Moving the Masses: Bus-Rapid Transit (BRT) Policies in Low Income Asian Cities

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxv

   PDF

2. Complexities of Urban Transport in Low-Income Asian Cities

   • Suryani Eka Wijaya, Muhammad Imran

   Pages 1-29

3. Conceptualising Policy Tensions in LIA Cities

   • Suryani Eka Wijaya, Muhammad Imran

   Pages 31-49

4. Transport Planning and Policies in Indonesia

   • Suryani Eka Wijaya, Muhammad Imran

   Pages 51-73

5. Transport Policies and Planning in Bandung

   • Suryani Eka Wijaya, Muhammad Imran

   Pages 75-113

6. Transport Policies and Planning in Surabaya

   • Suryani Eka Wijaya, Muhammad Imran

   Pages 115-154

7. Policy Tensions in Transport Planning

   • Suryani Eka Wijaya, Muhammad Imran

   Pages 155-181

8. Conclusion

   • Suryani Eka Wijaya, Muhammad Imran

   Pages 183-190

9. Back Matter

   Pages 191-200

   PDF

Public transport in low-income Asian (LIA) cities fails to meet people’s mobility needs, generates high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and worsens social exclusion. Following successful Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) projects in Bogota and Curitibá, LIA countries promoted BRT in their large to medium-sized cities. However, the political and institutional structure distinctive to LIA cities makes their implementation difficult. This book investigates policy tensions by examining the planning and attempted implementation of BRT projects, taking Bandung and Surabaya in Indonesia as case studies. It analyses BRT to understand how power and communication gaps in institutional relationships between different actors at multiple levels of governance create conflict, and concludes that top-down policies and funding mechanisms cause tension in intergovernmental relationships. It also found that BRT solutions generated socio-political tension arising from the socio-economic realities and local political dynamics that shaped city structure, mobility patterns and capacity in resolving conflicts. The superimposed BRT solution generated discursive tension because conflicting discourses were not aligned with local economic, social, and environmental issues. The book highlights the need to take into consideration the vital role of local social and political actors, institutions and planning processes as they respond to and shape policies that are imposed by higher levels.

• Bus-Rapid Transit (BRT) in Low Income Asian Cities
• BRT in Indonesian cities
• BRT in Bandung
• BRT in Surabaya
• Transport policy tensions in Indonesia cities
• Climate change and BRT in low-income Asian cities
• Transport planning and policies in Indonesia
• Transport planning and policies in Bandung
• Transport planning and policies in Surabaya
• Urban Public Transportation in Developing Countries
• International development agencies

• BAPPEDA of NTB Province, Mataram, Indonesia

  Suryani Eka Wijaya

• Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

  Muhammad Imran

Suryani Eka Wijaya is a Planner at the Regional Development Planning Agency (BAPPEDA), Nusa Tenggara Barat (NTB) Province in Indonesia, where she has led spatial planning and natural resources sub-divisions, prepared development plans for regional growth and coordinated development programmes at the central government, provincial government, and city/district government levels. Her research focuses on the challenges and opportunities that Bus Rapid Transit brings to low-income Asian cities. Suryani received her PhD in Planning from Massey University (as a New Zealand Development Scholar), her Master in Engineering Management and Policy from the University of Technology, Sydney (on the Australian Development Scholarships) and her undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering from Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia.

Muhammad Imran is an Associate Professor and Programme Coordinator Resource and Environmental Planning at Massey University, New Zealand. His research focuses on generating theoretical and practical knowledge that contributes to sustainable transport policies in developed and developing Asian countries. His research has generated an in-depth understanding of institutional blockages to, and opportunities in, sustainable transport by arguing for greater recognition of the role of governance, history-politics nexus, and discourse on transport decision-making. Imran is the author of a book, Institutional barriers to sustainable urban transport in Pakistan published by Oxford University Press. Imran has received research grants from the Royal Society of NZ Marsden Fund, the NZ Transport Agency and has acted as a consultant for the World Bank. 

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