ABOUT 50 per cent of the city's 10 million registered bicycles are out on the streets of Shanghai everyday. Shanghai Metro recorded 1.96 million passengerstrips on March 4, 70,000 more than the previous record, set three months ago.

These statistics lend weight to claims that the city lacks a convenient public bus system, according to Jiang Peishun, secretary general of the Shanghai Public Transport Advocacy Society, who has been arguing for a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system to be established in the city.

Wang Jian, head of the Chongqing-based Bus Rapid Transit Research Centre in China, explained that a BRT system consists of three parts: specially constructed roads compatible with and reserved for buses, specially designed vehicles, and central control transportation lines, such as those in metros (basically a digital management system).

Jiang and his fellow BRT advocates' recommendations have been accepted by the Shanghai government and a research group has worked out a detailed plan for implementing BRT in the city. The blueprint is awaiting the nod by one of the vice mayors who is in charge of public transportation.

The advantages of BRT over metros or light-rail trains are: its cost is from one-tenth to one-twentieth of a metro (1 kilometre of underground rail costs more than 200 million yuan, or US$24 million); quick return (one BRT route takes at most two years to build compared to five to seven years for metros); and it is almost as efficient and fast as a metro, according to Wang.

He also noted that, except for the one in Hong Kong, no metros are profitable, while buses have proven they can make money.

Priority for buses

Although the obvious advantages of BRT have been widely accepted by authorities, implementation has been delayed by practical problems.

"Few people in China realize that buses enjoy first priority among transportation systems," Wang said.

Jiang agreed with Wang, saying that even though officials profess to give buses priority, this was not reflected in actual practice.

Wang commended Shanghai's move to auction privately-owned licence plates to control the number of cars on the roads. "It's a wise way to allot limited public space in a balanced way," he said. "An excess of cars is the major cause of traffic problems."

Traffic can be improved within three to five years in any city, depending on its priorities. Paying attention to improving the bus system shows concern for the life of ordinary people rather than the minority of richer ones, Wang added.

Long way to go

Construction of a BRT system also raises the problem of relocating many residents.

Jiang uses the analogy: "To rebuild a house is always much more difficult than constructing a new one," to describe the difficulties of putting a new BRT system into existing neighbourhoods.

If the BRT plan for Shanghai is approved, the city will have four lines, on which the average speed of buses will reach 25 to 35 kilometres per hour, nearly the same as the metro. Buses in the city now average 12 to 15 kilometres per hour.

Changzhou-based CBC-IVECO Co Ltd in East China's Jiangsu Province has produced 55 of the first BRT buses in China. The 18-metre-long buses have been used on the 5-kilometre-long BRT system in Beijing that was put into use at the end of last year. When the project is completed in June it will cover 23 kilometres.

Chen Ming of the CBC-IVECO said the company is expecting the market for BRT buses to boom in the next few years.

"BRT can only properly take effect when the whole system and a network of lines are completed. Therefore, the Beijing BRT system still has a long way to go," Jiang said.

Kunming, capital city of Southwest China's Yunnan Province, was first in the country to launch a 5-kilometre-long reserved roadway for buses in the middle of a road - the primary form of BRT - in 1999. To date, Kunming and Shijiazhuang of North China's Hebei Province have built the best networks of busways in China. "But they are not BRT systems in the real sense," Jiang said.