The excellence of a road consists chiefly in its being protected from the reigning winds, and the swell of the sea; in having a good anchoring-ground, and being at a competent distance from the shore.William Falconer, poet, 1732–1769
When it comes to the design of the BRT corridor infrastructure, a thorough design process is required to ensure that once built, the infrastructure will deliver incident-free services for an extensive period of time. Once a BRT system becomes operational, any downtime to undertake corrective maintenance and modifications will result in severe delays to the system, operation-cost penalties associated with the delay, and embarrassment to all involved in the design process.
This chapter discusses the various stages of the design process, namely the conceptual design stage, the preliminary design stage, and the detailed design stage. Thereafter, various elements of the design process are discussed, namely data collection, geometric design, pavement design, busway colorization and delineation, busway road marking and signage, and the treatment of utilities. Finally, the design of cycle and pedestrian facilities, as well as the urban design and landscaping design are discussed.
Contributors: Andre Frieslaar, HHO Africa; Andy Laatz, HHO Africa; Fred de Villiers, HHO Africa; Susan Smit, HHO Africa; Karl Fjellstrom, Far East BRT; Ulises Navarro, ITDP Latin America; Carlos Pardo, Despacio