An international consortium including the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies at the University of Sydney is to continue its ground breaking efforts to improve bus rapid transit systems with renewed backing from the Volvo Research and Education Foundation.

Prof Corinne Mulley from the Institute describes their approach.

We been looking at all sorts of things as a consortium about how bus rapid transit could be better placed in cities and provide better mobility for citizens because that's what it's all about what we been doing in Sydney specifically is trying to identify why there appears to be a rail by is not only from politicians but from citizens.

We're done a stated choice experiment in which we've given people to begin with pictures where the was a new tram and old tram, new LRT an old LRT, a new bus and an old bus and ask people which one they preferred and I was staggered that over 50% just on the looks chose the modern LRT.

More recently we've been looking at another stated choice experiment to try and dig down and find out what sort of characteristics are putting people in favour of rail based technology rather than road based technology and there were some interesting features that come out of this.

The two that stand out for me is that actually from buses what citizens appreciate is the greater network that you get for the same amount of dollars spent. So we gave people of fixed budget. You could have this amount of network from another without saying that it was LRT or BRT. SO people chose that feature as being important to them. And the second thing which stood out for me in terms of the research is the role of experience. So in cities like Brisbane where people are familiar with rapid transit it gets very much higher rating in terms of people being prepared to vote for a system that would include BRT.

Institute of Transport and Logistics press release http://sydney.edu.au/business/itls/news_and_events/news/2017/vref_backs_vital_transport_research_with_multimillion_dollar_grant