Why BRT Systems Lose Reliability After Year One
By E2Gx Editorial
Bus Rapid Transit systems often launch with strong performance metrics, only to see reliability erode within 12 to 18 months. This article examines the operational and governance factors that drive that decline — and what recovery looks like in practice.
BRT corridors across Africa share a common trajectory: a strong launch, early political goodwill, and then a slow degradation in on-time performance that nobody officially acknowledges until ridership drops. The root causes are rarely about infrastructure. They are almost always operational.
The three most common failure patterns we see are schedule drift, dispatch breakdown, and control centre disengagement. Schedule drift happens when timetables are set at launch and never revised against real demand data. Dispatch breakdown occurs when depot management lacks clear authority to hold or release vehicles. Control centre disengagement happens when the OCC becomes a reporting function rather than a live control function.
Recovery requires addressing all three simultaneously. Partial fixes do not hold. A revised timetable without dispatch discipline will drift again within weeks. A strengthened OCC without schedule integrity has nothing reliable to control.
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