Comment by lurk2
4 days ago
The usual patterns that crop up are:
1) Lack of institutional knowledge. No one even knows how to get started and bringing in foreign expertise may be prohibitively expensive.
2) Economics don’t pencil out even in higher income countries compared to BRT systems, especially because high density and heavy traffic means the lines usually have to be grade-separated which adds additional costs compared to an at-grade system.
3) Corruption makes development impossible. No well-established processes for expropriation exist, or the country is given over to clientelism such that landlords won’t give up what they own and hamper the development process via political connections.
BRT is usually the most effective solution in places where grade-separated rail is not yet viable as it allows a right-of-way network to be established that can later be upgraded to rail. This doesn’t solve problem 3, which requires a comparatively authoritarian approach to overcome the incentive problems at play; this is why the Chinese have generally excelled in the space over the last 20 years.
For anyone interested in the issues with Indonesian economy, politics and development may I suggest a great book: Indonesia, Etc. by Elizabeth Pisani.
Even in the US, a lot of right-of-ways were taken by the government for rail and, later, highways (which intersected with earlier railroads in many cases) before it would have been as difficult a process as it would be today. Not a political comment so much as an observation that it's harder to just take private land today.
1) I really don't see how it prohibilitivly expensive. Much poorer places have built them and there are tons of companies who are willing to do it. Specially if you have a 30 year plan.
2) Another one I don't buy if you have a 30 year plan. Buses have higher operating costs, need more space, have less capacity and the surrounding infrastructure gets more expensive. The only thing BRT is good at, is making it easier to get start because you initially don't need ground infrastructure.
3) This is much more likely.
But Ill grant you what BRT might allow you do to is ban cars from a corridor without to many people being angry, and that is a win by itself.
> The only thing BRT is good at, is making it easier to get start because you initially don't need ground infrastructure.
The only thing rice is good at is being a cheap source of nutrition.