GRT Vehicles and Technology

Contents

• Vehicles and technology
• ITS applications

Vehicles and technology

The passenger volumes on Zhongshan Avenue and other major corridors in Guangzhou are sufficiently high to justify the use of articulated, 18m buses. The key bus design elements on Zhongshan Av are:

• The bus should be roughly 18 metres long. (Some routes will be allowed to use 12m BRT buses.)
• The bus floor should be the same height as the station platform, with a recommended height of between 0.75 metres and 1 metre.
• The bus should have as many doors as possible. With articulated buses, normally four 1.1 metre wide doors are possible on the BRT station side, but a minimum of three.
• The bus should also have doors on the curb side to allow the bus to operate on mixed traffic routes as well, outside the BRT corridor. There should be at least three curb side doors, with steps leading down to ground level as with the current buses in Guangzhou. As now, when using the vehicle outside a BRT station passengers will board through the front door (and possibly also the rear door, with an attendant stationed at this door) and alight at the rear or middle doors.
• The buses should have air conditioning.
• BRT buses should adhere to strict GRT system identity specifications.

The figure below shows a selection of BRT buses in other cities.

ITS applications

A BRT system in Guangzhou would require many ITS features such as traffic signalling, passenger information, fare collection and integration systems, operations control and communications, and a system control centre.

ITS is used in BRT systems primarily for two purposes:

• controlling the private bus operators
• passenger information systems.