the stations have hostile architecture so that the wind blows right through and the heaters do little to nothing to keep you warm (they purposely removed the glass panels that were originally there to block wind), buses are weaved in and out of traffic every two feet in the downtown, the service is every 30 minutes on weekends(when people visit downtown for fun), the entire system is going to be just one line until the city can figure out how to get it together once more to build the other line that was planned, accessibility is a nightmare when even though there are curb extensions to stop buses closer, it seems the drivers were never trained on this and pull multiple feet away from the platform, and all of this is for a system that is brand new and highly hyped up. Hell, they didn’t even bother to change the name, it’s still called “Route A”… Sure it is a nicer ride than the old one, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a laughable joke when compared to China or Brazil, even in small towns!

I love our bus system in lynwood even more after watching this: we are a suburb of seattle, with just under 100,000 people, we have not 1, not 2, but three separate high quality, fast & frequent BRT light lines. All SWIFT brt stops, have high floors, ticket machines, all door boarding, level boarding, full roofs, and yellow textile strips. All swift BRT intersections have signal priority, and almost all of it has dedicated "turn only" lanes, or full Bus Lanes, to prevent traffic build up along the route: the swift runs from 4 AM to 2 AM, every 15 minutes at night, every 10 during the day, and every 5 during rush hour. It is a hilariously well maintained, clean, fast, and well designed system for a city with less than 100 000 people.

The old adage of "you buy cheap, you buy twice" is most certainly the case here. Personally I'd put LRT down that corridor but only use the 12 stations described in the original plan from the 1980's... I've never personally seen a BRT line that wouldn't have been better designed as LRT other than perhaps Ottawa which ironically is dismantling its BRT line for LRT along the same corridors but at a very high cost due largely to maxed out capacity. In other words, BRT worked too well and there's no way to grow the system so they had to switch to rail...

This reminds me of when King County, Washington put in the BRT "A Line" along International Boulevard, and it somehow ended up being slower than the regular bus line it replaced.

What telephoto did you use for the bird shots? Were you still shooting Canon back then? I've been eyeing the 75-300 IS USM

this is Alex Davis quality

Being from Pittsburgh and having three busway BRTs, I always found it odd that Cleveland RTA kept describing the HealthLine as the first true example of BRT when it was first conceived.

This is why BRT is little more than a distraction from restoring urban rail in our cities. First, because BRT capacity is too low to substitute for LRT economically, given North American labor costs. Second, it is too easy for governments to repeal rules and policies and generally let the system deteriorate from the day after the politicians pose for TV cameras. I saw a BRT system collapse in Honolulu as soon as the present mayor lost his election. LRT and Metro are permanent improvements that last.

I clicked on this because it looked cool and informative; I wasn't expecting to feature so heavily in it! 😂 Amazing video - it was hilarious, and you did such great research on the Healthline's deterioration over the years.

15:56 "It's up to us as advocates, voters, and regular citizens to determine which future we want for our cities." No it's not. The RTA board isn't elected, it's appointed by corrupt politicians. The public doesn't realistically have any effect on the decision-making process.

Another banger bestie 🎉

7:37 Hey that's Matt Zone looking at the camera.

RTA never had the promised signal priority, so the "BRT" is waiting for cross traffic at major intersections. RTA simply doesn't enforce the dedicated bus lane, so the "BRT" is constantly navigating around parked cars. RTA put cops in charge of fare enforcement, _already knowing that that violated the Fourth Amendment,_ and then didn't have backup plan when the cops were dismissed. RTA also put up "real-time arrival" displays that actually just displayed the schedule times.

"Important people in cars were pissed that they had to wait for a bus to make their left turn into work" tells you everything you need to know about how said "important" people feel about important services like transit....smh. These drivers care more about making sure they don't have to wait for a bus to turn than about pedestrians. And important people take transit too, not just people in cars!

One of the more interesting examples of BRT is the Adelaide O-Bahn, a guided busway in Australia. You can also find guided busways in the UK like the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway and Leigh-Salford-Manchester BRT, as well as in Japan as the Yutorito Line in Nagoya. The history behind the famous Adelaide one is that the greater Adelaide area experienced significant growth during and after WWII, and thus so did the number of vehicles registered. By the mid-1970s, transportation had become a problem in the northeastern suburbs. This led to a study that concluded that a light-rail would be the best option. However, there was opposition because people thought it would interfere with the well-designed layout of the city proper, and that light-rail vehicles would be too noisy. In search of a replacement for the light rail project, they examined the O-Bahn system in Essen in what was then West Germany by Daimler-Benz. The system was seen as far superior to previous proposals because it was flexible, used less land, made less noise, they viewed it as faster and as mentioned here as a reason for BRT, it cost less. In addition, its unique feature of a non-transfer service direct from suburban streets to the city center made it more attractive. With this system, the buses use a guide-wheel, which protrudes just ahead of the front wheels. It is connected directly to the steering mechanism and steers the bus by running along the raised edge of the track. Adelaide's track is 12 km/7.5 mi long and includes three interchanges at Klemzig, Paradise and Tea Tree Plaza. With its interchanges, it allows buses to enter and exit the busway and to continue on suburban routes, avoiding the need for passengers to transfer to another bus to continue their journey. Not to mention, the O-Bahn has sump buster devices to prevent cars. The O-Bahn has caused a clustering of commercial and community development near the Tea Tree Plaza Interchange, as service-providing organizations and businesses have of course sought to exploit the area's easy accessibility to public transit and the city center. Market imperatives have also been aided by the zoning of the land around the area as commercial rather than residential. The large Modbury Hospital is adjacent to the interchange, and the Torrens Valley campus of TAFE was built directly to the east of the busway after it opened The first use of a protected busway was the East Side Trolley Tunnel in Providence, RI. It is 2,160 feet long and was originally built for trolleys in 1914, but the tunnel was converted to bus use in 1948! The tunnel runs under College Hill on Providence's East Side, with its east portal at Thayer Street, the busy commercial district near Brown University, leading to its west portal at North Main Street near the Rhode Island School of Design. The tunnel traverses a 100-foot drop in elevation from its east portal to its west portal, while providing a gentler 4% to 5% grade compared to the steeper 10% grade of the city streets above it and of course allowing transit vehicles to bypass traffic and stoplights. The tunnel allows faster transit access from College Hill to Downtown Providence and the RIPTA transit hub at Kennedy Plaza. Police and fire department vehicles also use the tunnel. You could argue this was the first BRT in the world, though many believe the first BRT system in the world to be the Runcorn Busway in the UK which opened in 1971. 22 km was operational by 1980. Arthur Ling, Runcorn Development Corporation's Master Planner, said that he had invented the concept while sketching on the back of an envelope. The town was designed around the transport system, with most residents no more than five minutes walking distance, or 500 yards (or around 460 m), from the Busway. The busway has a designed speed of 40 mph. The central station is at Runcorn Shopping City where buses arrive on dedicated raised busways to two enclosed stations Bogotá has the TransMilenio BRT system. In 2024, 12 lines totalling 114.4 km (71 mi) run throughout the city. Usually four lanes down the center of the street are dedicated to bus traffic. The outer lanes allow express buses to bypass buses stopped at a station. There are six types of stations on the TransMilenio. Sencillas (Simple) or local service stations, located approximately every 500 m. De transferencia (Transfer) which allow transfer between different lines through a tunnel. Sin intercambio (No transfer) which do not allow transfer between lanes (north-south, south-north, west-east, east-west), located in the Autopista Norte (due to a stretch of the road), Tunal and 6th Street ramification (due to water channels). Intermedias (Intermediate) which service both feeder and trunk line. Cabecera (Portal), which are near the entrances to the city. In addition to feeders and articulated buses, intercity buses from the metropolitan area also arrive at these stations. And Paraderos bus dual (dual-bus stop) which are located in the streets, these stops don't have turnstiles, electronic boards and the floor level is the same of the street, served by buses with station-level and street-level doors. These stops are located in the pretrunk corridors (AK 7, AV Caracas, AV Suba, AC 80, AV El Dorado). At the end of 2018, Transmilenio ordered 1,383 new buses as a replacement of the older ones in service. 52% were compressed natural gas (CNG) buses made by Scania with Euro 6 emission rating, 48% were diesel engine made by Volvo with Euro 5 emission rating. In the 4th quarter of 2023, 1,836 buses on average were circulating on the trunk line system. An additional set of 869 regular buses, known as "feeders" (alimentadores in Spanish), carry passengers from certain important stations to many different locations that the main route does not reach. There is no additional fare to use the feeder buses. There are 27 bicycle parking facilities in main TransMilenio stations with 7,351 parking spaces to facilitate cyclists using the system. Eight BRT corridors were certified in 2013 to meet the BRT standard with excellence, Autonorte and Caracas silver, Americas, Calle 80, Eldorado, NQS and Suba gold

Furry jump scare.

It makes me sad to see how hard it is to provide decent transit in the US which made me think that maybe you should try more basic improvments first. I'm from Barcelona and we have an extensive transit system with almost every type of transport mean but one of my favorite changes was in the bus system. Buses are good but existing lines were a legacy of the past with different lines that could be a good option in some cases but in most cases I prefered the metro. About 15 years ago they started a reorganization plan turning part of the line into a grid system. This shows up on the BRT list in Wikipedia but it's not BRT. The buses are regular (but they added over time more articulated buses), they stop in regular stops (they added more stops with next buses signes) and the new lines had larger distances between stops but now there were horizontal lines and vertical line (also 3 diagonal lines) so it was easy to find one of them near you and with one chane you can get close to almost any where. They made sure that change points between vertical and horizontal lines are close to each other and even added direction markers on side walks to make it eazy to find the connection. They did add more bus lane, basic ones near the sidewalks but there is mo priority in intersections (unless required, like for a bus stopping on right that meeds to turn left). They did cancel some regular lines for that but they made sure that the areas of those lines were covered by the new ones. Now I mostly use buses. Sometimes smaller and cheaper changes can increase ridership making the service more viable and with growth it will be easier to increase investments.

They JUST added phone scanners like a month ago as well as the blue and green line trains. It took them long enough to

You’re avoiding discussion of the main problem of BRT. Buses cannot be coupled together when the ridership demands it. If the line proves even a little bit popular it quickly becomes 2-3-4x more expensive to run than light rail due to the linear increase in driver wages.

Oh, hey, I was in one of these videos, kind of. Incredible video!

Oh the quality on this is amazing

What is it with transit enthusiasts and bringing furries into the genre? 😐

INDY MENTIONED (rip blue line bus lanes)

4:47 I hate that they are calling them “important people”, as if only people in cars are important. Lots of people who take transit are also important, Infact in Minneapolis St. Paul, which is where I live, 40 percent of people who take transit are essential workers. Plus how do we know all those people in cars are important people? Some of those people in cars could be people who aren’t important and are instead just some dude cruising around roaming the streets looking for prostitutes

Thank you for capturing the ride! I really enjoyed it! 👍

Such an interesting and sad story! I cannot believe that a few drives with influence can decide to shut down signal priority for thousands who use public transportation. And I totally agree that front door boarding and bus stops being located too close together dramatically slow down the entire system. Subscribed and look forward to watching the rest of your videos! 😎

Great video! Thoroughly researched and great graphics. The situation in Cleveland sounds similar to what happened in York Region, ON. Our VIVA BRT was promised as "rapid transit" with shiny vehicles and stations but we also had our TSP weakened, the headways cut below 15 mins in some periods, and local connections reduced or made unusable. Thankfully we have not backtracked on the off-board payment yet. It's difficult to turn BRT into a full-fledged rapid transit service in this continent because it's so easy to water down BRT by axing the features that make it rapid transit such as taking away its priority and frequency, which is harder to do with rail. Hopefully Cleveland can find solutions to improve the BRT as mentioned.

good video

great video

Amazing video! Was extremely disappointed with the Health Line when I visited Cleveland although overall the city is very nice and underrated. Hope it can be restored to greatness one day