The buzzword “BRT” covers a lot of different services. A comparison, with some notes on what it means to a rider:

type	local bus	BRT “lite”	full BRT	light rail
example	Houston 2 Bellaire	Los Angeles Rapid	Cleveland Euclid Corridor	Houston METRORail
stations with shelters and seating	sometimes	yes	yes	yes
	Shelters = a place to sit in the shade and out of the rain while you wait.
ticket machines at stations	no	no	yes	yes
	Ticket machines = you can board at any door and you won’t be held up while somebody fumbles for change.
simple routes and distinctive vehicles	no	yes	yes	yes
	Simple routes = you know you’re getting on the right bus without having to remember numbers.
traffic light priority	no	yes	yes	yes
	Traffic light priority = you get there faster.
reserved lanes	no	no	yes	yes
	Reserved lanes = you’ll be at your destination in the same time at nay time of day, regardless of traffic.
frequency of service	irregular	5-15 min.	5-15 min.	5-15 min.
	Frequent service = you can show up at the stop without checking a schedule and you’ll be on your way soon.

By no stretch of the imagination is “BRT lite” a light rail equivalent service. Full BRT is pretty close, though (light rail still has higher capacity and a smoother ride). The question is: when politicians or transit agencies say BRT, what do they mean?

The difference is in the details, and the kind of service we get will be determined by decisions made as design progresses. An agency may compromise in response to budget and community concerns, or they may hold firm to the goal of light rail equivalent service. For example, residents are often worried both about traffic impacts from removing car lanes and impact on houses from widening the street. An agency might respond by having busses and cars share a lane, pleasing some residents but delivering an inferior transit system. Another instance: light rail can’t cross railroad lines at grade, but BRT can. Does an agency save money by keeping crossings at grade, leaving busses stuck behind crossing gates?

Fundamentally, few people care about bus vs. rail. That’s a debate for politicians and transportation geeks. What riders care about is how soon their ride gets there, how comfortable it is, and how quickly they will get where they are going. That’s the bottom line, and that’s how any BRT plan should be judged.

Imagine if Houston had a rapid transit system that connected the suburbs to downtown with fast, frequent, comfortable, non-stop service.

Actually, it does. METRO has spent over a billion dollars over 20 years to build a system of HOV lanes and park-and-ride lots that’s unlike any other in the United States. Dedicated ramps and barrier-separated lanes let busses go from outside Beltway 8 to the streets of Downtown without ever encountering a stoplight or a traffic jam. The result: 40,000 daily transit trips in 5 major freeway corridors, helping transit get a remarkable 40% market share for Downtown commuters.

Yet somehow this system has been all but ignored in our transit debate. In part, that’s because the HOV lanes have never had a political constituency. Conservatives dislike them because they are nice pieces of concrete that not everyone is allowed to use; liberals, even those who don’t recall that this is what Bob Lanier built instead of the monorail, are loath to endorse something so suburban and, well, concrete.

But METRO is also to blame. I made the map above myself because METRO doesn’t have anything like it, and I’m forced to refer to this thing the “HOV lane commuter bus system” because METRO has never come up with a better name (the “METROExpress” tag on the map is also mine). Perception means a lot in transit, and the fact that METRO treats these routes as if they were just ordinary busses has a lot to do with the fact that the public sees them that way. We have a service that is more extensive, faster, and more convenient than many commuter rail systems, yet nobody knows that. A little marketing would go a long way here.