The hero is the one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by. The saint is the man who walks through the dark paths of the world, himself a light.Felix Adler, professor, 1851-1933
Relocation and Protection of Existing Electrical Services
The inclusion of BRT into an existing roadway corridor will often necessitate the relocation and/or protection of bulk electrical reticulation cables, and may require the relocation of existing streetlights. It is therefore important to appoint electrical engineering consultants within the design team to undertake this element of the infrastructure design. Establishing communication with electricity authorities at the preliminary design stage is also important, to foresee potential relocation.
Great care must be exercised in locating these underground bulk electrical cables at an early stage in the design process, as it may be too costly to relocate these cables, and this may impact the adopted route for the corridor. Experienced and certified electrical engineering subcontractors should undertake any unavoidable relocation of electrical cables. The relocation of electrical cables will add considerable cost to the installation of BRT lanes within a corridor, and allowance must be made for this in the overall cost estimate.
New Electrical Services
An electrical reticulation system is required along the corridor to provide electrical supply to stations, traffic signals, automated irrigation equipment, surveillance cameras, and streetlights.
Streetlights should be located within the corridor to ensure that they provide the required degree of lighting for safe traffic operations in all vehicle lanes, as well as sufficient lighting levels on all pedestrian sidewalks and bike lanes. The degree to which safe lighting levels are achieved will have a bearing on the perception of personal safety, and a direct bearing on nighttime patronage of the BRT corridor.
Street lighting with decorative poles and light fixtures can give the BRT corridors a distinctive signature, which can assist customers with system legibility.
The location of the bulk electrical-reticulation cables should be under the sidewalks or bike lanes, to minimize the cost and impact of works associated with rectifying damage to cables, cable servicing, or future cable connections.
Other electrical connections required are signalized intersections and automatic irrigation systems.
Each station along the corridor will require connections to the closest water and sewer lines. Once the station locations have been finalized, the water and sewer connections can be identified, applied for through the utility agency, and designed.
Draw chambers linked by multiple ducts should be designed into the corridor to ensure that the existing and future requirements for telecommunication and surveillance cables do not require sidewalk excavations along the BRT corridor. Each station should be linked into the telecommunication and surveillance cable network, as well as any mast-mounted surveillance cameras placed along the corridor.
Often other utilities are encountered in the road reserve. These may be gas lines, oil pipelines, oil effluent lines, etc., and all pose a challenge to the design engineer.