Lessons from the spread of Bus Rapid Transit in Latin America

Abstract

Technological transitions and governance theories are employed for the analysis of the dissemination behavior of Bus Rapid Transit systems in Latin America. This process presents interesting characteristics and traits that seem to facilitate the overcoming of barriers and act as catalysts for the adoption of innovation. The present study uses a systems perspective to explore the dynamics of Bus Rapid Transit's adoption by different cities in the region and to follow its geographical dissemination, relying on historical data collected on numerous implemented projects.The resulting analysis provides an insight on the determinants and key points for the concept's expansion, which may be useful for the study of the dissemination of environmental technologies in cities. Contextualized, solid demonstration projects and incremental innovations, it is here argued, facilitated the adoption of new ways and promoted the dissemination of this urban mobility solution within a homogenous group of cities. A description of the Bus Rapid Transit system's approach to barriers that are also found to hinder the dissemination of environmental technologies provides a learning basis for future dissemination strategies.

A Worldwide State-of-the-Art Analysis for Bus Rapid Transit: Looking for the Success Formula

“…BRT is connected to a complex set of actors and networks within the social and technical dimensions of the city (Mejia-Dugand et al 2013) and, thus, it is a system that could be difficult to implement and operate in a flawless manner. Filipe and Macario (2013) report that neither are all the advantages of BRT over other public transport modes always true, nor are the stories of implementing BRT systems always successful ones.…”

“…All these authors agree that the BRT concept could be a feasible solution for many cities' mobility problems and, furthermore, that "there is a lack of studies analyzing the connection among the implementing venues, the transmission of ideas from one to the other, and the impact that incremental improvements have had on the geographical expansion of the concept" (Mejia-Dugand et al 2013). Thus, any work concentrating on such issues could be a timely and meaningful process adding to the existing BRT knowledge.…”

Environmental Technology and its Role in the Search for Urban Environmental Sustainability : The Dynamics of Adaptation

“…The first phase focused on studying two megacities (i.e. Cairo and Mexico City) as arenas for the diffusion of environmental technology, and resulted in a Licentiate thesis (Mejía-Dugand, 2013), three conference papers (Kanda et al, 2012;Mejía-Dugand et al, 2011;Mejía-Dugand et al, 2012), a report to the funding agency , and a scientific article (Mejía-Dugand et al, 2013b), which is included in this thesis (Appended Article 2).…”

Analyzing international city networks for sustainability: a study of five major Swedish cities

“…Such difficulties rest on the fact that the holistic approach proposed with this tool is tied to Swedish lifestyles and particular conditions that have facilitated the development and stability of these solutions at home. This can very well be a problem that many other technology providers face, since components of such solutions have grown in an orchestrated manner with local, coexisting systems and have developed in close proximity to them, something that Mejía-Dugand et al (2013) also highlight.…”

“…with private companies implementing environmental technologies based on market signals or providers' reputation). Benefits of making use of this knowledge include: entering a flow of incremental innovation that might facilitate the diffusion process (Cooke et al, 2002) and benefiting from two-way information flows (Batten, 1995); pacifying the competing logics in social and environmental innovations (Guy and Marvin, 1999); finding key compatibility factors between the innovation and the governing regimes and developing flexible and complementary/adaptive solutions (Batten, 1995;Mejía-Dugand et al, 2013); improving user-producer relations (Cooke et al, 2002); and maximizing the network value of an innovation (Cooke et al, 2002).…”