Guillermo Moreno Garcia might counter the current PLD plans to build, at least, 4 more metro lines with a much cheaper alternative mass transit plan based on BRT.

What say fellow posters? Does it make sense?


"Bus Rapid transit (BRT) is a high quality bus-based transit system that delivers fast, comfortable, and cost-effective urban mobility through the provision of segregated right of way infrastructure, rapid and frequent operations, and excellence in marketing and customer service.

BRT essentially emulates the performance and amenity characteristics of a modern rail-based transit system but at a fraction of the cost. A BRT system will typically cost 4 to 20 TIMES LESS than a light rail transit (LRT) system and 10 to 100 times LESS than a metro system."

page 23 of Introduction PDF.
http://www.itdp.org/documents/Bus%20Rapid%20Transit%20Guide%20-%20Part%28Intro%29%202007%2009.pdf



http://www.itdp.org/microsites/bus-rapid-transit-planning-guide/brt-planning-guide-in-english/



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BRT Planning Guide - September 2007

Complete Guide (66 MB PDF)

Chapters

Click on the chapter title to download the PDF document:

Introduction (2.5 MB PDF)
Part I, Project Preparation (13.5 MB PDF)
Part II, Operational Design (11.4 MB PDF)
Part III, Physical Design (12.6 MB PDF)
Part IV, Integration (9.3 MB PDF)
Part V, Business Plan (9.6 MB PDF)
Part VI, Evaluation and Implementation (4.9 MB PDF)
Resources, Annexes and References (788 KB PDF)

Additional Resources

Annex 1, BRT System Comparisons (224 KB PDF)
Annex 2, BRT Consultant Directory (116 KB PDF)
Sample operator contract (1.5 MB Word file)
BRT Infrastructure Cost Calculator (40 KB Excel file)

The Bus Rapid Transit Planning Guide is copyrighted by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP). It is intended for technical and educational use only and may not be used for commercial purposes. It may not be reprinted or modified without the explicit authorization of ITDP.

The BRT Planning Guide is co-edited by Lloyd Wright, Executive Director of Viva; and Walter Hook, Executive Director of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP). It was developed through support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Global Environment Facility/United Nations Environment Programme, and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH.

For more information, please contact brtguide@itdp.org

Guillermo Moreno is a smart and sensible man who is not on an ego trip. I only wish he had more of a following to enable him to be a strong presidential candidate for next election.

BRT is very successful around the world as fast, efficient but most importantly a cost effective public transportation system perfect for a poor country like the DR. But Leo thinks Sto Dgo is a baby New York or little Miami and got us deeply into debt just to show off and make him and his friends richer.

While an interesting concept I believe there isn't a single way out for transportation for DR.

It will take other forms for long travel which BRT seems not to be the best plus it's subject to traffic(left turns) makes it not so good in a country where traffic lights are still considered a decoration and not a stop and go traffic system.

Plus lets no even talk about the gang that controls the transportation roads in DR.

I personally do not like the idea of any more public trafic on the roads ,,if you were to take off 10 public taxis for every one bus I may be in agreement but SD is a trafic mess at present ..I would much preder the money to go into line number two so it goes from Villa Altigracia along kennedy and all the way to Ave las Americas and it need not go underground from the River Ozama to las Americas and the other way to Villa Altigracia .
But I would also like to see a bus service to the airport

one of the main reasons why there is so much traffic on the roads is that there was no planning built into the cities here. zero. zilch. therefore, people always have to be on the roads. it does not matter by which method you travel, if you have to travel. bus, car, motoconcho, anything, you still clutter up the roads. why is it that if i need certain vital documents, i have to go to Santo Domingo? you can apply for a passport , in the USA, at the post office. then, when you go to Santo Domingo, you have to go to six different offices, and they are all crosstown from each other. you are forever travelling. if there was some sense of intelligent planning, maybe you could resort to a brilliant new idea i just thought of...WALKING. all the relevant departments would be in easy distances from each other, and you would get to all, BY FOOT POWER. that is called urban planning. that would never work in the DR, because somebody, somewhere, would be losing money, and we just cannot have that, can we?

you are welcome, Atabey. i cannot speak to the merits, financially,of the BRT, having not studied the inputs, and the nature of the terrain over which it will run. however, i am sure, or rather, instinctively sure, that it is less costly to operate, and to maintain. the issue is that buses run on a road, which does not require very regular, and costly, upkeep. trains run on a track. one decent earthquake can cause severe distortions in the alignment, which could paralyze the system , for months. it took almost 3 years of work to repair a segment of the No 2 train in the Bronx, and those guys have the latest technology, and the very best of skills. i shudder to think what it is going to cost, in finances and downtime, if a minor disaster eventuates here.

as the old saying goes, "Give the Devil his due". at least Hipolito rejected the idea of a metro as pure nonsense, when it was put to him by Lula of Brazil.

But where he failed was in not going for a BRT system in return. SD and many other large cities in DR, think Santiago, NEED a mass transit alternative to all the cars, motoconchos, etc. BRT appears to be the way to go. Especially in Santiago with its larger earthquake risks.

Here's an opportunity to achieve VAST energy savings for middle income nations in development.

In Depth | 14 March 2012

LED bulbs: The end of the lightbulb as we know it?

Paul Rubens


Efficient LED technology looks set to flick the switch on traditional incandescent lightbulbs forever, say researchers.

IN BBC NEWS:

Social housing block fitted with LED lights (Image: Energy Saving Trust)
LEDs offer a brighter future

A field trial of LED light fittings in social housing says the new technology can deliver huge energy savings.

Look up at the ceiling above you, and chances are there is a centuries-old piece of kit swinging from a cord. The light bulb has been hanging around for more than 150 years. Yet between its invention and the present day, its design has hardly changed.

But now the days of the traditional incandescent bulb look numbered. These electricity-sapping glass orbs have fallen out of favour with environmentally-conscious governments and consumers. And waiting in the wings is a new breed of hi-tech light based on the humble LED (light-emitting diode), the small lights found in everything from TV remote controls to bike lights. Not only do they promise to solve the bulb’s environmental woes, their backers say they will also respond intelligently to your surroundings and even influence the way we behave.

“LEDs are about to change the way we see things forever,” says Tim Holt, chief executive of Strathclyde University's Institute of Photonics in Scotland. “We are only just at the start of the LED lighting revolution.”

Already, the efficiency and long life of LEDs is making them a popular – if costly – option in places where changing bulbs is inconvenient or expensive, such as in motorway lights, traffic signals, airport runways or on large buildings and bridges. For example, the Louvre museum in Paris is currently replacing 4,500 bulbs with LED equivalents, a change that is expected to result in a 73% reduction in energy consumption. Plans are also in place to replace the 25-year-old lighting system that illuminates Tower Bridge in London with LED lighting in time for the 2012 Olympic Games
http://www.toshiba.co.jp/lighting/about/louvre/developing.htm

But the real hope of the LED industry is that arrays of these tiny twinklers packed into something that resembles a bulb will become the light of choice in your bedroom, bathroom or study, allowing them to grab a slice of a global lighting market that was worth an estimated €52bn in 2010. Their cause is helped by the numerous governments around the world which have chosen to phase out the sale of incandescent bulbs. An EU-wide phase-out is already underway, and in November 2011 the Chinese government announced that the import and sale of incandescent bulbs would start to be banned from October 2012. Over 1 billion incandescent bulbs were sold in China during 2011, meaning the announcement was enough to drive investors into a frenzy: the share price of Cree, a United States-based LED manufacturer, increased by almost 10%.

Of course, the death warrant for the incandescent bulb has been signed before. Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) – or energy efficient bulbs, as they are more commonly known – were supposed to spell the end of the light bulb in the 1970s. But despite rising to prominence in the 90s and constantly improving, they have failed to deliver on their promise. In part this is down to them costing more than regular bulbs, taking an age to warm up and often producing low quality light. And that is without even mentioning the environmental concerns over bulbs that contain mercury.

LEDs, it is claimed, will help overcome these problems. These tiny lights were invented by GE in the early 1960s and were initially only available in red, a property that defined the look of early pocket calculators and digital watches. Over the years, however, more colours have appeared.