MSc plus MPhil/PHD: Questioning BRTs: A win-win solution to public transport problems in the cities of developing countries?

Bus Rapid Transit systems are being constructed at unprecedented rates in developing countries as the solution to the crisis of public transport faced by many of its rapidly growing cities. In 2007, forty cities across six continents had BRT systems. By January 2016, the figure had risen to 207. This increase mainly results from new BRTs in Latin America, Asia and Africa, where many more BRTs are currently being planned and negotiated. A consensus presents BRTs as a 'win-win' intervention that benefits the transport system, the economy, the environment and the poor. This doctoral research project asks: for whom do BRT systems work and who stands to gain and lose from their adoption? In what ways, since when and why have they been promoted so aggressively? With what consequences for public transport and its workers?

Drawing on extensive fieldwork, and under the supervision of Dr Matteo Rizzo at SOAS and Alana Dave at ITF, the doctoral research project entails an interdisciplinary and critical analysis of BRT in one city in a developing country. The doctoral candidate will spend the second year of their PhD conducting in depth research in the chosen city. The research will explore the tension between urban mass transport as a public entitlement and as a commodified service, and its impact on the evolution of BRTs. The politics of incorporation and resistance to BRTs by pre-existing transport operators (including bus owners and workers) will be scrutinised. Furthermore, the project will map the nexus between economic interests and 'knowledge production' which underpins much of the 'consensus' about BRT benefits. The doctoral student will disseminate its findings as part of the activities of ITF and its affiliates on BRT.

By asking whether BRTs are fit for purpose, the project contributes to critical debates on a pressing challenge faced by developing countries today: how to provide environmentally friendly public transport to the masses of low-income residents in their rapidly growing cities.